When Dong Luobin, now 39, fled from Auckland's Consulate for the People's Republic of China nearly five years ago, he told NZ police he feared his Catholicism was putting his life in danger.

Six months later New Zealand authorities granted him refugee status. They concluded he faced persecution over his religious and political views were he to return to China.

"Defections are a particularly rare occurrence," says Rhys Ball, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University. This is the first defection of a foreign government official or employee on New Zealand soil that Ball is aware of since the 1947-1991 Cold War.

Dong says he's speaking out publicly about his experiences to help New Zealanders understand the importance of their democratic freedoms.

He describes his early working life in Auckland as one where he and others were constantly watched, monitored and controlled.

He worked in a multi-building compound surrounded by a high barbed-wire-topped wall. Staff, mostly non-English speakers lived on site, had to surrender their passports to the consulate, and were able to leave the compound only in groups of three or more.

When Dong started work at the consulate in 2016, physical security wasn't as tight, enabling him to sneak out during lunchtimes or evenings to visit a nearby church.

Dong is a third-generation Catholic. He says practising his faith in China was subject to surveillance and repression.

His absences to attend church secretly were noticed and on 7 May 2018 he was questioned by consulate staff about his whereabouts the previous day and why he did not answer his phone.

He began to fear the crucifix he wore around his neck may also have been noticed and his religious beliefs would soon be discovered.

Coincidentally that morning he had been given possession of his passport to take to the Automobile Association for his New Zealand driver's licence: It presented an opportunity for escape.

The Catholic defector first tried seeking asylum in the church he had surreptitiously visited, but the pastor he sought was not present and staff called police. He was taken to an Auckland police station where he was interviewed with the assistance of a Mandarin-speaking officer.

"I said to the translating officer, ‘If you send me back to the consulate I will die'. Then the police perhaps understood my situation. The officer said, ‘Don't worry, we will protect you.'"

The following day Dong made contact with a lawyer who immediately filed an application for asylum.

National Party MP Simon O'Connor says while most New Zealanders will be aware of the [Chinese Communist Party's] repression of Uighur Muslims or suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong, they mightn't know Christians are also aggressively targeted.

O'Connor, a staunch Catholic, said Dong's story should be a warning for New Zealand: "His story, and why he defected, illustrates the paranoia of authoritarian regimes."

Source

• NZ Herald

The man wrote in his request he had converted to Christianity because it is a peaceful faith. However, the Independent reports Britain's Home Office's refusal letter cited several biblical passages, including the book of Revelation, to say the Bible was "inconsistent" with his claim.

The man's caseworker tweeted he'd never seen anything like this used to refuse asylum. Read more

I honour Fraser, but not because he opened our borders to fleeing boat people coming in their tens of thousands. He didn't. He secured the borders, and then he led the nation in opening "our arms and hearts to tens of thousands of refugees" as the novelist Tim Winton put it in his Palm Sunday address in Perth last year.

Winton was wrong to claim that Fraser welcomed the boats.

Winton was right to proclaim: "I was proud of my country, then, proud of the man who made it happen, Malcolm Fraser, whose greatness shames those who've followed him in the job. Those were the days when a leader drew the people up and asked the best of them and despite their misgivings, Australians rose to the challenge. And I want to honour his memory today."

Seeking the right balance between compassion and realism, between the human rights of asylum seekers and the national interest of a rich democratic country, we might find as much guidance from the memory of the last generation of refugees in their honouring of the last generation of political leaders who tried to forge a solution compassionate and fair to the many who were seeking asylum and acceptable to the voting public.

I have concluded that stopping the boats is a precondition to finding a politically acceptable, compassionate and fair solution. It is time to quarantine the question of the morality of those stopping the boats, accepting the political imperative of stopping the boats if they can practically be stopped. Continue reading

• Father Frank Brennan, S.J. is Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University.

Over the last two weeks, our classes revolved around human rights — always a bit of a cringeworthy topic when one comes from Australia.

Cringeworthy, because when the UN issues a report finding Australia to be in breach of the UN Convention Against Torture in respect of our treatment of asylum seekers, our Prime Minister publicly announces that Australians are sick of being lectured by the United Nations.

Apparently we're also sick of the Australian Human Rights Commission, especially that pesky Gillian Triggs who keeps going on about children in detention.

It appears now that we simply do not wish to hear anything about what happens in Australian detention centres — Parliament has made it illegal to tell us anyway.

By contrast, there is the country I have called home for the past six months. In that time, Italy has received tens of thousands of migrants arriving by boat from northern Africa.

Italy's economy is one of the worst in Europe. It is struggling under the strain of the humanitarian crisis that is the unprecedented numbers of migrants arriving by sea.

Yet the government does not turn to inhuman methods cloaked in a shroud of secrecy. Italy's approach could not be more different from Australia's.

Between January and October 2014, Italy's search and rescue operation was credited with saving 160,000 lives at sea. All of these people were received by Italy thereafter, including more than 12,000 unaccompanied minors.

At the peak of boat arrivals to Australia in 2012, we received about 10 per cent of those numbers.

During its peer review before the United Nations Human Rights Council, no fewer than 39 countries praised Italy for its search and rescue activities at sea following the exceptional arrivals of migrants and for respecting their human rights.

Australia was one of them. Continue reading

• Anna Martin is a Melbourne lawyer and former Vice-President of Reprieve Australia. She is currently writing her Masters thesis on female perpetrators of human trafficking.

It has rejected of the recommendation made by the United Nations Human Rights Council to rule out the transfer of asylum seekers to detention centers in third countries.

This is one of the 34 recommendations that have been rejected, out the total of 121 made by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) after the UN States' Universal Periodic Review's (UPR).

Intelligence supplied to the Government confirms New Zealand is increasingly being talked up by people smugglers as a destination for asylum seekers.

New Zealand's Prime Minister, John Key, recently said said revelations about desperate asylum seekers paying thousands of dollars to reach New Zealand by boat were no surprise.

Listen to interview with John Key.

Last year New Zealand's parliament passed legislation late on a Thursday allowing it to detain groups of more than 30 asylum seekers for up to six months.

At that time Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse said, "This legislation is about ensuring our system can handle a mass arrival should one occur and sending a clear message to potential people-smuggling ventures that New Zealand is not a soft touch."

When they met in Wellington at the beginning of June, the bishops of Oceania upheld their solidarity "boat people," urging a "more humane approach" to their situation.

Stressing that "boat people are real people," Bishop Eugene Hurley of Darwin, Australia, remarked that "the giving of sanctuary has always been one of the noblest of human endeavors."

He warned of the use of language to dehumanize those seeking asylum, noting that while they are called "queue jumpers," there is no discussion of how to form orderly lines when one is fleeing war-torn Sri Lanka and Syria.

The bishop went on to call the offshore detention centers "factories for mental illness," saying their use is "devoid of logic, fairness, and compassion."

"The UN Human Rights Council adopted the outcome of New Zealand's second review of New Zealand's human rights record on Thursday 19 June in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a relatively new UN mechanism that aims at reviewing a country's human rights performance every 4-5 years. New Zealand was under review for the first time in 2009 and was again reviewed in January 2014.

Source

• The Sunday Times
• Pacific Scoop
• news.24.com
• CNA
• Image: cdn.24.co.za

Last month however, the Federal Government announced that Leonora's detention centre - along with three other centres on Australia's mainland - would close by the end of February.

For Good Samaritan Sister, Annette Dever, a parish pastoral worker in the communities of Leonora, Laverton and Leinster since 2003, the presence of the asylum seekers has been positive and enriching for the broader community.

It's also had a "great impact" on her.

"Their presence will be part of this town forever. They're history now; they've been here and they've been part of this town."

"They will stay in my heart forever. I'll pray for them especially, and of course, all other asylum seekers as well."

Annette said the asylum seekers reminded her of "the silent neighbour at our door".

"We don't know them very well - the silent neighbour - but God is asking us to be aware of them," she explained. Continue reading.

Source: The Good Oil

Image: The Good Oil

"The Government knows our views and it also knows of the work that the Church does to assist asylum seekers both in detention and after their release." Bishop Gerard Hanna, the Bishops' Representative for Migrants and Refugees, said today.

On Wednesday, Australia's High Court voted 6-1 in a decision which put and end to the Government's people swap deal with Malaysia.

The court said the people swap solution was illegal because people's rights were not adequately protected.

Promising to take a good look at the decision, a disappointed Australian Prime Minister, Julia Guillard said, "nothing in it is going to deminish our resolved to break the people smuggler's business model."

An embarrassed Australian Labor government may now have to fall back on the previous Coalition government's agreement with Papua New Guinea and restart processing asylum seekers on Manus Island.

Professor of law at the Public Policy Institute Australian Catholic University and adjunct professor at the College of Law and the National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian National University, Fr Frank Brennan SJ expressed surprise at what he called a "drubbing" for the government.

In his column "The Meddling Priest" Brennan outlines the implications of the decision

• the government will have to process boat people onshore in Australia unless they are certain that they can line up a processing country which provides appropriate access and protections 'as a matter of legal obligation' either under international law or under the domestic law of the country
• the government can no longer rely on the general power to remove an alien when wanting to remove from Australia someone who is seeking asylum
• the government will be able to remove asylum seekers prior to the determination of an asylum claim only to a country which is legally obliged to process the claim and to provide protection
• no Commonwealth official will be able to remove unaccompanied minors or other children of whom the Minister is the guardian without the consent in writing of the Minister.

The Australian and Malaysian governments signed their agreement on 25 July 2011, agreeing that all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat after that date would be turned around and sent to Malaysia within 72 hours. In return for 800 asylum seekers, Malaysia would offer Australia 4000 proven refugees for resettlement in Australia over the next four years.

Within hours of Wednesday's decision, refugees in Malaysia and Indonesia were predicting that a new wave of boats carry asylum seekers would soon head for Australia.

Sources

• SMH
• Eureka Street
• The Age
• CathNews Australia
• Image: Flickr