Christmas Island | The Monthly

The story of a people smuggler

Small Fry

By Ruth Balint

In November 2010, three young Indonesian men were arrested at Ashmore Reef with 37 asylum seekers on board a fishing boat. They were taken to Christmas Island, where they spent three months in the ‘Indonesian camp’ of the detention centre, and then to Darwin for another three months in immigration detention. From there the men were moved to maximum security prisons in Sydney, where they s

A People-smuggling Trial

All at Sea

By Sian Powell

A semi-literate Indonesian hired hand started thumbing the tears from his cheeks in the dock of courtroom LG2 in Sydney’s Downing Centre last April. He faced a roomful of imposing figures: two defence barristers and a crown prosecutor in black gowns, a judge resplendent in black, scarlet and lilac, an Australian Federal Police officer, two corrective services officers, and two rows of serio

Scott Morrison

So Who the Bloody Hell Are You?

By Nick Bryant

In a country that has always exhibited a fickle streak towards foreigners heading for its shores, Scott Morrison is especially well credentialled to speak on the subject of his shadow portfolio, immigration. The Liberal politician who has spent much of the past 18 months regurgitating the phrase ‘stop the boats’ was also the managing director of Tourism Australia, who asked the rest of the world: ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’

Comment: Hazara Asylum Seekers

By Sally Neighbour

Yusuf Hamid was a shoemaker in the village of Kharaba in Ghazni Province, eastern Afghanistan. It was the time of the Taliban, as Afghans invariably refer to the years between 1996 and 2001 when the bearded talib, students from the Islamic madrassas strung along the Afghan–Pakistan border, imposed their draconian brand of Islamic law on Afghanistan.Hamid (

Christmas Island

The Indian Ocean Solution

By David Marr

The Jaffaris are Hazaras from Afghanistan, a people long persecuted as Shia Muslims in a country overwhelmingly Sunni. Sharif was still a boy when he fled the country to grow up in the large Hazara community in Iran. At some point, he moved to Pakistan and rai

The Third Wave

By Tim Flannery

As I write, in mid March, a geriatric sandy-coloured rat wanders his enclosure at the Alice Springs Desert Park. Death can't be far off for the poor creature, which would hardly matter except that, as far as anybody knows, he's the last central rock-rat on Ear