He has been there only for a short time but now he is off on a mission to Thailand.

He is planning to stay in Thailand for two years and then he will come back to New Zealand.

O'Brien celebrates his 50th Jubilee of Marist Religious life this year.

A lot of his ministry has been in Maori Pastoral Care, in Porirua, up North in Rawene and Okaihau.

He most recently was working in Otara, Auckland. This year he has been at Pukekaraka, Otaki.

His skills in fixing computers and getting things going smoothly have been in good use.

O'Brien will be joining The Marist Asia Foundation (previously called Marist Mission Ranong MMR).

He will be living in a community in Ranong which includes fellow New Zealander Father Frank Bird.

Ranong is a fishing village in the South of Thailand.

It is located opposite the southernmost town of Burma/Myanmar (Kaw Thaung).

This makes it a significant border crossing town.

MMR began working there in 2006 responding to the education, health and migrant worker needs of the Burmese community.

The latest estimates suggest Ranong has up to 120,000 Burmese migrants, most of whom work in the fishing industry.

In 2013 the Marist Asia Foundation opened a purpose-built Marist Centre.

The Marist Centre provides:

• Education for over 200 Burmese migrant children
• An HIV AIDS community-based health project for 75 individuals and their families
• Support programmes for hundreds of Burmese migrant workers

The Marist Asia Foundation team includes a number of Thai and Burmese as well as international volunteers.

They work with the Thai government authorities, other non-governmental organisations and the local Thai and Burmese community.

Source

• Supplied: P Cody
• maristasiafoundation.org
• Image: Supplied: P. Cody

In a new report titled "Libya's Dark Web of Collusion", Amnesty International says the EU finances the Libyan coastguard and officials running the country's detention camps to carry out torture and exploitation.

At present, the human rights group says about 20,000 people are detained in detention centers in Libya.

The aim is to stem the flow of people across the Mediterranean to Europe "... with little thought, or seeming care for the consequences for those trapped in Libya as a result."

Irregular entry, stay and exit are criminal offences in Libya.

"The lack of any judicial oversight of the detention process and the near total impunity with which officials operate has facilitated the institutionalisation of torture and other ill-treatment in detention [centers]," the Amnesty report says.

The organisation further reports the EU "routinely acts in collusion with militia groups and people traffickers to 'make money from human suffering'".

After ships, training and funding from the EU and Italy were provided to the Libyan coastguard, Amnesty says the number of arrivals in Italy fell by 67% between July and November compared with the same period in 2016.

Deaths at sea have correspondingly reduced.

Furthermore, Amnesty says the coastguard and those to whom they hand over refugees, migrants and asylum seekers, are often acting with criminal gangs and militia.

Amnesty claims the coastguard and smugglers sometimes mark boats to allow vessels to pass through Libyan waters without interception.

At the same time, the coastguard sometimes escorts boats out to international waters.

Refugees and migrants intercepted on their way to Europe are sent to camps run by the Libyan general directorate for combating illegal migration.

They are then routinely tortured for money, Amnesty reports.

Source

• The Guardian
• National Public Radio,Inc
• Aljazeera
• Image: Thomson Reuters Foundation News

Refugees and detainees were told to consider their options, but not to leave it too late to make a decision.

"No one will be resettled in Australia," an official said.

In an announcement at the centre on Tuesday detainees were told that one of its four compounds known as Foxtrot would be closed on 30 June.

An accommodation block within Foxtrot, N Block, is to be emptied by 28 May.

"Once closed electricity will be turned off and your belongings will be relocated. The area will be locked and no one will be permitted to enter," a PNG official said.

The official said other compounds would be closed and demolished "in the coming months," and that "better information about the next phase of Manus Regional Processing Centre demolition will be provided in due course".

Refugees can move to accommodation in the PNG community or go to the Transit Centre in nearby Lorengau.

Those eligible for resettlement to the United States, will be settled in

Foxtrot's non-refugees (detainees whose claims for asylum have been rejected) can apply for voluntary repatriation or temporarily move to another compound.

Non refugees have been given a deadline of 31 August to apply for voluntary repatriation with Australian assistance.

Previous detainees to accept repatriation are reported to have been offered $US25,000.

Those who did not apply were warned they would be removed from PNG by the government of Papua New Guinea "without any reintegration assistance".

"Non refugees have no other options,""the official said, although one such asylum seeker, Azzam el Sheikh, has had his deportation stopped by a PNG court while his refugee determination process is reviewed.

Source

• channelnewsasia.com
• radionnz.co.nz
• Image: abc.net.au

But to describe this as a camp is wrong. This is a swamp. There are no basic facilities. None. It's a field of mud and tattered tents. I am surrounded by people waiting to see a doctor holding little tickets, eyeing each other with suspicion. This, at least, is better than where I have just been, where I found Afghans sleeping in a ditch.

The people I am with are worried about the children, aged as young as 10 and 11, they have seen there; "unaccompanied minors" with scabies.

Ali babbles to me non-stop about how he is all right, really. But no one here is. In June, there were maybe 150 people camped out. Now there are more than 10 times as many, predominantly Kurds.

Families are arriving all the time. The average refugee is a young man, it's true, but there are more and more women and children. A boy of seven pulls out his prize possession to show us - a tiny fire truck.

Women sit in tents frying potatoes. They smile and chat, but everyone is cold. Everything is wet. Everyone has a story of how they got here. Some show me on their phones images of them getting out of flimsy dinghies - their witnesses to trauma.

As they have journeyed from Syria or Eritrea, fleeing Islamic State, torture, unimaginable darkness, the phones are their lifelines. They connect them back to where they have come from and to a world they are now locked out of. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian, from an article by Suzanne Moore, an award-winning columnist and also writes for the Mail on Sunday.
• Image: The Telegraph