Meg Pickup, Ballina
July 19 marks seven years since Kevin Rudd’s fateful announcement that, from that date, any people seeking asylum who arrived by boat in Australian waters would never be settled here as refugees.
Since then, these already traumatised people have been detained indefinitely under successive coalition governments. This is tantamount to torture. They continue to suffer human rights abuses at the behest of Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton.
Currently there are more than 1,400 men, women and children detained in Australia with more than 400 detained offshore. Some have been incarcerated for up to ten years. This includes more than 200 refugees brought to Australia for urgent medical care under Medevac, and now detained in cramped conditions in hotel prisons in Melbourne and Brisbane – because detention centres are filled to capacity.
This madness must stop. Help make a difference. Support the #7yearstoolong campaign.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
