'It is inhumane': Teachers wearing pro-refugee t-shirts in schools
Teachers across Australia will be wearing pro-refugee t-shirts in a nationwide stance against offshore detention camps.
Backed by the Education Union, teachers have felt a sense of "professional urgency" to speak out and take action against the abuse that they believe is happening to refugees in camps.
The school-based campaign, Teachers for Refugees, was created on Human Rights Day in 2015 to shine a light on refugees’ plight.
On December 12, they will be wearing shirts embellished with the words “Teachers for Refugees - Close the Camps, Bring them Here" that are still being distributed through their own network.
The Education Union is backing the campaign and urging the private school system to do the same.
Teachers in Victoria will be wearing the T-shirts and badges in schools.
The NSW Teacher's Federation has also supported the action, but some are only wearing the merchandise outside of schools.
Some schools in South Australia will also be taking part. Queensland schools are not yet participating.
Victorian teacher, and one of the group's founders, Lucy Honan, told 7 News Online that teachers have a professional urgency to call out human rights abuses.
“The camps are untenable,” she said. “They can’t last and it is inhumane."
"Many of us have worked with refugees in offshore camps, within the community and we all work with children in our classrooms who are from migrant backgrounds."
Ms Honan said Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's polices are "atrocious" and his plans to send the refugees to the US is in tatters.
"You can’t punish a group of people seeking asylum," he said.
"The policies are sending them into camps have been internationally condemned."
"I don't know him personally, but the rules he is designing for offshore detention camps are not the kind of rules we accept in classrooms."
Ms Honan said teachers are creating a safe environment with no racism or hierarchy and Dutton is doing the opposite "on a large and cruel scale".
"If teachers in school acted like this it, there would be outcry."
The nationwide stance comes as the Turnbull government announced refugees people on Nauru and Manus Island will be taken in by the US by next year.
About 1600 people will be eligible, but the numbers and assessment of people would be up to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the US government, he said.
The UNHCR wants the government to find a solution for all asylum seekers in offshore detention because they believe migrants have “stayed for far too long and indeed languished in limbo”.
