“It’s still sinking in,” posted Kon Karapanagiotidis OAM on Instagram last night after being awarded Melburnian of the Year by the City of Melbourne.The CEO and founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) thanked the Lord Mayor Sally Capp AO, Deputy Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece, “and the entire council for this recognition”.
Talking to Neos Kosmos, Karapanagiotidis said he was “deeply honoured as a Greek Australian to be awarded Melburnian of the Year.”
“I accept the award on the shoulders of my late father Leo and my mother Sia, who, like an entire generation of Greeks, sacrificed their dreams for ours,” said the human rights advocate, philanthropist, and cooking enthusiast.
He lamented how “everything can change in a generation when we see the potential of migrants and refugees and give them opportunities” instead of “dehumanising and punishing them for seeking safety and a better life.”
“I hope I’ve made the entire Greek Australian community proud as I’m fiercely proud Pontian Greek”, Karapanagiotidis told Neos Kosmos.
He said the award was a “recognition of the importance of philoxenia of welcoming the refugee and creating a seat at the table of our new Australians.”
Karapanagiotidis welcomed the High Court’s ruling of November 9, which ruled indefinite immigration detention as unlawful. He called on the government to “immediately release people who have been subjected to years of inhumane treatment.”
“The High Court ruled that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful”, Karapanagiotidis said. The High Court ruling means that the government cannot detain people who have “no reasonable prospect of ever being able to be removed indefinitely.”
Until the High Court ruled, Australia could indefinitely detain people seeking asylum, giving the minister for immigration what he said was “god-like power”.
“It is a breach of constitutional limits on detention, given detention wasn’t used for the sole purpose of removing people from Australia”, he said.
The trained lawyer argued that the High Court ruling suggests that indefinite detention is a “breach of the separation of powers between executive and judiciary” and was used to “punish people.”
Karapanagiotidis called for the “immediate release” of some “92 people, according to Home Affairs, who have been languishing in detention as asylum seekers.
