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Blog: Dear Prime Minister

On July 30 2016 I started writing letters to the Prime Minister of Australia to protest against the imprisonment and torture of the asylum seekers in the offshore detention centres of Manus Island and Nauru. I started with the intention of writing a letter a day for every person in detention until they are all freed. There are more than 1800 asylum seekers in off shore detention. These are those letters and any response from Mr Turnbull.

Australia's responsibility #380

Dear Prime Minister

Alison Battisson, Human Rights Lawyer, has said:

Saeed’s case is another example of an asylum seeker getting lost in an unfamiliar legal system. Australias’s system for hearing and reviewing protection claims is so complex that many find it impossible to navigate. All we ask is that the Minister hear Saeed’s full story
— Alison Battisson

Saeed's brother and other refugees from the same Iraqi minority group were granted asylum in Australia but , on a technicality, Saeed was not. Ms Battisson was working with Saeed to appeal his case directly to the Minister, as is Saeed's right. However, today she found out too late that 15 officers forcibly removed Saeed from Villawood detention centre and put him on a plane back to Iraq despite his extremely frail health.

This is the same racist system which keeps refugees tortured and imprisoned on remote islands, keeps tens of thousands of recognised refugees without work, welfare, health care or education in limbo in Australia, forces employees to betray their professional duty of care and costs inconceivably large amounts of money. Is Saeed's death the price of your Prime Ministership?