Human Rights Watch Film Festival

June 16, 2004 Off By leigh

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is currently running in New York. One I recommend is Persons of Interest which interviews a number of the 5000 persons detained by the U.S. government and held without charge due to their Arabic/South Asian backgrounds.


The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is currently running in New York. One I recommend is Persons of Interest which interviews a number of the 5000 persons detained by the U.S. government and held without charge due to their Arabic/South Asian backgrounds.

A short film accompanying this film is Down the Wire, which documents the breakout of detainees at Baxter detention center in north Western Australia. Of note, Australia is the only country that has a policy of detaining asylum seekers – every other country more civilised than mine releases those people into their community while processing their asylum request. We lock them up in a prison in the desert. Australia’s only saving grace is the humanity of it’s young people prepared to physically fight the police to allow the detainees to reclaim their international human rights to be treated with dignity, not as criminals.