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The Baxter detention centre after the fires during the Christmas break in 2003
Photo (AFP): The Baxter detention centre's roof is gutted a result of the fires during the Christmas break in 2003. Project SafeCom's Jack Smit's media statement "I'm delighted Baxter burns, and I hope it burns right down to the ground," went right around the world in the international coverage the event attracted.

Archived pages 2003

During 2003 the Woomera detention centre was mothballed as a result of a relentless exposure by advocates, activists and a select number of journalists and televised documentaries - of its incidents, suicide attempts, hungerstrikes and break-outs. But Woomera was replaced by the Baxter detention centre, a centre even more secure, torturous and de-humanising. Not without surprise, the year ended with Baxter on fire - see photo.

Below are the pages we added to the website during the calendar year 2003; they are divided into a section on refugee issues and issues related to the wider debate about Howard's Australia and Australia's invovement with the conservative US Bush administration.

 

Royal Commission

The call for a Royal Commission into detention and the treatment of refugees, asylum seekers and immigration detainees has always been relevant, especially since the 2001 Tampa stand-off. With Downloadable Petition Form!

Blog archives

18 October 2006: The Project SafeCom Blog Archives - This is the page that brings together all entries from our Blog. They are manually entered, so please accept apologies if sudden and new entries are not posted to this page immediately.

2003 pages

1. Refugee issues, policies

15 December 2003: Parliament for Refugees: Those who dare to break the silence - This page contains the list of sitting parliamentary representatives in the current government term. As time slowly moves towards the 2004 election, Members will have links to statements they have made about the Howard government's treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

15 December 2003: Senators for Refugees: Those who challenge, block and disallow - This page shows the list of all senators in the Australian Senate in 2004, and - replacement - candidates for the election. As time slowly moves towards the 2004 election, the Senators will have links to statements they have made about the Howard government's treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

15 December 2003: Our 2004 Federal Election campaign: a template for human rights? - We formed our election campaign around trying to compose a platform of quotes, statements, speeches and articles from all Australian Federal Parliamentarians, both Senators and Members of Parliament. All statements needs to include opinion or statements by these politicians themselves about refugees and asylum seekers. So we wrote to everyone in Federal Parliament, asking for material we could use.

15 December 2003: Project SafeCom's 2004 Federal election platform - "Because ALL boatpeople who arrived at Australian shores in the last decade or so, came to ask for asylum, a claim they are rightfully allowed to make under the UN Convention, calling them 'illegal' is in our eyes equivalent to peddling lies on the part of the Howard government, and by others who parrot the current policies".

15 December 2003: The Greens: A Rock of Security in the Senate - Bob Brown's 2001 National Press Club Address: "Today, Mr Howard and Mr Beazley's parties are working in the Senate to ram through 7 bills cutting not only the rights of asylum seekers but of those Australians who want to help them. The bills overrule access to the courts, bring in mandatory..."

15 December 2003: The Human Rights Day hunger strike on Nauru - "When we were in our own country we were persecuted in different ways by atrocious rulers and governments, but now when we are in the Australian-made detention centers we don't think that we have been treated better than what Taliban and other cruel Governments did to us."

10 December 2003: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights - On the occasion of the 55th Anniversary of the International Declaration of Human Rights, we created this page with pop-up windows detailing how Australia breaches the Declaration through its asylum seeker and refugee policy. "Now, Therefore the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations..."

Citizen X3 December 2003: Citizen X, dramatic theatre at Fremantle's Deckchair - We were part of the entire 2003 season with the Project SafeCom information stall. "This is a striking and heart-rending play that gives voice to the voiceless. The letters incorporated in the play, written from Woomera, Curtin, Port Hedland and Villawood, are vulnerable, confused, poetic, sometimes angry, sometimes resigned but always very human. And regardless of your opinion on detention centres for asylum seekers, these voices are worth hearing."

2 December 2003: The Australian Labor Party and SIEV X - An open letter to Labor's new leader Mark Latham, by Tony Kevin, SIEVX whistleblower. "Do you support the series of passed Senate motions calling for a full powers independent judicial inquiry into the sinking of SIEV X ? If you become Prime Minister, will you undertake to implement this Senate demand?"

2 December 2003: Threats to Democracy: Insiders, spin-doctors and dog-whistlers - "The manipulation of truth on two major issues - asylum seekers and Iraq - is not a passing or trivial matter. It involves the lives of thousands of asylum seekers put at risk for political advantage. It goes to the heart of our Judeo Christian tradition of caring for the outsider."

26 November 2003: The Five-Star Asylum journo comes around - "Almost 12 months ago, The Daily Telegraph published a provocative page-one story headed "Five-star asylums" about conditions inside Australia's seven detention centres. Opponents of mandatory detention labelled it a disgrace. The author of the original "Five-star" article, David Penberthy, has buddied up with Ngareta Russell and visited Villawood 10 times."

26 November 2003: Andrew Bartlett's October 2003 SIEV X Senate Motion - Speech in the Senate accompanying the Motion of Condolance for the victims of SIEVX. "...that the Senate ... calls on the Commonwealth Government to immediately establish a comprehensive, independent judicial inquiry into all aspects of the People Smuggling Disruption Program..."

24 November 2003: The Melville Island incident: Australia's New Low - UNHCR regional representative Michel Gaubadan called it "a new low" for Australian refugee treatment. Fourteen Kurdish asylum seekers sought refuge in Australia. In an extraordinary move the Howard government retrospectively excised thousands of islands, including Melville Island - but Senator Andrew Bartlett intervenes.

16 November 2003: Full list of 1998 - 2001 Federal marginal seats by State - This is the full list of Federal electorates, grouped by State, that were marginally held by Labor or the Liberal-National Coalition parties in Australia. It helps you with your lobbying efforts!

8 November 2003: Frank Brennan's Lecture: Tampering with Asylum - "Given that Australia has the advantage of geographic isolation, I ask my government, why don't we try to be just a little more decent rather than less decent than other countries with the same living standards when it comes to our treatment of those who arrive (whether with or without a visa) invoking our protection obligations?"

8 December 2003: 'Old' Mark Latham: defender of mandatory detention - When pressed by Project SafeCom to reveal his sources for this stark claim, the Member for Werriwa Latham Latham wrote us back, stating that 'government sources' claimed this, however, he did not reveal his source - and we told him we weren't too happy with this: his figures were topsy-turvy from what the rates really were...

Frank Brennan SJ: Tampering with Asylum3 November 2003: Frank Brennan's book: Tampering with Asylum - With the Howard Government's revelation that 90% of the unauthorised boat arrivals in recent years have been proved to be refugees, it is timely to reassess the harsh measures instituted to process these people who were labelled as unlawful queue jumpers. Brennan does so in his new book.

25 October 2003: A child in detention: dilemmas faced by health professionals - If a government's policy conflicts with ethics of care workers, health professionals, psychologists or psychiatrists, these ethics are undermined if these policies are deemed to be followed or implemented. This paper deals with the dilemma in the case of a child held in detention and faced with serious psychological distress symptoms.

24 October 2003: Kate Reynolds: Motion in condemnation of Australian Refugee Policy - "I hang my head in shame at the treatment of refugees in this country. It is time that the nation's military intelligence resources and actions were directed towards detecting real terrorists, rather than stopping refugees from seeking asylum in our country as is their legal right."

23 October 2003: JSCFADT Human Rights Sub-Committee Statement to Parliament - Human Rights Sub-Committee's recent activities concerning conditions within immigration detention centres and the treatment of detainees. Tabled by the Chair, Senator Marise Payne, Senator for New South Wales (Lib), who also stated: "I maintain that detention centres are no places for women and children..."

22 October 2003: Australia's crimes against humanity not interesting to the media - Julian Burnside QC mounts a blistering attack on Australia's media, accusing it of refusing to report the government's escalating atrocities: "If the tragedy of our present regime is told dispassionately decades from now, the silence of the press will be seen as part of our national disgrace."

21 October 2003: Horror on Manus Island: the story of Aladdin Sisalem - In July 2003 Australians were told that Australia's Pacific Solution Lombrum Processing Centre on Manus Island was no longer operational. But DIMIA left one asylum seeker to rot on the Island. Aladdin was Palestinian and Stateless, and Australia claimed, after having locked him up, to have no responsibility for him.

11 October 2003: Mary Crock: Where are we on the Refugee Highway? - If we become inured to the obvious suffering of those behind the razor wire, we will have lost our sense of decency as a nation. No matter what your politics, there must come a time when we stand up and say "this is not right".

11 October 2003: The Project SafeCom Information Sheets - we hand them out at rallies, we give them away at events and fundraisers, they're a major feature of our stall. Here they finally are! (also added to the menu buttons....)

11 October 2003: Human Rights Watch Commentary On Australia's TPV's - Australia is the only country to have legislation permitting refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention to remain in the limbo of temporary protection forever ... Most egregious is the flagrant disregard for the well-established human rights principle of family unity in the TPV system.

7 October 2003: Dr Carmen Lawrence, What is social justice? - "The UN ... has added crucial social, economic and cultural rights, including the right to an adequate standard of living; the right to education; the right to work and to equal pay for equal work; and the right of minorities to enjoy their own culture, religion and language. These are all objectives of social justice policies."

2 October 2003: People-Smuggling: National Myths and Realities - "New sources of people flows to Australia are bound to emerge, sometimes with little or no warning. Significantly, the scale of potential flows from non-traditional sources like India, Indonesia and Africa are far in excess of anything Australia has ever experienced," says ONA whistleblower Andrew Wilkie.

1 October 2003: About Immigration Spin Magicians and False Passports - Webdiary's Margo Kingston's case study of how to bamboozle the people who employ you - us - when you're accused of perpetrating the crime you've spent years telling us you're trying to terminate - people smuggling.

7 September 2003: Howard's war to liberate a people he vilified - "For Mr Howard and his government in particular, with its shameful record of human rights abuses, vilification and demonization of the very people - those oppressed by Saddam Hussein - he claims to care about. Hypocrisy seems an inadequate adjective to describe such amoral behaviour..."

3 September 2003: Bruce Haigh: Target Your Enemy - This short article by retired diplomat Bruce Haigh puts the attention and focus back on to "Ruddock's puppet master": Australia's PM 'Honest John' - John Winston Howard, and it was written with the hope that many human rights advocates would take note.

25 August 2003: Hell lasts 1,792 days: the story of Stephen Khan - A Kashmiri shepherd meets Australian refugee detention policies: Less than five hundred metres from where Stephen Khan lives there's a constant riot of arrival and departure. Stephen Khan, however, isn't going anywhere. He hasn't been going anywhere for more than three-and-a-half years. He's the fifth-longest serving detainee in Australia, the second-longest in WA, the longest in Perth.

20 August 2003: A Family Court session: lawfulness of children in detention - An 'alternative' report of the case proceedings in the Adelaide Children's Court, where Justice Strickland stated that it is unlawful to keep the five Bakhtiari children in detention, yet he did not order the government to free them.

18 August 2003: Two NADA News broadcasts on 3CR Community Radio - Two members of the National Anti-Deportation Alliance, recently formed in Australia, talk on-air at 3CR Community Radio in Melbourne, discussing the highly questionable practice of forced deportations and chemical restraints.

4 August 2003: Dr Carmen Lawrence, Fear and Denial in Public Policy - "Fear always serves the real elites - as opposed to those concocted by the conservative commentators; the privileged who throughout history have claimed to be uniquely positioned to identify the "dangers" from which they must protect us - witches, Jews, blacks, Muslims, communists, terrorists, illegals. Fear sells and it gets people elected."

2 August 2003: The cries for help from inside detention centres - Many requests for help, notes for help and petitions to Australians have been sent by our friends in Australia's detention centres. Some were written by children. Some were scribbled on note paper, wrapped around a rock and thrown over the fences of detention centres. Here are some sent to us and other advocates.

1 August 2003: The plight of the Mandaeans: A new Iran contra deal - "The Government wants to test the resistance of Australians to this indecency. I hope they are unpleasantly surprised and that Australians will draw the line at forcing people back to situations where their very lives are at risk." In this piece, which appeared first in Margo Kingston's Web Diary, Carmen Lawrence discusses the Mandaean issue.

1 August 2003: Carmen and the Issues that matter - WA Member of Parliament Dr Carmen Lawrence quit the Labor front bench in December 2002 'in disgust' with the ALP's asylum seeker policy. In a speech delivered to the ACT Labor Club she speaks out, voicing her concerns about the Iraq war, refugees and Labor's response to the Howard government.

1 August 2003: Grant Mitchell, The Swedish Model of Detention - The decision by a state to detain individuals without valid visas, adequate identification or immigration clearance raises numerous arguments. The Swedish practice of detention should be seen as a model for other countries, not only in its ability to quell unrest and create a safer working environment, but also in how to treat and respect those detained.

29 July 2003: Modern-day torture: Government-sponsored neglect of asylum children - Australia's response to unwanted and uninvited refugees is to keep people out by military means, and to incarcerate those who make it alive to our shores, including families with their newborn babies. Such response is morally wrong as well as indefensible...

Here are two of the Children Overboard kids...24 July 2003: The Unthrown Kids: All leaked Kids Overboard photos - They show gratefulness. They show fathers who are tired, but moved. They show mothers who smile, in deep love for their children, and thankfulness for the rescue by HMAS Adelaide. Forgotten are the rounds of machine gun fire, the cannon shots, aimed over the bow of the dilapidated boat.

23 July 2003: John Faulkner, The Aftermath of the CMI Inquiry - "John Howard indicated that he was prepared to spend whatever money it took to deter boatpeople from arriving on the Australian mainland. But have there been other costs? What has been the cost of the Howard Government's disruption programme in Indonesia - not just the financial cost? I intend to keep asking questions until I find out. I intend to keep pressing for an independent judicial inquiry into these very serious matters."

9 July 2003: Julian Burnside QC: Refugees: Australia's moral failure - A speech at a dinner launching 'Just and Fair Asylum' in Sydney on June 11 2002. "We diminish ourselves by the way we treat [refugees and asylum seekers]. Once we recognise that these people are human beings, we will see that the problem is in truth a moral problem and that we have made a profound mistake in the way we have handled it."

9 July 2003: Australia's Treatment Of Asylum Seekers: The View From Outside - A careful analysis of the criminal code therefore suggests that Mr Ruddock and Mr Howard are guilty of crimes against humanity by virtue of their imprisonment of asylum seekers, says Julian Burnside QC.

1 July 2003: The struggle for Labor, the trouble with Labor - The draft proposal reprinted on this page, written by a Labor for Refugees branch member, gives a striking snapshot about what was largely absent from the newsmedia reports at the time, and still absent from the public debate: the fierceness of the struggle within Labor.

30 June 2003: Pathway to Residential Hospitality: Common Journey of Healing - Yazdan Jawshani, a refugee from Afghanistan and Indigenous leader Lowitja O'Donoghue have something in common, and not just something. The Journey of Healing for Australian Indigenous people overlaps in many ways with the journey for refugees in Australia.

See the World Refugee Day Quiz!20 June 2003: Project SafeCom's 2003 World Refugee Day Aussie Tourist Quiz - On the occasion of 2003 World Refugee Day we developed The Aussie Tourist Quiz, a quiz designed for Australian politicians as well as overseas tourists. We designed this on-line Quiz for both Aussie tourists and Aussie politicians who could win prizes with the Quiz ... See the answers and the Quiz here!

15 June 2003: Russell Skelton, A life worth living: finding Tampa people in Kabul - "...he finds it hard to believe the way he was tricked, manipulated and misled by Australian authorities. "They did everything they could to sink our case for refugee status. We were denied access to lawyers, we we never told of our rights and we were held illegally on Nauru for two years. We were genuine refugees and we were denied asylum."

22 May 2003: SIEV X and the DFAT cable: The conspiracy of silence - That such a large number of government officials .... were willing to co-operate in withholding the detailed, highly relevant information in the DFAT cable leaves little doubt that we are still far from the full truth concerning the sinking of SIEVX.

20 May 2003: An interview with 2003 Whistleblower of the Year Tony Kevin - Former Australian diplomat Tony Kevin is convinced the SIEV X asylum-seeker tragedy will become the Howard Government's Watergate. "...the public story was not true, it did not hang together..."

17 May 2003: Forming the National Anti-deportation Alliance - On Saturday 17 May 2003, 37 participants in a phone conference, representing many refugee groups from all States and territories around Australia, formed the National Anti-Deportation Alliance (NADA). This is the resource page for NADA.

6 May 2003: Malcolm Fraser launches the book 'From Nothing to Zero' - "These extracts from letters from asylum seekers will help Australians see the refugees' many human problems. They have their hopes, their fears and their concerns for the future, as we all do. Their stories should create an understanding that people from different countries, different cultures and different religions have very similar concerns and interests to ourselves."

6 May 2003: 'From Nothing to Zero': Letters from Detention - "These extracts from letters from asylum seekers will help Australians see the refugees' many human problems. They have their hopes, their fears and their concerns for the future, as we all do. Their stories should create an understanding that people from different countries, different cultures and different religions have very similar concerns and interests to ourselves."

20 April 2003: Reuniting families: Howard and Ruddock's hypocrisy - When it counts as a core value, Howard, and with him Ruddock, Australia's Immigration Minister, show an appalling contempt for the place of the family in society, and for internationally agreed values, treaties, and conventions relating to the concept of 'family'.

10 April 2003: Borderline: Australia's Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers - Sonia Tascon interviews author Peter Mares: The detention of asylum seekers, including children, the detention of families for long periods of time, was seriously under-reported, covered in a veil of secrecy and indifference.

2 April 2003: Why people are travelling to Baxter during Easter 2003 - About a visit to the Baxter detention centre, The Baxter Convergence planned for the weekend of Easter 2003. The page publishes some reasons people have for going to Baxter in a mass demonstration. Like the event in Woomera in 2002, it promises to be an international event; eleborate organisation is well underway.

1 April 2003: Camping around Port Augusta: a guide to camping and overnighting - Since DIMIA does not provide accommodation for Australian and International tourists and backpackers, you're left to the devices of guy ropes, tent pegs, your water bottle and the gas campstove for your holiday stay. Our consultants from "Unusual Tourist Ventures", a Melbourne based company, have prepared this report (but note the page date).

31 March 2003: A list of Frequently Asked Questions about Baxter2003 - Many people are again expected to converge on the Baxter detention centre during the Easter weekend in April 2003. Some people comment or indicate doubts as to the usefulness and safety of a protest, and the subsequent impact on those incarcerated inside. These FAQ's formed on the network lists.

31 March 2003: Dunn and Howard, Limits on the detention of asylum-seekers - The Australian government remains blind to the demands of international human rights law, revealing the impotence of non-enforceable norms. What that means for human rights advocates in Australia, and for asylum seekers in detention, is that the battlefield is not the international arena, but the domestic legal system.

15 March 2003: Self harm: answer to Government torture and powerlessness in detention - Indefinite incarceration of people without a criminal charge is one of the world's most severe breaches of International Human Rights conventions, yet this is what Australia does with the asylum seekers who, under the 'stitched-up' Migration Act, have been excluded from becoming successful in their determination by Australia as refugees. This page highlights the situation of some of the Iranian asylum seekers held in detention centres around Australia.

12 March 2003: It's not unlike the pain of my own people - Lowitja O'Donoghue speaks out: Giving Ruddock the additional 'Indigenous' portfolio is to recognise the racial agenda in Howard's own mind. Aboriginal people and the Stolen Generation have demanded an apology on the basis of racial injustice. And its very hard to see injustices to refugees to be anything other than race motivated.

24 February 2003: Fatima Erfani: why did she die because of medical neglect? - This is a page dedicated to Fatima Erfani, a 28-year old mother of three, who died as a result of what we see as medical neglect, compounded by extreme stress, and isolation on Christmas Island as a result of the abhorrent Australian asylum seeker policies under Australia's Prime Minister John Howard.

The Baxter Detention Centre: 9000 volts fences, miltary style control of innocent people31 January 2003: Going for Baxter, going for broke - Created while the 2003 Baxter convergence was planned, this is a page, specifically dealing with the Baxter detention centre, the main centre of asylum detainees, with some of our friends having lived inside detention for more than six years, and now well into their seventh year.

30 January 2003: Open Letter to Politicians Full Of Questions About Refugees - We're asking a barrage of questions about visiting Iranian Mullahs to Canberra, the secret plans to deport 190 Iranians from Australia, and on this page we're including questions about Minister Ruddock being scared for the UN Committee Against Torture or the UN Human Rights Committee.

24 January 2003: Australia's Pacific Solution: The BBC & Kate Durham undercover on Nauru - Project SafeCom's first ever, and major, screen event, featuring two screenings at the Fremantle Film and TV Institute, with Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett and ALP Member for Fremantle Dr Carmen Lawrence. The event was attended by almost 200 people. This page is a 'retrospective' assembly of the various pages for the event.

2. Opinion, democracy and peace

12 October 2003: Bravo, Kerry O'Brien, bravo 7.30 Report, bravo, Aunty - In 'The ABC of journalistic precision', blogger Jack Robertson comments on the fierceness and independence of the ABC's 7.30 Report's anchor Kerry O'Brien on the occasion that Howard supporter Tony Abbott, the Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, gets hauled over the coals over a number of issues.

8 September 2003: Paul Keating on John Howard - two articles, edited transcripts from Keating's launch speech on the occasion of the book The History Wars in Melbourne. The top one is from The Age, the one below, and the longer one, from the Sydney Morning Herald.

4 August 2003: Dr Carmen Lawrence, Fear and Denial in Public Policy - "Fear always serves the real elites - as opposed to those concocted by the conservative commentators; the privileged who throughout history have claimed to be uniquely positioned to identify the "dangers" from which they must protect us - witches, Jews, blacks, Muslims, communists, terrorists, illegals. Fear sells and it gets people elected."

2 August 2003: America's Top 40 Lies About the Iraq War And Terrorism - An article by Steve Perry for Jihad UnSpun. Statements such as "The Administration Was Not Bent On War With Iraq From 9/11 Onward" and thirty-nine others like it get a thorough debunking - essential reading!

2 August 2003: Acts of Hope - Challenging Empire on the World Stage - Rebecca Solnit is "hopeful, partly because we don't know what is going to happen in that dark future and we might as well live according to our principles as long as we're here. Hope, the opposite of fear, lets us do that [....] The reckless Bush Administration seems to be generating what US administrations have so long held back: a world in which the old order is shattered and anything is possible."

1 July 2003: The PAN Recall: the biggest medicine recall in history - "This an important article and the information is vitally important to all who value their health freedom. The Pan debacle, the biggest recall in history, has uncovered a number of astonishing issues that very few Australians are aware of. These issues are of international importance."

6 June 2003: Arundhati Roy, The Day of the Jackals - Arundhati Roy in Washington DC. "Public support in the US for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit coordinated by the US government and faithfully amplified by the press. And now the bombs have fallen, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilization: Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates."

27 May 2003: The Role of the Writer in John Howard's Australia - The Colin Simpson Lecture in the Redfern Town Hall. "I have a simple plea to make: that writers start focusing on what is happening in this country, looking Australia in the face, not flinching, coming to grips with the fact that we have been on a long loop through time that has brought us back almost - but not quite - to where we were."

Authored by Project SafeCom and published  23 March 2003: Why Project SafeCom opposes the invasion of Iraq - Why Project SafeCom opposes the invasion, why it is corrupt, and what some other people say about it. "One of the chief agendas for the USA is the control of the oil-rich countries - and interwoven with that, is that the key agents in the policy formulation are also those in significant positions of control of the oil industries, such as Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Donald Evans, James Baker."

Media Releases 2003

31 December 2003 Baxter Management plans Serious Human Rights Breaches in Mass strip searches
24 December 2003 Nauru Crisis Deepens but govt remains unmoved
17 December 2003 Human rights advocates, psychiatrists call for immediate NAURU closure
11 December 2003 Nauru hungerstrike ongoing, with extremely serious intent
10 December 2003 Mark Latham uses topsy-turvy statistics to defend mandatory detention
27 October 2003 Ruddock's announced Migration Law Review cannot be trusted
16 October 2003 Kadem family members in roof-top protest
15 September 2003 Refugee advocates 'calculate' human, national cost of refugee policies
29 August 2003 Minister for Immigration further destroys spirit of UN Refugee Convention
23 August 2003 OPEN Letter from all Iranian detainees in Baxter IDC
22 August 2003 Baxter detainees attempt suicide before forced deportations
20 August 2003 Australia's Minister For Deportation prepares for next phase of refugee cruelty
19 August 2003 Palestinian refugee left to rot on Manus Island, DIMIA attempt at denial
14 August 2003 NAURU Asylum seeker implicates Indonesian Immigration Officials with assisting people smugglers
30 July 2003 Tough LATELINE questioning crumbles Ruddock's spin
24 July 2003 EXCLUSIVE: Children Overboard Incident photos
16 July 2003 Federal Court appearance may well see release of longest held asylum seeker in Australia
30 June 2003 Refugee group suspects Immigration Minister Ruddock silenced Immigration Detention Advisory Group
17 June 2003 Australia attempts to perpetuate its 'Guantanamo Bay Experiment' on Nauru
06 June 2003 Refugee advocates place Kim Beazley on 'conditional' status
03 June 2003 Ten Iranian families raided: ordered by Iranian government?
19 May 2003 Sack Ruddock, sack ACM, start Judicial Inquiry and Royal Commission
15 May 2003 Ruddock involves Iranian Embassy in secret deportation deal
8 May 2003 Group 4 Falck loses interest in running asylum centres
21 April 2003 Detainees strengthened, encouraged, and offering love to protesters, but outraged at media reporting
19 April 2003 Beatings at Baxter, Trumped-up Police charges, SA Premier vilification
18 April 2003 Dumping Iraqis: first Howard in Iraq, now Ruddock in South Australia
18 April 2003 Mounted Police trapping, harassing and threatening protesters with mass arrests at Baxter campsite
International17 April 2003 INTERNATIONAL: Australian Refugee groups: Ruddock has twelve months to remove the stench of Baxter
15 April 2003 Refugee Group calls for UN Observer team inside Baxter at Easter
International12 April 2003 NEDERLANDS: Australische vluchtelingen actiegroepen zetten Howard onder druk gedurende de Paasdagen
12 April 2003 Baxter detainees, shackled, cuffed and mouths taped by guards
International12 April 2003 INTERNATIONAL: Australian asylum detainees, shackled, cuffed and mouths taped by guards
10 April 2003 Mike Rann should take action to stop child abuse in Baxter
4 April 2003 Refugee Activists prepare Easter action at Baxter Hell Detention Centre
International4-10 April 2003 INTERNATIONAL: Refugee Activists prepare Easter action at Baxter Hell Detention Centre
13 March 2003 Ruddock's Sweet Deal with Iran doesn't cancel atrocities of both countries
31 January 2003 Murder by Negligence: Australian Government Responsible
28 January 2003 Refugee advocates say: NAURU refugees should be immediately released
International27 January 2003 (Australia Day) Australia Day 2003: Refugees deliberately ignored
22 January 2003 Detained Christmas Island mother dies in Perth hospital
18 January 2003 News article: Fremantle Herald - Pollies take on the Pacific Solution
02 January 2003 AFP uses teargas, handcuffs and strip searches on all Woomera residents