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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.

End offshore detention.

Dear Prime Minister,

Every day, evidence rolls in about Australia's pointless, cruel, barbaric offshore detention system. The refugees stuck in its limbo have written, spoken, made art and films about the atrocities on Manus Island and Nauru. That should have been more than enough evidence for a humane and civilised country to immediately abandon the regime and compensate its victims. But Australia has ignored the evidence and deliberately refined the system of torture there to inflict physical and mental illness, to remove all services including electricity and water and to refuse refugees' attempts to resettle safely.

Human rights agencies, the United Nations, legal and medical organisation, religious groups, government agencies, the audit office and activists have produced reams of documentary evidence that supports the refugees' evidence against offshore detention. They also go further, and reveal the planned brutality, the disregard for humanity, for morality and for accountability.

Former Manus Island social worker, Alice Krupa, has published a thorough, appalling account of the planned systematic breaking down of the asylum seekers, of the strategic restriction to medical care and the repeated and intentional disregard for basic human rights and international law. Ms Krupa describes the dreadful decline and mistreatment of Hamed Shamshiripour leading to his preventable death. And still Hamed's fellow detainees are enduring the terrible conditions which killed him. We have no option but to act now. It is unconscionable to witness this and for it still to continue. Bring all refugees and asylum seekers to safety and freedom now.