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Capital punishment
Isn’t it sweet that the Australian Government would like everyone to realise that we hold the moral high ground.
Time to end Bush’s wretched war. (excerpt)
Yesterday, the Australian Government, via the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, reiterated its opposition to the death penalty. "We urge countries who continue to apply capital punishment not to do so," he told the ABC, adding that Australia would co-sponsor a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly calling for a moratorium on capital punishment.
Just as we hold the moral high ground on all those other International Treatise signed on the rights of children, or the rights of asylum seekers, after which we close the doors from any critics and go ahead and literally drive people to self-harm, suicide, mental illness.
But we are white, and white is might, so it must be right.
Feb 2008: As promised prior to the 2007 Federal Election, the ALP on assuming government, quickly moved to shut down the Australian-run detention centre on Nauru in the remote South Pacific. However, it has not withdrawn the controversial September 2001 legislation that created the offshore detention and processing system that came to be known as the 'Pacific Solution'. Instead of transferring asylum seekers en route to Australia to Nauru, it now transfers all asylum seekers to the detention centre on Christmas Island off Australia's far North-West coast. They still have have no rights under Australian law and are processed separately.
Oh, and they didn’t get the chance to enact a new legislation with greater powers similar to what allows the above ‘solution’ because those fool citizens didn’t give the ALP a majority in the Senate.
Commenting on the announcement, James Thomson, spokesperson for the National Council of Churches’ refugee program, which coordinated the statement, said that if it were not for the sustained pressure that churches and community brought to bear in the debate, and the pivitol role played by key parliamentarians who stood their ground against the Bill, it would have been passed.
Flight from Nauru ends Pacific Solution
"The Pacific solution was a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise introduced on the eve of a federal election (in 2001) by the Howard government," Senator Evans said.
He said the department had spent $289 million between September 2001 and June 2007 to run the Nauru and Manus centres.
Mark Getchell, from the International Organisation for Migration, which ran the Nauru facility, said there were now no asylum seekers left on Nauru.
"It is the end of an era," Mr Getchell said.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) welcomed the end of the policy.
"Many bona fide refugees caught by the policy spent long periods of isolation, mental hardship and uncertainty - and prolonged separation from their families," UNHCR's Richard Towle said in a statement
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