The Australian government has restricted foreign diplomats bringing domestic workers into the country, a UN anti-slavery expert has reported, after two recent federal court cases exposed systemic exploitation a judge described as “slave-like working conditions”.
Actor and wife filmed promotional ad in UAE, a country which strives to present itself as tolerant ‘while carrying out repression against dissent’
Australian movie star Chris Hemsworth has been criticised for starring in a slick advertisement promoting Abu Dhabi as a tourism destination in partnership with the United Arab Emirates government, the latest celebrity to use their influence to promote the gulf state.
Hemsworth features in the minute-long ad with his actor and model wife, Elsa Pataky, which they posted on their Instagram accounts on Wednesday. The ad was also shared by the Experience Abu Dhabi Instagram account.
Every bit of news of every attack trivialises everything else here. Dreams, plans, ‘achievements’
I grew up and spent most of my life in Beirut before migrating to Australia just over a decade ago. I had to leave and I cannot go back. I have come to terms with the reality that I am a forced migrant.
Forced migrants and refugees flee to seek safety. I watch photographs and videos of as many as a million Lebanese people internally displaced since September, living on streets, in schools and even in a nightclub. It appears to me that safety is a moving scale, and evidently not everyone is owed safety. That my people, and I, cannot access the safety promised in the refugee convention. Or that the safety we are owed looks very different.
Australian children held in a Syrian detention camp for more than five years – some born in the camp and having never left it – are despairing as they watch hundreds of other foreign children leave for home.
“They can’t understand why they don’t have a chance to be saved like the other Australians and given a shot at a normal life,” one mother in the camp told Guardian Australia.
This brave journalist and young women like her are bearing the brunt of the failed democratisation project: ‘Hope is fading’
In the final days of the Afghan republic – in defiance of a looming takeover by the Taliban – the Hazara journalist Mani sang revolutionary poems in public in Kabul about women, freedom and justice. Now she is on the run, waiting for the Australian government to grant her a humanitarian visa.
It’s three years since Australia pulled its final troops out of Afghanistan. Their presence over two decades saw the country emerge from the ashes of civil war, embrace a relative peace and a fragile democracy before falling back into the darkness of fundamentalism under the Taliban.
Australia and Indonesia have struck a new security pact that will lead to more joint military exercises and visits, prompting human rights advocates to call for safeguards.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Indonesian defence minister and president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, in Canberra on Tuesday that there was “no more important relationship than the one between our two great nations”.
Australia and Indonesia have struck a new security pact that will lead to more joint military exercises and visits, prompting human rights advocates to call for safeguards.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told the Indonesian defence minister and president-elect, Prabowo Subianto, in Canberra on Tuesday that there was “no more important relationship than the one between our two great nations”.
The Australian government has rolled out the welcome mat as China’s premier, Li Qiang, visited Canberra, but his trip may have been overshadowed by an apparent attempt by Chinese officials to block the view of the formerly detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei during a signing ceremony.
The first trip to Australia by a Chinese premier in seven years is the most striking symbol yet of the easing of tensions in a previously turbulent relationship.
Beijing has enjoyed exercising “panda diplomacy” over the years, loaning bears to countries depending on its assessment of how well diplomatic relations are going.
Human rights advocates have called on Anthony Albanese to place China’s human rights record ahead of economic and trade discussions in his meeting with China’s second most powerful leader on Monday.
They said it was time for Australia’s Labor government to demand concrete action from China in addressing human rights complaints against it as “statements of concern” were not achieving results.
Li Qiang has announced a panda swap for Adelaide zoo, a diplomatic move long anticipated but timed to coincide with the first visit of a Chinese premier to Australia since 2017.
Making the announcement at the zoo, Li said two new giant pandas would replace Wang Wang and Fu Ni, who have lived at the zoo for 15 years as the only specimens of their kind in the southern hemisphere.
Foreign affairs minister says she raised concerns about China’s human rights record during meeting with Wang Yi, including in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong
The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has told her visiting Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, that Australians are “shocked” at the suspended death sentence imposed on the writer Dr Yang Hengjun.
Wong raised the Australian citizen’s case – along with human rights more broadly – during a meeting that was largely aimed at stabilising the previously turbulent relationship with Australia’s largest trading partner.
But there needs to be greater architectural reform, which is also what Professor Fels articulated, which is what the Nationals have said. When there’s too much market concentration, you have too much power.
And all we’re saying is that whether it is in the supermarket [or farm gate], we want fair prices from the farm gate to the supermarket gate.
I think that he demonstrated the need and reinforced what the Nationals have been calling for, when there’s evidence, clear evidence around price gouging.
We saw that with meat prices where farm grade prices dropped by 60% or 70% in June. Yet, the checkout price only dropped by 18%. They put pressure all the way down through the supply chain. And what Allan Fels has said in his inquiry is that we need to have more ACCC price investigations, where there’s clear evidence. And that’s what we were calling for and the government ignored that. And I think shoppers have paid too much.
Australian-linked mining companies are continuing to operate in Myanmar, helping to support the military junta and the junta-dominated mining sector, a new report alleges.
The activist group Justice for Myanmar released a report Tuesday detailing the activities of mining companies either linked to Australia or backed by Australian investors, which it alleges have continued their operations in the war-torn nation since the coup almost three years ago.
Australian citizens should be banned from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Labor MP Julian Hill has suggested, calling on his own government to take a stronger stance against settler activity deemed illegal under international law.
As foreign affairs minister Penny Wong prepares to travel to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as part of a Middle East visit this week, Hill said the government should consider bolder action – such as visa bans for settlers – against settlements considered a major impediment to a “two-state solution” with Palestine.
Cabinet papers from 2003 show the government pursued talks without consulting peak Indigenous body – which it then abolished
The Howard government fought strongly against recognising the right of Indigenous peoples to “self-determination” and worked secretly with Canada to try to change a draft UN declaration, newly released cabinet papers show.
The cabinet papers from 2003, released by the National Archives on Monday, show that some Australian government departments held concerns about potential impacts of the UN declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples, but Australia’s talks with Canada on amendments were being pursued with “no Indigenous consultation about the process or its product” as such input would be “premature”.
Australia must not compromise on human rights as it improves its relationship with China because “the truth must be told”, a minister from the Tibetan government in exile has said during a visit to Canberra.
Norzin Dolma, a minister of the Central Tibetan Administration based in Dharamshala in India, met Australian MPs from across the political spectrum on Thursday to warn against a “quiet diplomacy” approach to “gross human rights abuses” and “brutal suppression” in Tibet.
Australia will impose sanctions on Iranian state media for broadcasting forced confessions, with the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, vowing to take tougher action before the anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s death in custody.
Brushing off claims from the Coalition that the government has been slow to act, Wong will announce on Wednesday that she is introducing new sanctions against those linked to the oppression of women and girls.
The Australian democracy activist Chau Van Kham has been released from a Vietnamese jail and returned to his home in Sydney.
“Chau Van Kham has returned to Australia a free man,” his family said. “We share the happy news that Chau Van Kham is well and has returned to his family today.”
Exclusive: ‘I have spent half my life in a tent closed off by gates like a prison,’ says the child, who is under 10, in a voice message to Anthony Albanese
An Australian child trapped in a Syrian detention camp has pleaded directly with prime minister Anthony Albanese to be rescued and brought home.
“I am one of the children left behind in Roj camp and I have spent half my life in a tent closed off by gates like a prison,” a voice message sent to the prime minister’s office says. “I have never been to school, laid in grass or climbed a tree.”
Thousands of students at the University of Papua New Guinea staged a protest at the Waigani campus Forum Square today against the US-PNG Defence Cooperation Agreement that is scheduled for signing this afternoon.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is already in the country to sign the defence pact and also the Ship Rider Agreement with PNG.
The students claimed that the agreements between PNG and the United States concerned national security and their content must be made known for public scrutiny and transparency before signing takes place.
However, Prime Minister James Marape had earlier insisted that the agreements to be signed were transparent.
Marape added that not all agreements signed should be presented to Parliament earlier.
He said the country’s State Solicitor, who represents PNG’s legal checks and balances, had been involved “every step of the way” and had given clearance over the laws of this country.
Marape said that as soon as it is stable for transparency the country would be privy to those agreements and they would be tabled in Parliament.
‘Almost there for signing’
“I just wish to assure everyone, that Parliament will be privy to what we are about to sign and at the moment our Foreign Affairs team has been leading the negotiations. We are at the stage where we are almost there for signing,” he said.
“I want to give assurance to our country, it is nothing to be sceptical about,” said Marape.
Marape further elaborated that similar agreements and cooperation had been reached with other countries and that PNG could reach out to other bilateral partners with similar agreements as stipulated in the Constitution.
Also, the country’s foreign policy was: “Friends to all and enemies to none”.
The US and PNG already had a Status of Forces Agreement, or SOFA.
A SOFA is an agreement between a host country and a foreign nation stationing military forces in that country.
SOFAs are often included, along with other types of military agreements, as part of a comprehensive security arrangement.
Corporations allowed
Marape briefly stated that the SOFA agreement did allow US defence corporations and others to be involved in PNG.
PNG was just elevating this specific one with the USA.
Deputy Prime Minister John Rosso also clarified that once the agreement was agreed by the National Executive Council (NEC) and signed off by the Prime Minister and Defence Minister it would be brought before Parliament and debated before it became law.
On behalf of the government, Finance Minister Rainbo Paita adressed the protesting students at the UPNG Forum Square and received the petition presented by the Student Representative Council president Luther Kising.
Other tertiary institution’s student bodies, such as the University of Goroka and the University of Technology at Lae, have also protested against the defence cooperation agreement.
Meanwhile, there was a high presence of police reinforcements at the entrance to UPNG preventing the protest from escalating further.
Stella Martin and Rose Amosare NBC reporters. Republished with permission.
UPNG protesters at the Forum Square today. Image: NBC News
Sarah Copland, whose two-year-old son, Isaac, was killed in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, says the fight for justice has been gruelling.
This week marked a small breakthrough for the families of more than 200 people who died in the August 2020 Beirut port explosion, amid accusations the authorities in Lebanon have repeatedly obstructed an investigation.
Report also urges government to be prepared to expel Iranian diplomats who may be involved in ‘intimidation, threats or monitoring’ of citizens or residents
Australia should designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organisation and be prepared to expel diplomats from the country, according to a new Senate inquiry report.
The report, published on Wednesday, urged the government to expel “any Iranian officials in Australia considered to be involved in intimidation, threats, or monitoring of Australians”.
Australia has imposed sanctions on Iranian security officials and has targeted Myanmar’s military ruler on the second anniversary of the military coup there.
The Australian government revealed a range of new sanctions late on Tuesday, including Iranian figures linked to the suppression of protests and the export of drones for Russian use in the war against Ukraine.
The Australian government has vowed to keep raising human rights concerns “at the highest levels” after Beijing’s ambassador urged the country to avoid “trying to smear China”.
After a thaw in the diplomatic relationship between the two countries, China has signalled its openness to resuming a dedicated human rights-focused dialogue for the first time in nine years.
Human Rights Watch calls on government to address its own ‘alarming deficiencies’, including detention of children under 14 and treatment of asylum seekers
The detention of children under 14 and new laws targeting climate protesters are harming Australia’s credibility to stand up for human rights in the region, a leading rights body has warned.
Human Rights Watch called on Australia to address its own “alarming deficiencies” when the organisation on Thursday published its annual reports on the performance of nearly 100 countries.
The Australian government will use human rights sanctions to punish “egregious human rights violations and abuses” by Iranian and Russian perpetrators.
The Australian foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, announced the Magnitsky-style sanctions (named for the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after exposing corruption in Russia) have been imposed on 13 Russian and Iranian individuals.
An Australian citizen is among at least 40 foreign nationals now held in Iranian jails amid pro-democracy protests across the country – and an escalating violent response by regime forces.
A spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Iranian-Australian dual national had not been arrested for taking part in the anti-regime protests but confirmed that Australian officials had been refused access to assess the person’s welfare.
Economic adviser to ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi was accused by military leaders of having confidential papers
Aung San Suu Kyi and the Australian academic Sean Turnell who served as her advisor have been sentenced to three years in prison after a closed trial in Myanmar, according to reports.
Turnell, an economist at Sydney’s Macquarie University, was first detained last year on 6 February, a few days after the military ousted Myanmar’s elected government, plunging the country into chaos.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has raised the case of jailed engineer Robert Pether with the Iraqi leader, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as the Australian’s family warns he has become “gravely ill” and is rapidly deteriorating in his Baghdadi jail cell.
Pether has now been imprisoned for more than 14 months following a commercial dispute between his engineering firm and Iraq’s central bank, which had hired Pether’s company to help build its new Baghdad headquarters. Pether’s family say he is innocent and the trial was unfair and compromised.
