Actually Factually is a 10-minute segment which discusses and adds context to the article, ‘By sending asylum seekers to Nauru and Manus, is Australia guilty of crimes against humanity?’ This claim was determined uncontested by ABC RMIT Fact Check. Erika and Emma-Eve discuss the legal and ethical issues regarding this claim. The aim of this segment is to convey the facts of a situation that has significant political implications domestically and internationally.

The original fact check article Actually Factually focused on was “Wilkie told Q&A that Australia’s treatment of refugees is a crime against humanity. Is he right?” ABC News Fact Check, 2019.

In this article MP Andrew Wilkie claims that Australia is guilty of ‘crimes again humanity’ for the treatment of asylum seekers on offshore processing centres, specifically at Nauru and Manus Island. Actually Factually researched this claim to find out if it could be a definitively true or false statement. We quickly discovered it wasn’t. Legally a nation cannot be charged with crimes against humanity, and it is very difficult to find an individual guilty of such crimes. Though this does not mean the treatment afflicted upon asylum seekers by the Australian Government was right or just.

Hosts Emma-Eve and Erika provide both the legal and humanitarian facts of offshore processing centres and how accurate MP Wilkie’s claims are relating to these facts.
Group members – Emma-Eve Haidar-Khalouf, Erika McGown, Eleanor Woodward, Natika Demir, and Claire Beers.