On 19 October 2009, Channel 9 News aired a national news report on asylum seekers. The report quoted numerous statistics which have since come under the scrutiny of Media Watch who allege that some of the reported details were misleading and inaccurate.
9 News stand by their report.
In the interest of fairness and balance, here is the ABC’s Media Watch response that followed….
Duration : 0:6:19
For more than five months a group of nearly 240 Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been stranded in an Indonesian port.
The stand-off began when their boat was intercepted by the Indonesian navy following a tip-off from Australia.
The boat people, who are virtually cut off from outsiders, say they want to be resettled in Australia or overseas.
But Australia argues that the boat was intercepted in Indonesian waters so the people are Indonesia’s problem.
Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen reports. (Mar 10, 2010)
Duration : 0:3:28
Fleeing conflict and war, asylum seekers are risking everything they have for new lives in Australia. On this edition of 101 East we are in Australia to look at one of the toughest immigration policies in the world.
Duration : 0:22:58
February 2010
If they stay they face intimidation and violence. If they go they run the gauntlet of naval controls and treacherous seas. Yet the Tamils of Sri Lanka are taking the high water over the at home.
If there is an opportunity to leave Sri Lanka I will not hesitate, even if it poses a risk to my life. The Tamil Tigers – both a liberation army and a terrorist group fighting for a separate homeland in Sri Lanka was all but wiped out by the Sri Lankan army last year in a bloodbath that shocked the world. Former UN spokesman, Gordon Weiss, believes that Tamil civilians were also targeted: about 300,000 civilians, plus the Tamil Tiger forces, were trapped in an area about the size of Central Park. According to Weiss, the Sri Lankan authorities deliberately underestimated the number of trapped civilians, as a ploy to allow the government to get on with its business. Tamil Civilians who survived the offensive have been relegated to camps and accused of spurious crimes. Theyre now risking everything to find asylum. Asylum seekers are drug dealers and traffickers, dismisses President Rajapaksa, now that the Tigers have been destroyed, national unity will prevail. Yet the thousands of Tamil civilians prepared to flee their families and risk their life savings on a dangerous journey, tell a different story.
Produced by ABC Australia / Distributed by Journeyman Pictures
Duration : 0:23:51
A group of 11 Sri Lankan asylum seekers were picked up by Indonesian police near Indonesia’s Bintan island this week.
The group of seven men, two women and two children were said to be abandoned by a Malaysian agent after being told they would be taken to Australia.
For many ethnic Tamils from Sri Lanka, fleeing conflict and what they say is discrimination in their homeland and travelling by boat on a dangerous journey to an uncertain life in Australia is viewed as their only shot at a better life.
Many of them end up detained as refugees and only a handful are granted asylum each year.
But hundreds of them are still willing to try, despite the risks and the high financial costs, as Al Jazeera’s Aela Callan finds out.
Duration : 0:2:52
A group of 56 Sri Lankan asylum seekers are on land today after spending the last month on an Australian customs vessel.
The Sri Lankans were picked up at sea by the Oceanic Viking a month ago after they sent a distress call in Indonesia’s search and rescue zone.
Officials said they will be taken to a naval base and then transferred to an immigration center.
Last week 22 men got off the vessel and stayed at an immigration detention center on Indonesias Bintan Island. They agreed to disembark after Canberra offered assurances they would be resettled in Australia within four weeks.
The standoff between Indonesia and Australia over how to handle the asylum-seekers has brought some frostiness to Canberra-Jakarta relations.
Since January, 39 boats carrying more than 1,800 people have arrived in Australian waters. Australia is seeking Indonesia’s help to block the surge of asylum-seekers.
The Australian prime minister has strongly defended his border protection policies and says the influx of boats is due to the end of civil war in Sri Lanka.
But critics say softer laws introduced by the Australian government have encouraged the new wave of arrivals.
Duration : 0:1:26
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/
Foreign minister Stephen Smith was with Kevin Rudd for their meeting with the Indonesian president, discussing the best way to deal with asylum seekers. He arrived back in Canberra in the early hours of this morning.
Duration : 0:9:44
Perth’s Tamil community has been affected by the plight of Sri Lankan asylum seekers heading to Australia for refuge…..
The Australian government seems to have dangerously sided with Sri Lankan fake Buddhist Sinhala “loyalist” immigrants against Tamil immigrants in Australia + has moved to ban any Tamil resistance in Sri Lanka as being just terrorist organizations – regardless of the human rights abuses of the land-grabbing Sri Lankan government…..
In order to justify that mistake, Australia now seeks to oppress + suppress refugees arriving from Sri Lanka by whatever means – including desperately attempting to dump them upon third nations such as Indonesia, uhh. This is a gross failure by self-serving white settler society….. but the Australian authorities are guilty of their own deceitful land-grab (the “NT Intervention” – an oppression of First Nation black Australians + a kind of mini martial law, uhh)…..
Also see http://www.tamilnation.org/refugees/index.htm
Over the next six years at least Amnesty International will work to shift the balance of power together with those who have been so far denied a say as they tell their own stories and strive to engage in the processes that determine their own future….. http://www.amnesty.org/en/demand-dignity
The billions of people who live in poverty are shut out, ignored and denied security by the actions and failures of the powerful. This is a human rights crisis….. http://thereport.amnesty.org/en/global-themes/demand-dignity
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Duration : 0:5:58
Sri Lankan asylum seekers have finally left an Australian ship for a detention centre in Indonesia.
After a month-long standoff, they agreed to leave the ship following Australian promises of quick resettlement to those with genuine refugee claims.
But as Aela Callan reports from Tanjung Pinang in Indonesia, the crisis is far from over.
Duration : 0:2:6
181 new asylum seekers arrive on Christmas Island