Author Talk - Aileen Crowe
Event description
Meet Aileen Crowe, author of "Acts of Cruelty. Australia’s Immigration Laws and Experiences of People Seeking Protection after Arriving by Plane".
Acts of Cruelty: Australian Immigration Laws and Experiences of People Seeking Protection After Arriving by Plane documents the complex, drawn out and harsh legal procedures and historically racist immigration culture that can await people arriving by plane and subsequently seeking refugee status in Australia. This story has hitherto been under-represented because of the more notorious offshore detention policies of successive Australian governments for people arriving by boat. In this book, research by Dr Aileen Crowe, a Franciscan nun and refugee advocate, provides both detailed insight into the lived experiences of such would-be migrants and the tortuous maze of bureaucratic, often punitive immigration processes and laws which they must try to navigate at their peril. The author's support and advocacy role brings her close to individuals and families attempting to escape numerous forms of persecution in their own countries as they confront further trauma in seeking Australia's protection and their human rights. The book is an important and challenging document for potential migrants and asylum seekers, politicians, lawyers, students of international relations, and the general public internationally.
This is a book that should make us all deeply ashamed of the sheer indifference to human need that our politics has promoted towards asylum claimants since the 1990s. ... As a nation we must face the deep root of inhuman cruelty in our national psyche that our politicians so willingly exploit to advance their own power.”
Dr Paul Tyson