News stories by Stephen de Tarczynski

MELBOURNE, Australia, Feb 27 (IPS) - Juvinal Dias has first-hand experience of mistreatment at the hands of a foreign power. Born in 1981 in Tutuala, a village in the far east of Timor-Leste, Dias' family fled into the jungle following the 1975 invasion by Indonesia.

MELBOURNE, Dec 30 (IPS) - Among those leading the fight against the massive Indian-owned Carmichael coal project in Australia's Queensland state is 21-year-old Murrawah Johnson of the Wangan and Jagalingou aboriginal people, the traditional owners of the land where the proposed mine is to be located.

MELBOURNE, Nov 24 (IPS) - For Australian activist Samantha Castro, it was her association with the non-profit publishing organisation Wikileaks that brought her to the attention of the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

Concern is growing for the mental health of thousands of people locked up indefinitely in this country’s immigration detention system.

Australia has taken a major step in reducing its future greenhouse gas output with the announcement of a plan that will initially place a tax on every tonne of carbon pollution produced by hundreds of the country’s major emitters.

Any Australian government efforts to have two of its citizens spared from the death penalty in Indonesia have been made more difficult by past refusals to intervene on behalf of three Indonesian Islamists in the lead-up to their executions in 2008.

Supporters of asylum seekers here say that the government’s response to recent suicides in Australian immigration detention centres ignores what is already well-known: that indefinite, long-term detention in crowded facilities results in deaths.

Many countries view nuclear energy as a way to meet growing electricity demands without releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses. And as a major uranium exporter, Australia is keen to capitalise on future opportunities despite the ongoing nuclear emergency at Japan’s Fukushima reactors.

When an outbreak of dengue fever occurred in the hot and humid north of Australia’s Queensland state in late 2008, Nicola Strange was among hundreds of locals that contracted the mosquito-borne disease.

Mohsen Soltany Zand knows life inside Australia’s immigration detention system. Now an Australian citizen, Zand sought political asylum here after fleeing Iran in the late 1990s. He was held by Australian authorities in several detention facilities between 1999 and 2003. 'My experience was unbelievable. (I suffered) a lot of mental damage and many shocking things (happened). It was absolutely like hell,' he says.