BY GRANT COLEMAN
& AMY PARISH
WOLLONGONG Facing a concerted campaign of censorship by the Young Liberal-dominated Students' Representative Council (SRC) of the University of Wollongong, the Refugee Action Collective (RAC) has decided to push ahead with plans for a student general meeting on September 17, which could declare the campus a refugee safe haven.
The SRC has made it clear that it does not support the safe haven campaign. At the last SRC meeting on August 30, a motion was passed declaring the RAC petition calling for a general meeting to be unconstitutional. Since this initial attack, the campaign of censorship has continued. Hundreds of students have signed petitions for the safe haven campaign.
On September 5, SRC president Amanda Craig refused RAC access to photocopying for the campaign. This was in response to a leaflet condemning the undemocratic methods of the SRC. Craig also stated that even if students vote to make the campus a refugee safe haven at the general meeting, the SRC would refuse to recognise the meeting's decisions.
Convenor of the RAC safe haven campaign, Sophie Williams, condemned the undemocratic methods of the SRC: "The SRC obviously doesn't agree with the campaign to offer sanctuary to refugees who have escaped from detention or those who still languish in Australia's concentration camps. The University of Wollongong could join a growing list of individuals, campuses, high schools and city councils in offering the most persecuted section of society refugees sanctuary."
In the leadup to the general meeting, RAC activists will continue to campaign around refugees' rights, while condemning the actions of the SRC. On September 3, RAC organised a street theatre performance during the lunch break.
Utilising both scripted and improvised material, students staged a landing of asylum seekers, complete with a chicken-wire detention centre, a hideous effigy of immigration minister Philip Ruddock, and caricatures of detention centre guards and others representing the racist bandwagon propping up mandatory detention.
"Asylum seekers", wearing sashes reading "hope" and "freedom", manoeuvred a tin boat across the duck pond using two sticks and a construction sign, only to be met by a navy officer. They were then met by Australasian Correctional Management guards and stripped of their sashes, instead given numbers. Upon being placed in detention, each of the refugees gave an emotive account of their experiences.<|> From Green Left Weekly, September 11, 2002.
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