NEWSREFUGEES

Today, June 20th, is World Refugee Day, an international day of awareness that “honors the courage, strength and determination of women, men and children who are forced to flee their homeland under threat of persecution, conflict and violence, as well as the people who have dedicated their lives to helping them.” This year, the United Nations has chosen as its theme the message that "one refugee without hope is too many.”

Unfortunately, in the United States, we mark this day with the disturbing reality that many of the people who reach our shores seeking refuge from persecution, torture, and other abuses often end up with little hope: locked up in detention for years. Under U.S. law, asylum seekers are not allowed access to legal aid to represent their cases, and they are often placed in remote, for-profit detention centers, many times in areas where there are few pro-bono attorneys. The U.N. has indicated that detention of asylum seekers should be limited and avoided, yet it is common practice in the U.S.

In Austin, Texas, today’s day of awareness will be a day of protest during which a broad coalition of human rights groups will stand against the construction of a new detention center for refugees and other low-level immigration detainees in Karnes Co., Texas. Protesters will gather on the capitol steps at 7 p.m. and then march to the Travis County Jail.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has contracted the building and management of the new detention center to GEO Group, a large for-profit prison corporation at the center of numerous investigations after allegations of severe human rights abuses.

More than a year after a 7.0 magnitude rocked Haiti’s infrastructure, large parts of the island-nation remain in ruins. Worse, deadly diseases such as cholera have killed nearly 5,000 people.

Although the federal government suspended deportations of Haitians in the aftermath of the natural disaster, the New York Times reported in December that Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to resume deportations of Haitian nationals in the U.S. by January 2011.

Here at Change.org, I reported on the outrageous plans to resume deportations to Haiti and started a petition asking the federal government to extend the temporary protected status (TPS) Haitian nationals received after the quake beyond July 2011. More than 300 people signed the petition—and today they have cause to celebrate.

Victory!

Yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that TPS would be extended for qualified Haitians beginning on July 23, allowing them to stay in the U.S. through Jan. 22, 2013.

Despite pleas from over 5,000 Change.org members, students, and the Oakland Unified School District's School Board, AC Transit has not yet agreed to create a student rate bus pass for Oakland's K-12 students. But while last week's AC Transit board meeting was a letdown, we're not giving up the fight for equitable bus fares in California's Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

As it now stands, students are charged for bus rides according to their age rather than their life circumstance. In Alameda and Contra Costa counties, a monthly youth bus pass costs $15/month, while an adult bus pass costs over $80/month. For students over the age of 18 who are working hard to finish high school, the $80/month fare is often prohibitive — even, at times, costing them their education. This backwards policy thwarts the efforts of low-income and immigrant students to access the education they deserve. In particular, refugee students who attend Oakland International High School often see their 19th birthdays come and go before graduation, because their education was interrupted or started late.

Tomorrow at 5 p.m., hundreds of Bay Area students will be anxiously awaiting a decision that might determine their ability to attend school. No — it's not about school closure or whether their pink-slipped teachers will have jobs next year. Instead of these concerns, students are simply wondering whether they'll be able to afford the bus fare to and from school each day.

On Wednesday, March 23, the Alameda Contra Costa Transit (AC Transit) Board of Directors will vote on a response to Oakland Unified School District's plea to create a discounted fare for Oakland K-12 students — regardless of their age.

Although riders of AC Transit ages 18 and under pay only $15/month for a student bus pass, riders 19 and up must pay $80/month for the same route -- even if they are also still in high school. Seriously? $80/month? Many professional commuters in the Bay Area (including myself) pay equal to or less than that. By the end of this year, this discriminatory fare policy will have adversely impacted 800-900 Oakland students who are just trying to get to school in hopes to graduate and prepare for their futures.

Fifty-three Rohingya "boat people" have been detained in isolated Thai prisons since 2009. Their crime? Fleeing brutal persecution in their homeland of Burma. In late January, Thailand nabbed another 158 Rohingya who had survived a harrowing journey on ramshackle home-made boats. Thai officials threw them directly into prison.

Despite the known mistreatment of Rohingya in Burma, the Thai government is refusing to recognize the migrants as refugees. Worse, it is blocking the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from visiting the detained Rohingya, thus sequestering them from any legal defense or opportunity for protection.

As I write this, Nepal is in the midst of a constitutional renovation which, the government contends, promises to grant more rights to its people. Yet the current draft of the Nepali constitution  contains draconian and dangerous birthright laws that threaten to strip thousands of Nepali children of their citizenship.

As it's currently drafted, Nepali children could only earn citizenship if they were able to prove that both parents are/were Nepali citizens. Because we're talking about a poor country with high birth rates and death rates, this clearly leaves thousands of people vulnerable to statelessness. Orphans? Children of one foreign and one Nepali parent? Children of unknown parentage? Children whose parents have lost their papers? Already, at least 800,000 Nepalis lack citizenship certificates. These new constitutional provisions would only swell this number to crisis-level proportions.

Easy enough for people in the U.S. to say of Nepal's new constitution , "This is ridiculous!" But frankly, it's not so far from home. There seems to be a disturbing trend these days to blacklist children based on their parents status — what with Nepal's sloppy constitutional reform and the U.S.'s proposed plan to mark the passports of children born to undocumented parents with a scarlet "I." Why are we allowing children to be the casualties of our shoddy immigration systems?

Haitian immigrants in the U.S. consider deportation a death sentence. That’s because nearly a year after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the island-nation, much of Haiti remains in ruins, with a cholera outbreak making the body count soar there. Although the U.S. suspended deportations of Haitian immigrants after the Jan. 12, 2010, quake, the New York Times reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) has resumed rounding up Haitians here and will begin deporting them in mid-January 2011.

Members of the Haitian-American community argue that resuming deportations is not only bad for those sent away, but also for Haiti itself. In the wake of political chaos and a snail-paced recovery, the country is ill-equipped to manage an influx of deportees. For now, I.C.E. officials say they will only deport Haitian immigrants who’ve completed sentences for committing crimes in the U.S. Moreover, Haitians in the country who were granted temporary protected status after the quake will be safe from deportation until that status expires in July.

This information reportedly has done little to reassure the Haitian community. Many wonder which segment of  Haitians the federal government will target next, explained New York City Councilman Mathieu Eugene, a Haitian American, to the Times. And with I.C.E. officials staying tight-lipped about how many Haitians here they will be rounding up or when the next immigration sweep will occur, it’s understandable that Haitians in the country would be fearful.

Australia has one of the most controversial immigration policies around: mandatory detention for everyone who enters without a visa. This means that if you seek asylum in the country, you’ll be automatically routed to a prison-like detention center for as long as it takes to process your claim (whether it’s months or years).

The cost of this policy has been enormous: thousands of unaccompanied children held away from their families and receiving no schooling, desperate refugees who resorted to taking their lives, and citizens held in wrongful detention for years. The Australian system has been condemned by the United Nations, Amnesty International, National Council of Churches, Public Health Association of Australia, and countless other human rights groups.

This week, things reached a new level of desperate. At one remote immigration center on Christmas Island, where many detainees are held in tents, several asylum-seekers protested their detention by mutilating themselves. They sewed their lips shut and refused medical attention as a symbol for the powerlessness they feel. About 160 other detainees, mainly of Iraqi, Iranian, and Kurdish descent, have joined them in peaceful protest. The action is a response to the tragic suicide of Ahmad Al Akabi, an Iraqi who faced deportation and was held in detention in Sydney indefinitely.

For nearly two years, my fellow activists and I have been urging the White House that it must do more to prevent the outbreak of another war in Sudan. Now it seems the administration has listened.

President Obama was the first head of state to commit to attending last month’s special UN session concerning the referendum on independence for Southern Sudan. This vote - fewer than 90 days away - is prescribed in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, which ended more than 20 years of civil war. If Sudan is serious about peace, it must not only permit the referendum in an atmosphere free of violence, but must accept the will of the people should they choose independence. A vote for secession will also require that Khartoum works cooperatively with the government of Southern Sudan to resolve all issues regarding borders and oil revenues.

You thought you’d listened to them all – the stories, the witnesses, the gruesome accounts. But just when you thought they were over, they pop up once more, reminding us that in conflict zones, women still get the lower end of the deal.

A new study by the International AIDS Society explores the effects of mass rape on HIV in conflict situations. As one might expect, the study found that women and girls suffer extensively in war-ridden zones and face a major risk of contracting HIV and passing it on to their communities.

The study found that in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sudan, Somalia and Sierra Leone, mass rapes could cause five new HIV infections per 100,000 women or girls each year. The number is even higher in Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. The study also revealed that survivors of rape might spread the disease to their partners or their offspring due to the lack of knowledge or proper post-rape care.