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Belarus has been accused of hijacking a European jetliner and engaging in an act of state terrorism when it forced a Ryanair flight to perform an emergency landing in Minsk after a bomb threat and arrested an opposition blogger critical of authoritarian president Alexander Lukashenko
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Roman Protasevich, a former editor of the influential Telegram channels Nexta and Nexta Live, was detained by police after his flight was diverted to Minsk national airport. Minsk confirmed that Lukashenko ordered his military to scramble a Mig-29 fighter to escort the plane.
Marise Payne has responded: Pablo Viñales
Time to wind the blog down for the evening. Here are todayâs main events:
Four Covid-19 cases have been confirmed in Melbourneâs northern suburbs, three of which are close contacts of the original case. Victoriaâs health minister, Martin Foley, has said there are no current plans for a lockdown.
The disability royal commission heard residents of a national disability insurance scheme accommodation provider in western Sydney were subjected to alleged instances of physical and racist verbal abuse.
The Australian of the year, Grace Tame, said the prime minister, Scott Morrison, responded to her powerful speech at this yearâs Australia Day awards ceremony by remarking, âWell, gee, I bet it felt good to get that outâ.
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MardinArvin
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I spent years on Manus Island and in hotel detention. Finally I can live like a regular human being
Refugee and writer Mardin Arvin in Melbourne after his release from hotel detention. Photograph: Charlie Collins/Supplied
Refugee and writer Mardin Arvin in Melbourne after his release from hotel detention. Photograph: Charlie Collins/Supplied
Tue 2 Mar 2021 11.30 EST
Last modified on Tue 16 Mar 2021 00.06 EDT
The wind blows. Languid. The wind is calm, swirling around my body. It feels good.
I watch the leaves shifting places across the ground, I reflect on the fact that no one is standing over me any more, no one is watching me.
He would stand by it, for hours some days, to let the air and the noise of the outside world rush in, and to look out at those outside: protesters who came to campaign for his freedom, people walking past oblivious, the slow crawl of cars on now-unhurried streets.
Mostafa Azimitabar by the window in his room inside Melbourneâs Mantra Hotel, where he spent 13 months. Photograph: Moz Azimi
Now, suddenly, he is part of that world.
He is free, with a visa to live in Australia.
Azimitabar â known across the country as Moz Azimi - described his release on Thursday as âthe most beautiful moment of my lifeâ.
Last modified on Fri 18 Dec 2020 14.02 EST
The jungle north-east of Christmas Island’s immigration detention centre is dark and unforgiving. A person, seeking refuge or release, can disappear from sight in just a few steps.
The terrain runs steeply downhill to the nearby roiling sea. Jagged basalt rock, slippery and sharp, marks the descent. Treacherous country at any time of day.
But how a refugee under Australia’s protection came to be there, running weakened, staggering and disoriented through that jungle on a dark November night, is a four-year saga of punitive indifference, bureaucratic dishonesty and, finally, fatal incompetence.
Fazel Chegeni was already a vulnerable man when he arrived in Australia seeking the most basic of recognition as a human being. Stateless all his life, marginalised in every place he’d been, he had been beaten, tortured and left to die in a desert before he sought asylum in Australia.