Film Screening: No Advantage

Film Screening and Discussion on the Bogey of the 'Boat People'

People around the world mourned the tragedy of Lampedusa when several hundred people drowned after their boat capsized only a few hundred metres off the coast of the Italian Island. But deaths at sea of people seeking asylum should not be news. Hundreds of people seeking asylum have already drowned in the Mediterranean and hundreds have drowned in the waters between Indonesia and Australia. Just the week before Lampedusa nearly 80 people drowned making the journey to Australia.

However, instead of welcoming and assisting refugees, the focus both in Europe and this part of the world is to prevent the arrival of asylum seekers – irrespective of the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees.

Australia has a particularly bad record and now has the dubious honour of practising both mandatory detention and mandatory exclusion for all asylum seekers; if the NZ National Government has its way here, we will be following suit and in the future we could also easily abolish the right to seek asylum.

Come and watch 'No Advantage: Inside Australia’s Offshore Processing Centres', a 2013 documentary exposing the conditions inside Australia's off-shore detention centres, and come and discuss migration practice and policy.

Note: This film was originally scheduled to be shown in June but had to be cancelled at short notice.

When:Friday, 15 November2013

Where:People’s Cinema, 57 Manners St, Wellington
Time:6.30pm  

Remember, to seek asylum is not a crime.
No one chooses to be a refugee.
Take a stance.