Human Rights

Last year the ASRC published a report called Dumped At the Gate. Our report highlighted the practice of DIMA dumping long – term detainees in the community with no support. DIMA responded to our report by denying this was in fact happening. Sadly, this year nothing has changed, we continue to see asylum seekers released from detention with no care plan, no referrals being made, no support, no arrangement for medicare and centrelink before released (if eligible for it) or released onto administrative detention arrangements. Such arrangements leave asylum seekers particularly vulnerable. The community becomes their place of detention and they have no entitlements whatsoever including no right to work or medicare or income. Just recently we had a man released after 4 years on such arrangements and he could not cope such that he asked us to help him be admitted back in Baxter Detention Centre and we had to talk him out of it. What a disgrace.

Kon Karapanagiotidis
CEO
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre

This past week we provided yet another free training workshop for asylum seekers around food and hospitality skills, each year we providing through our employment networks tens of thousands of dollars of free training courses building the capacity of asylum seekers.

The ASRC in collaboration with a number of artists will be presenting Material Word an exhibition for 2 weeks in Federation Square (its free), sharing the stories of asylum seekers through art. To find out more go to the home page of our website: www.asrc.org.au and click onto link under EDUCATE section of our website. The official launch is next Thursday at 11am in Federation Square if any of you for some strange reason want to hear me speak!