we remain deeply concerned about iran's dangerous escalation of threats to israel in the region and iran's ambition to dominate the middle east who remains the united states is with israel in this fight and we strongly support israel sovereign right to defend itself regarding the j c p away present term from pretty quick this deal is very flawed he's directed the administration traffics and if we can't fix it he's going to withdraw from the deal it's pretty straightforward north korean leader kim jong un is willing to give up nuclear weapons if the u.s. commits to a formal end to the korean war and promises not to attack the north that's according to south korea which says kim made the promise to its president at friday's historic summit kemas also promised to shut down the north's nuclear test site in may the u.s. backed syrian democratic forces say they have repelled the syrian army from taking several villages along the border with iraq meanwhile the government says it's made

a deal with the opposition fighters to evacuate areas around some in damascus opposition activists in armenia are holding more protests ahead the votes in parliament on choose day to choose a new prime minister the previous prime minister ghassan resigned a week ago after must protests against the opposition demanding that their leader nicole russian man be chosen to replace him those are the headlines to stay with us here on al-jazeera one i want to east is coming next. was.

almost half a million foreign students many from asia choose to study in australia. it's the country's third largest export industry worth nearly eighteen billion dollars a year. but australia's reputation as a safe and sunny place to study is under threat after widespread reports of great. i'm steve chair on this episode a one on one east we investigate how foreign students have become prey on australian campuses. it's the start of the university. orientation week. along with. their first day and high expectations.

all of a favor. to the economy the majority come from china and india. and china to test them. to a testament friends. try to trace a chance. to china. but there is some parts of campus. in the primary. a strain in universities a facing a crisis. drinking and degrading initiation rituals it's a culture that's been linked to a shocking level of harassment and assault of students.

that. way. but most international students to skate and too ashamed to speak up if they've been targeted. and. there's so much there and sometimes when you see it makes. them time to believe.

it's been two years since i moved from china to canberra australia is capital and home of the prestigious a strange a national university. doing biotech and arts and majoring biology and sociology. she was prepared for her intense double degree but knew little about a strange. job why. everyone's really tall and. decided to live on campus in student accommodation she admits she was totally unprepared for the social culture she found herself in. it's really hard to stop. construction. from me from my culture it's really there. how we party how we just paying our rounds. one night a friend of louise housemate followed her back to her room. so i've got something

modern i need to go back and gather. the guy wanted to come inside and want to save a bit on the drink. you just lie about straight away. and say hey or you're doing try to pull him up and that's why you have. personally battering god. he keeps saying i'll get what i want. tried rich for help it and weren't. i couldn't prove the only string and when he was covering my mouth i couldn't scream. what country was the man who did this is from australia it's from. mailing australia's. they like go for. you know they like to

be. expression all young guys. these fellow international students told her not to go to the police well we thought back then this australian law only protects australians and then for your report of things like this they probably think we're causing trouble for them and we'll probably get deported come from michele skate it's a shame for the thing for us. it's. is this thing do you want anyone ever in tell your parents of a possible to hide it and you don't want to upset them all because you're spending their money and coming this far away because study and you got raped. and this disgrace. luke went to counseling but felt abandoned when her counselor left after one session she didn't go back. at her university housing she switched rooms but still felt unsafe. nightmares

truly difficult because you can't avoid them they're just coming to you live the normal day time but at my hearing. comes. eventually she did go to the police for that place moment i think she's trying to come from a she said don't worry it is definitely not your fault but next time just be careful. i'm going to be careful next time so what's next. and what will do me big. blue felt shamed and alone she never pressed charges she says she still sees the man who raped her on the street i wish i could . corrupt royce. i wish i could have been more information on what the international students do it's really up to bill and. it's

a huge problem. were last year a stray liz human rights commission conducted a nationwide survey it revealed that the number of students sexually assaulted each week in a university setting would fill this lecture theatre with thirty per day every day one in five of them were international students they considered to be soft targets and i think they considered to be soft targets because they don't know where to go to get. alison queller overseas an outreach program in melbourne to educate international students about sexual health she says after suffering sexual assault students will rarely go to the police. essential services just won't report sexual assault in general i've never met that is they've reported it and i think in a number one fear definitely the ramifications the court have on the face of.

fear of the authorities language barriers and confusion about a strain is legal and medical services contribute to their continued silence. over several months allison has been helping me to build trust with a group of international students and former students who mentor them. today we're meeting for a candid conversation about their experiences in australia. thanks for coming. to some sex is a to do subject in their home countries and australia's permissive culture has been a shock. it's a topic that's never ever spoken of not even we feel very best friends basic sex education is something they might have encountered for the first time in australia i do have a wise you know i have the place to say yes or no which is something that you do on

the nobody at all contraceptives obviously alison says lacking that kind of knowledge puts them at risk they're not he just election day he said the astray in experience and he was saying sexual assault is part of that's that's quite harrowing they say he just i.c.'s with alcohol and then without the whole then six . and there's a lot of. that over the top masculinity they'll grow q. and a touch you and they'll say all the stuff about the love dark girls or things like that it's just like would you say that to anyone else they're like oh look at the skin on her and you know kissed me on my hand because i was brown visibly brown not right and it wasn't like he was addressing me as a person once he was then he would have tried and i start that in my book and stuff and i said why do it where you do it all the way you're you're locked in that's what you like and use do you agree to those with me so that's why we feel so

uncomfortable bringing up issues that something has happened to us because we can't just anyone talk of casual sexual harassment soon turns to more serious incidents over on something. happened to me and then. i just happened to be answering a survey and then they got back to me and they said like this is concerning like what you wrote here do you want to talk to us about the so i agreed the buck to someone they said like we can go with you to the police and if you report that it's not going to be against you your visa won't be a fact that i still wasn't ready so they just referred me to the counselor and. to the doctors because something that wasn't all that was happening at and then yet because there's so much they've maran that and sometimes when you say it out loud makes it real she says despite her university's help she didn't feel she had the

support she needed even if you do everything to just you know be safe either on other people will always make you feel like you didn't do enough to protect yourself. more than anything she feels telling her parents i know that if i thought my parents that this happened to me will force me to go and i don't want that. and it's just so much easier to bury it all in because. if you're in one of those situations that something the others relate to and if something happens to yours. it does feel like it's your fault because your whole life there's this other part of your culture that's been saying don't dress like that don't behave like that don't be western like. that will happen to you so then when it does happen to you you're like my fault and then you can be open with your

family and like turn to them for support because they don't see it that way at all . and they might even yet be like actually ashamed of you. you know. in the following days i meet up with g.e. for a more in-depth talk she's struggling with something that happened several years ago just weeks after she arrived from india. you do tend to blame yourself like you didn't want to so you could have been more clear but. you know you tried to be clear is that clear enough and you know it's such a gray area that it's hard to even think about you know coming out with it and reporting it. she met a guy in her class she could tell he was interested in her and even though she wasn't interested in him as a boyfriend she agreed to see him several times this friend in the context of me

feeling isolated and lonely and really not knowing anybody and really like to stress what that feels like not knowing a single person anywhere around. one night they'd been drinking he walked home. then took advantage of her drunken state to say no. you can't continue thing no no no no no and when someone doesn't hear it they're like well what's happening you don't know how you're negotiating those boundaries anymore if you're constantly saying no to somebody and they stop assuming you do you feel like you have. gave consent to him. did i say the word yes. no i didn't ask them. and i only thought i told myself that i was in control. even if i was drunk and that i could have done better. it's

not your fault. i fear is going to take you some time to believe that. isn't there. where one of two single six mile cohen is at the university of queensland and a lack of understanding around consent is common among all students women and men a lot the traditional right has jumps out from behind the bushes with trench coat but that's not what the real ripest actually looks like he looks like someone that these young women can trust and who live confided in him i'm going to have a few beers with in him with whom i'm going back to a bedroom with perhaps who have been prepared to go so far but that's as far as i want to go and the answer is all the verbal no one or or nonverbal cues. in the city of brisbane i meet up with stephen foley he's head of simply one of the oldest

and most prestigious all male colleges at the university of queensland we realize that we were part of the problem you know we we had young men here at the college for whom we needed to assist finding and a new normal we have had behaviors in the past here that when i arrived four years ago i was appalled and shocked to see a range of them in that spectrum of things we've addressed falls in this respect for women it's respectful treatment of women and we're on route to achieving better . he's made some controversial changes at the college like restricting the availability of alcohol and banning degrading initiation rituals we say where we're producing students who go on and do great things because i've been instilled with a wonderful set of values and principles but they. sliding on the floor in their own vomit somehow those two things don't quite jail so we need to be truthful about

what it is that we're looking at and call it what it is and feel that they are going to have everyone and welcome to today's session as i'm sure you can all gather we're going to be talking about consent students that scenario is must attend consent training every year since today one group is having a refresher course with women from nearby grace college just imagine instead of initiating sex you're making them a cup of tea if they say no thank you then don't make them tea don't make them drink tea don't get annoyed at them for not wanting to be they just don't want to be ok can send everything. up into groups around the room guys other messages are about how to read nonverbal cues about someone's feelings and how to be an ethical bystander if you see someone at risk you really don't want anything happening to your little sister your mom or any of your family members and close friends you've really just got to put their safety about your own pride to make sure they're going

to do so is it scary if a guy can negotiate consent now i think there is definitely a fear about it even with all of the stuff that's going on in hollywood recently i know there's plenty of guys who will you know how can i even talk to a girl now and. basically just common sense. thing that may have saved him from aids in a second or third wave last year he went over to another college and they had a place where they give you talk about mark what constitutes sexual assault like what the punishment is and how much he commits completely ruin your life to someone one drunken mistake in my name that sort of knocked off the mark to sort of really makes you careful and really having her marriage much of a serious issue actually is. i've seen some young men who at the end of one of these not gone wrong. absolutely devastated and appalled at what they've done. and they have realized what they have done only after life done it and they were in

the moment and i think what they're saying is yes but they need to pull back and realize that what they're getting actually is a frozen scared person. but face to face consent training isn't the norm in a strain in universities and many question why it's not compulsory on all campuses say i didn't just believe me i just didn't want to do it my friend back in melbourne i made him a hunt an advocate who wants universities to step up and do more to prevent sexual assault and support survivors. i think it can be really hard for some people to get the idea in their heads that it is actually this prominent but it's because of the lack reporting the lack of trust the people have in the institutions and the people around them that it's not sparking about emma lived in china during her high school years and was raped soon after arriving at her university i was right three weeks after i had to astray. so i feel like i was very vulnerable

with her friends and family overseas she knows how devastating it is to be assaulted while isolated from the support of loved ones actually taking the steps to report to police so to university can be the hottest thing you've ever done in your life so many universities and it's trial start have any facilities in place on campus online places where they can tell students easy options this is how you can contact police this is how you can feel safer on campus. emma says change is beginning to happen but more needs to be done and it took so long for me to find a way to garner and when i did find magic i felt completely unsupported by my university they didn't even think about any actions of removing a potential brightest from that campus i felt that his education was as important as mine. universities have the power to expel students accused of rape who were

found to have breached the university's code of conduct almost running into a right this any day that you're on campus i had that fear for three years for my entire degree every single day i came on to campus. australian universities are not required to make this six misconduct complaint does have public but a freedom of information request revealed five hundred seventy five sexual misconduct complaints including harassment and rape were made over a five year period only six alleged perpetrators were expelled. other punishments included a forty dollar fine counseling a warning and a note placed on a personal file. with official responses like these it's little surprise fewer than one in ten report their assault to the university when we didn't respond to sexual assault appropriately where differentially impacting on students' learning opportunities and that to me is the real inequity of universities failing to act on

this problem. criminologist anastasia powell says the situation could be even worse than last year's human rights commission survey showed universities had input in the survey process and provided most of the research funding universities are in a conflict of interest here it is in their interest to show that universities are proactive that there isn't a problem of sexual assault and harassment so to have universities by the bodies that are in charge of conducting or playing a substantial role in that research is problematic paul says the response of universities has been inadequate i think we need a national consistent coordinated approach to this problem and i think there's a real lack of leadership particularly working with universities to develop a clear transparent national set of guidelines about what is the minimum requirement of sort of policies practices programs that we need to really be addressing this problem. thanks for giving us some of your time today margaret god

is the chairperson of universities a stray ok so margaret let's start with the human rights commission survey which was released last year it showed that one point six percent of students had experienced sexual assault across twenty fifteen twenty six staying in a university setting how many students is that. i don't have that number off the top of my head. it's a significant it's a significant number of students in fact one student would say to me on my calculations it's around about eleven thousand students a year thirteen pay day is this a national emergency i think that sexual assault is something that's very important to be dealt with across society so yes we've now got a better understanding of the scale of the issue and we are able to address it because while it is to many do you see

a conflict of interest in universities funding their own research into misconduct on their own campuses i mean that's a little bit like tobacco companies funding cancer research we were not commissioning something running it ourselves we commissioned an independent body to do it to be clear that what we were seeking was real evidence so we could take action she insists a strain in universities or a positive place to live and learn and that is what international students who finish an australian education. in overwhelming numbers it was a great experience and we work hard every single day to write sure every student will have that feeling when i look. sadly not everyone has had such a happy experience. and for dozens more today may be the day they were assaulted.

but gradually the silence is being broken when not silenced anymore at all with strong. strong we work together to fight this change and there's no going back from this people were and have to feel like they're learning any. problem. just stand up say this awful thing happened to me i don't deserve this kind of stuff to stand up reach for how. we do need a lot of power. but were. once pristine indonesia's river has become a toxic waste dump for textile factories that supply

a global fashion chain one has the examines the human cost of the world's most polluted river on al-jazeera. carcinogen.

we understand the differences and the similarities of cultures across the world. so no matter where you call home al-jazeera will bring you the news and current affairs that matter to you. al-jazeera the fact. this morning hopeless on the planet and one that could soon be lost forever with an international team of scientists is determined not to let that happen without intervention to give the big i would say here to a vast now it's a race against time to try and sustain a species like a chrysler it's an emergency plan they've all extinction tagged know on all jazeera .