Australian police drag breastfeeding pro-refugee mother away

This 21 July 2018 video says about itself:

Thousands protest Australia’s refugee detention policy

Thousands of people march across major Australian cities calling for an end to the country’s offshore detention of asylum-seekers.

From daily The Independent in Britain today:

Breastfeeding woman dragged from refugee sit-in protest

The woman said of the incident: ‘There are far worse things going on in detention camps‘

Olivia Blair

A woman was dragged from a refugee sit-in protest by police while breastfeeding her son.

Video footage shows the woman, known as Jill, being removed from the Immigration Department offices in Melbourne after participating in the sit-in.

The woman was part of the group Families, Friends and Feminists Against Detention (FFFAD) who held a ‘Pram Jam’ at the offices to support a Somalian refugee who was allegedly raped on the island of Nauru, where many asylum seekers are held.

The group state on their Facebook page they want the woman “to be give permanent resettlement options in Australia with her family”.

Jill told Buzzfeed: “I took my 22 month old son Manny to a protest… I was breastfeeding him when the police came in to remove us, and I continued while they carried me out.”

She reportedly said of the incident: “There are far worse things going on in detention camps.”

“It raises the question, why are my son’s feelings so important, while the well-being of children in detention is a matter of indifference?” she said.

The protest was in support of a refugee woman who was allegedly raped while being held on the Pacific island of Nauru.

According to the BBC, the Australian government said she could come to the country to terminate the pregnancy, however later left without doing so.

There are conflicting reports as to whether this was disallowed by the government, they state that the refugee changed her mind — which she denies.

According to Buzzfeed, she is now in an Australian hospital.

The Independent has contacted Victoria Police for comment.

In the latest outrage on Christmas Island—Australia’s notorious immigration detention outpost in the Indian Ocean—security guards provoked rioting by inmates on Sunday following the suspicious death of an Iranian Kurdish refugee, Fazal Chegeni: here.

AUSTRALIAN police smashed a protest yesterday at a refugee prison on Christmas Island. Cops sent to the Indian Ocean territory, just 230 miles from Indonesia but 1,000 miles from Australia, reported using “some force,” including tear gas, against people who had built barricades in the camp: here.

In its annual report on world human rights abuses, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) last month highlighted the inhumane conditions and denial of basic democratic rights facing asylum seekers at the hands of the Australian government: here.

The Labor party has abandoned its principles and a large section of its voter base by embracing a “rigid bipartisanship” on the issue of asylum seekers, a party stalwart and former administrator of Christmas Island, Jon Stanhope, has said: here.