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Category: Immigration

THE DREAM BOAT

Published by Shahidul Alam on November 18, 2013

A boatload of refugees making the 200-mile journey to Christmas Island.

THE DREAM BOAT

By LUKE MOGELSONMore than a thousand refugees have died trying to reach Christmas Island. But faced with unbearable conditions at home, they keep coming.Photographs by
JOEL VAN HOUDT

BY LUKE MOGELSON
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOEL VAN HOUDT

November 15, 2013

It?s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive, normally, from Indonesia?s capital city, Jakarta, to the southern coast of Java. In one of the many trucks that make the trip each month, loaded with asylum seekers from the Middle East and Central Asia, it takes a little longer. From the bed of the truck, the view is limited to a night sky punctuated by fleeting glimpses of high-rise buildings, overpasses, traffic signs and tollbooths. It is difficult to make out, among the human cargo, much more than the vague shapes of bodies, the floating tips of cigarettes. When you pass beneath a street lamp, though, or an illuminated billboard, the faces thrown into relief are all alive with expectation. Eventually, the urban pulse subsides; the commotion of the freeway fades. The drooping wires give way to darkly looming palms. You begin to notice birds, and you can smell the sea.

Continue readingTHE DREAM BOAT

Mark Zuckerberg On Immigration Reform

Published by Shahidul Alam on September 5, 2013

?It?s The Right Thing To Do As A?Country?

By Adrian Carrasquillo on BuzzFeed

The Facebook founder spoke publicly for the first time about the urgency of comprehensive immigration reform.??Anyone who knows a Dreamer knows they?re not,? he said as a diverse crowd featuring tech leaders and undocumented immigrants in San Francisco cheered.

On Forced Marriage, and Insourced Torture

Published by Shahidul Alam on July 20, 2009

The Loving Face of British Imperialism

rahnuma ahmed

…the [Nigerian] nationalist leader Nnamdi Azikiwe urged Africans and other colonized peoples to prepare their own blueprint of rights themselves instead of relying on those who are too busy preparing their own.
— Bonny Ibhawoh, Imperialism and Human Rights, p. 155.
Forced marriage, says a British High Commission press release, is a crime (British High Commission, ?The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office Forced Marriage Unit Launches National Publicity Campaign on Forced Marriage,? Dhaka, 28 March 2006. The link, for unknown reasons, has gone dead). As opposed to arranged marriages, forced marriages — by dint of not being based on consent — are a form of domestic violence and human rights abuse.
To increase awareness, both in Britain and abroad, the British home ministry (HO), and the foreign ministry (FCO), jointly formed a Forced Marriage Unit in January 2005. The unit was tasked with launching a publicity campaign: radio and press adverts, TV fillers and poster campaigns, and providing information. To those at risk, those affected, and those who are survivors.
The British government, said the state minister for home, Baroness Scotland QC, is determined to protect young people’s “right to choose” their spouses. A determination backed by the state minister for foreign office Lord Triesman’s assurance that “help is available” for its victims.

Continue readingOn Forced Marriage, and Insourced Torture