Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Detainee deaths

The human rights group The Edmund Rice Centre, is reporting that at least nine asylum seekers who were sent back to Afghanistan by the Australian government have been killed on their return. In addition, three children of asylum seekers who were sent back to Afghanistan from Nauru have also been killed.

At least two of the asylum seekers were murdered by the local militia (a polite word for "armed mob with automatic weapons and pretentions of being in the army"), while some of the others were killed when their houses were bombed.

Of course the government ministers who rejected claims that the asylum seekers' lives would be in danger if they were sent back, are putting on a brave face, arguing that they had no way of knowing that the people's lives were in danger if they went back to Afghanistan.

Gosh. We send people back into a country where armed militias are settling old scores and murdering those who are insufficiently religious, where terrorists set off bombs deliberately targetting civilians, where terrorists in uniforms occupying military forces fire missiles at houses, and they get killed. Even Blind Freddie could have seen that coming.

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