Journalist Peter Greste Calls on Australia to End Secrecy over Offshore Asylum Detention Centers

Democracynow.org - Before his own imprisonment by the Egyptian government, Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste had reported on the refugee crisis around the world. He criticized his own Australian government for refusing press access to detention centers where refugees are being held. "They keep [asylum seekers] on islands away from the press. The press have been denied access to those areas. And I felt very, very strongly about this, that we’re not being denied access on national security grounds. It’s impossible, I think, to justify denying access to journalists to those detention centers, because in a democracy the government acts in our name, the government works for us, as voters, as taxpayers. And so, unless there is a very clear, very specific reason for denying us access on national security grounds—and I simply can’t see why there would be in the case of asylum seekers—then we need to know what is being done in our name.”

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