Faith Communities Council of Victoria - FCCV - September 2018 Newsletter

FCCV SEPTEMBER 2018 NEWSLETTER
	NEWS | EVENTS | HOLY DAYS
2018 VICTORIAN INTERFAITH NETWORKS CONFERENCE: REGISTRATION NOW OPEN Registration is now open for the 2018 Victorian Interfaith Networks Conference to be held Sunday, November 18th 2018 @ St. Albans Community Centre.
MEHREEN FARUQI TO BECOME FIRST FEMALE MUSLIM SENATOR AMID FRASER ANNING OUTRAGE Mehreen Faruqi, who will on Wednesday become Australia’s first female Muslim senator, has slammed Fraser Anning as a “merchant of hate” who has “spat in the face of our successful multicultural society”.
A FAITH COMMUNITIES PERSPECTIVE ON THE ISSUE OF REFUGEES IN MANUS AND NAURU There are around 1,650 asylum seekers and refugees, adults and children, currently in Manus and Nauru. These are people who arrived by boat after 19th July 2013 and are still awaiting resettlement.
AUSTRALIA'S DROUGHT CRISIS: SIKH FARMERS FIGHT TO SAVE THEIR CROPS On the New South Wales mid north coast, time is running out for a group of farmers from the Sikh community to save their crops.
NEW JEWISH WAR MEMORIAL UNVEILED IN CANBERRA A new national war memorial has been unveiled to remember the 341 Jewish servicemen who laid down their lives fighting for Australia, 100 years to the day since Monash was knighted on the battlefield.
LIVING THE CHANGE: FAITHFUL CHOICES FOR A FLOURISHING WORLD For those who have not heard, a diverse range of faith communities around the world are awakening to a fresh opportunity to help create a safer climate future.
UNIONS SEEK TO END RELIGIOUS BODIES' RIGHT TO DISCRIMINATE IN HIRING Australia’s union movement will lobby for churches and other religious organisations to lose the legal right to fire some workers on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity.
SCOTT MORRISON - AUSTRALIA'S FIRST PENTECOSTAL PRIME MINISTER Australia has its first Pentecostal Prime Minister with Scott Morrison elected Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister of Australia.
LORD IT'S COLD OUTSIDE: THE HOMELESS PEOPLE SLEEPING IN CHURCHES It's 7pm on a Wednesday and, good Lord, it's cold in the Melbourne suburb of Heathmont. If Glenn wasn’t sleeping inside (the heated) Heathmont Baptist Church tonight, he would be shivering in a pitch-black Vermont water tunnel.
THE KORAN VERSE SPLITTING IMAMS ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Some imams in Australia still teach that the Koran permits husbands to beat their wives, with police reporting Muslim men are citing scripture to justify abuse. Now a new generation of faith leaders is working to undo the damage.
2018 NATIONAL RELIGIOUS SHORT FILM PRIZE WINNER ANNOUNCED Charles Sturt University (Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture) announced the winners of the 2018 Religious Short Film Prize at a special ceremony in Canberra on Wednesday 8 August.
BENEDICTINE ORDER TO JOIN BUDDHISTS AS SOUTHERN TASMANIA TO BECOME HUB OF MONK BUSINESS An order of Catholic monks famous for their six-day silent retreats and chanting have bought a property in southern Tasmania that they hope will become their new Australian base.
SWEDEN MUSLIM WOMAN WHO REFUSED HANDSHAKE AT JOB INTERVIEW WINS CASE A Swedish Muslim woman has won compensation after her job interview was ended when she refused a handshake.
POPE FRANCIS CONDEMNS CHURCH SEX ABUSE IN RESPONSE TO NEW REVELATIONS IN US Pope Francis has issued a letter to Catholics around the world condemning the "crime" of sexual abuse committed by priests and demanding accountability.
THAI CAVE RESCUE: RESCUED BOYS COMPLETE TIME AS NOVICE BUDDHIST MONKS With their heads bowed and wearing orange robes, the members of the boys' soccer team rescued from almost three weeks trapped in a cave in northern Thailand have completed their time as novice Buddhist monks.
HOW ONE MOVIE IS SPARKING A CONVERSATION ON BEING BAHA'I: AN INTERVIEW WITH ‘THE GATE’ DOCUMENTARY CREATORS Ask most people what the Bahá’í faith is, and you will get puzzled looks. It is one of the relatively newer religions and has around five million members around the world. The documentary 'The Gate' is trying to change that.

Australia's cruelty and shame.

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For over five years @BehrouzBoochani painstakingly chronicled his "profound and annihilating mental torture", serving as a permanent record of the treatment suffered by people who sought safety in Australia and were met with a cruel indefinite detention system.

Behrouz Boochani (Born July 23, 1983 in Ilam, Iran) is a Kurdish journalist, human rights defender, poet and film producer. He is the co-director, along with Arash Kamali Sarvestani, of the documentary Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time^[1], has published numerous articles in leading media internationally about the plight of refugees held by the Australian government on Manus Island and released the book No Friend But the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison in 2018. He has been held in Manus Island detention centre since 2013.

Behrouz Boochani graduated from Tarbiat Modares University with a master's degree in Political Geography and Geopolitics. Boochani worked as a freelance journalist for the Iranian newspapers Kasbokar Weekly, Qanoon, and Etemaad^[2] where he published articles on Middle-East politics, minority rights and the survival of Kurdish culture.^[3] He cofounded and produced the Kurdish magazine Werya.^[2] In February 2013, the offices of Werya were raided by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.^[4] Boochani went into hiding for three months and on May 23, 2013, fled Iran. On his second attempt to make a boat crossing from Indonesia to Australia he was intercepted, detained on Christmas Island and after one month was transferred to the Manus Island detention centre in August 2013.^[3]

While living in the Manus Island detention centre Boochani has published articles in several newspapers internationally such as "The Day My Friend Hamid Kehazaei Died" in The Guardian^[5] and "Life on Manus: Island of the Damned" in The Saturday Paper.^[6] He has also published poems^[7][8]and narrates his story in the documentary film "Nowhere Lines: Voices of Manus Island".^[9] Boochani is also the subject of the play "Manus" written by playwright Nazanin Sahamizadeh.^[10]

The film "Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time" was shot inside the Manus Island detention centre by Boochani, entirely on a mobile phone.^[11] A review of Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time was written by the award winning writer Arnold Zable.^[12] In March 2017, Boochani's plight was raised in the Australian House of Representatives by Australian parliamentarian Adam Bandt.^[13] Boochani is on the shortlist for the Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Award in the category of Journalism.^[14]