The Federal Government’s decision to impose a sudden freeze on refugee claims by Sri Lankans and Afghans is a “betrayal of Australia’s commitment to fairness and humanity”, says the St Vincent de Paul Society. “This is a far cry from the values of compassion and social justice espoused by this Government at the beginning of its term”, said Syd Tutton, the Society’s National Council President.<\/p>\n
Dr John Falzon, National Council CEO<\/span> said, “We are unconvinced by the government’s justification for this policy reversal. We are deeply saddened to see both sides of politics trying to outdo each other in a tragic display of thinly veiled racism. In his excellent 2006 essay, Faith in Politics, Mr Rudd placed himself on the side of the ‘marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed’. We call on him to revisit and rescind this policy decision on the strength of this conviction”.<\/p>\n The Uniting Church Synod of NSW<\/span> and the ACT<\/span> has also expressed grave concern about the decision of the Australian Government to suspend processing asylum application by people from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. During its 2010 meeting in Sydney, the Synod said the Government should “live out the ethical commitment of the Australian people to show hospitality to people fleeing persecution as codified in the United Nations Convention on Refugees, which all parties support”.<\/p>\n The Synod – around 450 representatives of the Uniting Church from throughout NSW<\/span> and the ACT <\/span>– said universally accepted principles of human rights demanded that every human being be treated with the dignity that was their birthright”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Federal Government’s decision to impose a sudden freeze on refugee claims by Sri Lankans and Afghans is a “betrayal of Australia’s commitment to fairness and humanity”, says the St Vincent de Paul Society. “This is a far cry from the values of compassion and social justice espoused by this Government at the beginning of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}