In the early hours of August 26, activists from the We Are All Boat People group decorated statues around the city in barbed wire, Tampa sashes and black armbands. Her Majesty Queen Victoria at the Queen Victoria Building sported a sash with the words “Tampa — another reason to say sorry”. Other statues — in Hyde Park fountain and around the CBD — were adorned with black armbands.

These activists, along with hundreds of others across Australia, were marking the first anniversary since the Australian government refused to allow the captain of the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa to bring some 400 refugees the ship had rescued to Australia. The asylum seekers were eventually shipped to Nauru, the government announcing the launch of its “Pacific Solution”.

As the reports on these pages illustrate, the refugee movement has significantly extended its networks since August 26, 2001. The public mood is shifting as refugees are given a human face and the government's lies are exposed. One example of this is that some $7000 was raised by refugee groups selling tens of thousands of black armbands for the day. An August 11 Canberra Times poll showed a massive 82% of respondents saying children should not be detained.

Not everyone is happy, however. A scathing opinion piece by Piers Ackerman in the August 27 Daily Telegraph argued that the Shame Howard campaign on Tampa Day was “sick” and that the refugee movement amounted to a “breast beating”, “teeth gnashing” irrelevancy. (The unanswered question being why he then devoted so much space to it!) Immigration department officials, however, didn't see the event as irrelevent. An alert was issued to the department’s central Sydney office, restricting access to the building, to prevent staff being asked to wear a black armband on August 26.

From Green Left Weekly, September 4, 2002.
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