MELBOURNE — Culminating a week of pro-refugee protest action, 100 high school students gathered outside Flinders Street Station on June 28, despite bucketing rain.

“People our age are the victims of the government's racist mandatory detention policy too”, Resistance activist Milly Williams told the crowd. “Unlike us [detained refugees] do not even have the chance to attend school. Today we stand in solidarity with them and all refugees.”

Five students from Melbourne Girls Grammar then explained how they had fought past teachers at their school gate to get to the rally.

After travelling by train and tram to the Maribyrnong detention centre, the rally — now grown to 300 — marched around the perimeter of the compound. Protesters attempted to breach the outer fence but were held back by police. In the ensuing confusion, police confiscated megaphones, wire cutters and sticks. Several protesters were wounded, including a 16-year-old who had a broken toe and needed stitches to his face after being trampled by police horses.

“Hundreds of people are not going to tear down the detention centre”, Margarita Windisch, from the Refugee Action Collective (RAC) told to the crowd. “Isn't that what we want to do? To tear down all the detention centres? We need to protest in our hundreds of thousands!”

Up to 500 protesters attended the protest festival on June 29, enjoying the improved weather. Local Labor MP Bruce Mildenhall had been invited but did not show up. Speakers included representatives of the Greens and the Socialist Alliance.

Protesters marched around the perimeter of the detention centre, chanting to the refugees inside, and a sit-down protest was staged on Hampstead Road outside the detention centre, blocking traffic, demanding that a refugee who is being held in solitary confinement at the centre be released.

From Green Left Weekly, July 3, 2002.
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