Dear Ms Andrews and Mr Hawke,

I am friend of the Centre for a Compassionate Society, which meets every week in the electorate of Melbourne. I live in the electorate of ***. We have committed to writing a letter to your government every week until all refugees and asylum-seekers who remain on Nauru and in PNG under Operation Sovereign Borders are appropriately re-settled. We also seek humane treatment for refugees and asylum seekers on-shore. We are copying this letter to the Prime Minister, the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, and to our local members of parliament.

Will you read the article in this week’s Saturday Paper by Mehdi Ali, who you have detained in the Park Hotel? https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/life/2022/02/05/the-worst-torture-destroys-persons-character/164397960013265

He writes about the ongoing torment, for him and his fellow detainees, of indefinite detention, and how he struggles to sleep as his mind oscillates between despair and desperate hope for release. He writes about how he and his fellow detainees suffer more than those in prison because they have no idea of an end date. He writes: 

The law is not supposed to be a matter of personal taste, but it is clear my case can only be settled by the taste of one individual in this country: the minister. There is no explanation or clarity for it. I am a human being who has been deprived of my basic rights because of one man’s powers. Nine years is far too long for a boy to be held for no reason.

Ministers, we wonder how you sleep at night, knowing that you hold such power over the lives of vulnerable human beings, whose only ‘crime’ has been to ask Australia for safety. You have the discretion to end this misery, and see Mehdi and all those refugees detained for so many years released and settled in the community. Will that be your legacy?

Kind regards,

*

Send your letter to:

Mr Alex Hawke: alex.hawke.mp@aph.gov.au (The Immigration Minister)

Ms Karen Andrews: karen.andrews.mp@aph.gov.au (Minister for Home Affairs).

Ms Kristina Keneally: senator.keneally@aph.gov.au (Shadow Minister for Immigration and Home affairs)

The Prime Minister via his website HERE.

And to your local Federal MP.