Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"John Howard’s recent comments concerning the asylum seeker boat SIEV 4 that was central to the ‘children overboard’ senate inquiry are disappointing but not surprising. Falsely accused of throwing their children overboard, he maintains the boat passengers don’t deserve an apology as "they irresponsibly sank the damn boat, which put their children in the water", which is as untrue as the allegation that they threw their kids into the water. He has conveniently forgotten to mention that ADF personnel were under orders to override safety of life at sea conventions by delaying rescue until passengers of asylum seeker boats were in the water, rather than when it became apparent the boat was going to sink." Sue Hoffman

"When I was last in Israel, I stayed in a Jewish village in the north of the country. The children from the nearby Arab town attended the village kindy and the Jewish farmers sold produce to shopkeepers in the town. Security was always a consideration – the village was surrounded by a fence which the men of the village patrolled every and all night – but generally there was no problem." Sue Hoffman

"The woman took my hands which are white and smooth and soft. Hers were brown and rough and worn. She stroked my face, my body, wanting some of my luck, my good fortune in having lived the easy life I've had - no wars, no dead children, no relatives who've just 'disappeared', no starvation, no grinding poverty. She'd fled from Basra in Iraq where she'd lost everything and no longer cared what she said or did or what others thought of her." Sue Hoffman

"Having travelled from Perth to attend the people smuggler trial at Brisbane Supreme Court with three Iraqi men who lost family on SIEV-X, I can offer a unique perspective on this chapter of the SIEV-X story. It was unbelievably hard, they tell me, to sit for hours listening to detailed accounts of how the asylum seekers were moved across Indonesia by people smugglers and ferried by small boat onto the SIEV-X, for this is the journey their wives and children took in the days and weeks leading up to their deaths." Sue Hoffman