Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Monday 29 September
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Australia’s border policies have become increasingly punitive over the past decade, under a succession of governments, as we push the ‘problem’ of asylum seekers who come by boat beyond our borders.
Our speakers will talk about government deterrence rhetoric and policies, the industry and experience of offshore detention, and strategies for protest. They’ll look at campaigns like Boycott Biennale and artistic responses, and draw on their personal experiences. With Aran Mylvaganam, spokesperson for the Tamil Refugee Council and activist for refugee rights, writer and activist Angela Mitropoulos and migration agent Liz Thompson.
Chaired by Mark Davis, journalist and reporter for SBS’s Dateline.
Featuring
Aran Mylvaganam
Aran Mylvaganam was born in Nagar kovil in Northern Sri Lanka. Between 1995 and 1997 he lived in a refugee camp in Udayarkaddu, before coming to Australia as a 13-year-old unaccompanied refugee in 1997. He was detained in Villawood detention centre for three months. In 2011 he founded the Tamil Refugee Council. Aran currently works as a union organiser with the Finance Sector Union and spokesperson for the Tamil Refugee Council.
Angela Mitropoulos
Angela Mitropoulos is a Sydney-based academic. She is involved in Crossborder Operational Matters and the Mapping Supply Chains & Infrastructure Networks group which resource the divestment and boycott campaigns against mandatory detention; and she was one of the organisers of the Woomera protests in 2002.
She has written on migration and borders for many years, and some of her publications can be found in Social Text, South Atlantic Quarterly, and Cultural Studies Review. She is the author of Contract & Contagion (2012), and her most recent text is Archipelago of Risk: Contingency Accounting and Border Control Systems (New Formations).
Liz Thompson
Liz Thompson is a Melbourne-based migration agent, working predominantly with asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. She worked on Manus Island as a Claims Assistance Provider until resigning in February 2014.
She has travelled to Afghanistan to conduct independent research on the situation for Hazaras in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2013.
Mark Davis
Blending his background in documentaries with journalism, Mark Davis has produced a remarkable range of international reports over the past 18 years. Davis has been awarded Australia’s most prestigious journalism prize, the Walkley’s, five times for his reports. He was awarded a World Medal at the New York Film and Television Festival for one of his many Afghanistan stories, Lion of the Panshir.
Mark Davis is a qualified lawyer turned documentary-maker turned journalist. In the mid 1990s he pioneered the ‘one man band’ style of journalism – reporting and filming his own stories.
He has worked for Australia’s premiere international and investigative programmes, including Four Corners and Foreign Correspondent for ABC TV and Dateline on SBS TV. A range of broadcasters screen his reports internationally.
For four years he was the presenter and principal interviewer for the Dateline programme.
Stylistically, he is best known for his mix of observational documentary with investigative reporting.