Selena Black, Sydney

On February 8, federal police conducted an early morning raid on a refugee supporter’s house, taking notebooks, computers and documents.

This followed similar raids on December 1, after which four people were summonsed to appear in court on charges of making false statements to assist refugees to obtain passports in order to leave the country.

Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition pointed out on February 8 that “The charges have been dropped against two of the refugee activists and the charges against the others are shaky”.

Rintoul described the latest raid as “blatant harassment of refugee activists and blatant political use of the federal police. The government has been embarrassed by the failure of its actions so far and it is now under a lot of pressure from the revelations of the abuse of Cornelia Rau in Baxter detention centre.”

From Green Left Weekly, February 16, 2005.
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