Sudanese community leaders in Victoria have labelled recent suggestions to deport youth offenders as “death sentences”. This follows proposals to crack down on a recent wave of teen gang violence in Melbourne.

Recent remarks by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton referred to ‘African gangs’ as having scared Melbourne residents into staying home for fear of being victimised. These comments have created a divide in the Victorian community about how to tackle the problem of youth gang activity with many of the offenders being of African descent.

Dutton said he was considering strengthening laws in the face of the rise of youth crime by automatically cancelling the visas of offenders and deporting migrants who cause serious injury.

The changes to the law were initially brought forward by a parliamentary committee led by Victorian Liberal member Jason Wood and are backed by the current Opposition Leader Matthew Guy. Guy’s election campaign to unseat the current Labor government is heavily centred around improvements to law and order.

In response to these proposals African community leaders have cautioned that this type of crackdown is both out of touch and ultimately dangerous. They pointed out that many of the youth offenders were born in Australia and those who weren’t would be deported to war-torn countries where their chances of survival were slim.

South Sudanese Community Association spokesperson Kot Monoah told the parliamentary committee that cancelling the young offenders visas would “send them to misery”. Monoah pointed out that he believed that these youths had “potential to be rehabilitated” and that deporting them was effectively a death sentence.

Richard Deng, a fellow African community leader, echoed Monoah’s opinion and called on the federal government to cease its political agenda, instead working with Victoria and the police to solve the issue.

Richard Deng is well-known in the Victorian African community and last year helped to establish a volunteer team to prevent crime via engagement with troubled Sudanese youth in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

This volunteer team has slowly expanded with plans for to recruit even more so that more areas of Melbourne can be attended to.

Mr Deng openly acknowledged that there is a youth crisis in the Victorian African community but added that “simply deporting people is out of touch”.

The maintenance of law and order has remained a long-time issue for the Andrews Labor government. Whilst most offenders have been Australian adults a number of high profile cases of youth crime have put the spotlight on the African community.

With a Victorian state election coming this November the Liberal party has cited the issue of law and order as a reason that the current premier Daniel Andrews is a soft touch. Labor members have retaliated against the Coalition federal government by accusing them of cutting funding to migrant services and not doing enough to tackle the underlying cause of crime.

United States President Donald Trump has recently taken the credit for the re-opening of talks between North and South Korea. Trump said that the United States threats for nuclear war had persuaded North Korea to re-establish diplomacy with South Korea.

This Wednesday North Korea reopened a hotline on the border that had been silent for the last two years. For many this suggested that tensions between North and South Korea were beginning to cool down after recent months of military posturing.

2017 had seen a back and forth between Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un with both leaders boasting their ability to wage nuclear war. North Korea tested its highest performing ballistic missile and the US state of Hawaii re-introduced nuclear attack sirens as a preparation for potential North Korean attack.

The move to re-open the hotline followed soon after Donald Trump tweeted a taunt aimed at Kim Jong-un talking about the size of his own “nuclear button”. This timing prompted Trump to conclude that his posturing had scared North Korea into wanting to improve relations with South Korea for fear of US nuclear attack.

Trump stated that he re-opening of talks between North and South Korea was due to his “firm” and “strong” stance against Kim Jong-un. He went on to say that his willingness to “commit our total ‘might’ against the North” had put North Korea in its place and called those who doubted him “fools”.

Trump concluded by saying that he though the new talks between the two mortal enemies was a “good thing”. North and South Korea have still technically been at war since the truce in 1953 which is different from a formal peace treaty.

The remarks by Trump were in contrast to those by the US United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley who tried to remove herself from the new contact between North and South Korea. She said that the situation did not need a “Band-Aid” and that the end goal was for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

The United States State Department gave a warning that this new contact could be a North Korean attempt to separate the United States from South Korea.

The hotline call lasted only 20 minutes but the details of the discussion were not made public. The hotline was originally shut down by North Korea in a backlash against the closing of a border town operated by both North and South Korea.

A North Korean news broadcast agency said that the talks were regarding the prospect of a North Korean delegation visiting South Korea’s Winter Olympic Games this year.