CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
After spending the last month criticising the Black Lives Matters protests for potentially spreading COVID-19 during the 30,000-strong march across the city, the Queensland Government has today opted to simply hide the other civil rights protests taking place in the Brisbane CBD.
On the orders of the Premier, Queensland Tourism have today built a kilometre long bamboo fence along the top of the Kangaroo Point cliffs.
The trendy Balinese-style sight screen was erected in an effort to hide the ugly demonstrations currently taking place in the middle of Brisbane’s most instagrammable cityscape.
While the overseas arrivals bringing the virus into Australia are being held in safely quarantined hotels on the state government dollar, refugees held “alternative places of detention” across Australian are being forced into inhumane lodging not compatible with social distancing.
Awareness of the plight of refugees detained in motels, like those at Kangaroo Point Central, have been heightened during the COVID-19 shutdown, with daily protests calling for their release taking place outside the makeshift prison.
Australian medical specialist groups, lawyers and human rights organisations have for weeks warned about the threat immigration detention poses as coronavirus infection hotspots.
Many of the refugees being held in Kangaroo Point Central have been detained for over seven years, with no timeline for their processing, and not one has been found guilty of breaking any international laws.
While both the State and Federal governments have ordered the Australian media to not report on these protests, it is believed that journalists were having a hard time ignoring them during their staff drinks on the other side of the Brown Snake at Friday’s Riverside each afternoon.
While the new bamboo fences along the famous Kangaroo Point fences have successfully hidden the very real human rights violations taking place on the southern end of the Story Bridge, journalists are still complaining about having to drive past the desperate refugees on their daily commute from New Farm to Mount Coot-tha each morning.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has today asked the cooperative Australian media and Queensland Government to please keep playing dumb until COVID-19 lockdown is over, at which point he will be transporting ‘these people’ straight back to the first sweltering offshore prison he can organise for them.
Refugee advocate remain on the scene, as they have done for weeks, maintaining a 24-hour blockade preventing the refugees from being relocated to even unsafer accomodation outside of the city.
