As up to 267 asylum seekers face being sent from Australia to Nauru within days, if not hours, churches and cathedrals in Australia are stepping up to where our government isn’t and offering them the medieval protection of ‘sanctuary’.
“We offer this refuge because there is irrefutable evidence from health and legal experts that the circumstances asylum seekers, especially children, would face if sent back to Nauru are tantamount to state-sanctioned abuse,” the Anglican Dean of Brisbane, the Very Reverend Dr Peter Catt, told ABC Radio.
In the wake of yesterday’s High Court ruling, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said that his department is “not going to put children into harm’s way”, but it’s become abundantly clear that Dutton’s definition of “harm’s way” is at odds with pretty much everybody else’s, including the United Nations.
The full list of Anglican churches and affiliated chapels offering sanctuary are:
St Cuthbert’s Anglican church, Darlington, Western Australia
Wesley Uniting church, Perth
Gosford Anglican church, Sydney
Pilgrim Uniting church, Adelaide
St John’s Uniting church, Essendon
Paddington Anglican church, Sydney
Pitt Street Uniting church, Sydney
Wayside Chapel, Sydney
