Anti-refugee policy can be abolished

Anti-refugee policy can be abolished

Prime Minister John Howard and immigration minister Philip Ruddock stood
firm throughout the two-week hunger strike by asylum seekers in the Woomera
detention centre. Some said this was proof that the government will never
change its policy. Yet their cold determination to stand firm in the face
of profound human suffering is precisely what has horrified and outraged
large numbers of people.

The editorial in the February 2-3 Weekend Australian captured
the incredulity that many felt: “In his [Ruddock's] Orwellian world, the
prospect of death in custody is an 'unfortunate outcome' or 'mishap', lip-sewing
and threats of suicide are 'inappropriate behaviour', and an asylum seeker
who has fled a tyrannical regime is a person making a 'lifestyle choice'...
Ruddock disputes the centres are part of a 'punitive' regime of imprisonment.
Next he will be calling them 'joycamps' — the word used to describe forced-labour
camps in Orwell's 1984.”

Six-and-a-half thousand people took part in refugee rights rallies on
February 2, the biggest ever mobilisation of people against the government's
appalling refugee policy. That's significant, not because those rallies
alone forced any immediate changes in government policy, but because they
signalled the potential for this issue to mobilise large numbers of people
demanding justice for refugees.

The Woomera hunger strike marked a real crisis for the government. This
is because, for the first time, it opened the eyes of large numbers of
people to the horrifying reality of life in refugee detention centres.
It also cut through some of the lies the government has used to maintain
support for its policy of detention and its demonisation of asylum seekers.

Yet more cracks in the bipartisan Coalition-ALP consensus are appearing
every day.

In the space of a week, criticisms and concerns were voiced by the UN
Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson; former Labor prime minister Gough
Whitlam, former immigration department secretary under Whitlam and Fraser,
John Menadue; the Pope; Jesuit priest and lawyer Frank Brennan; former
human rights commissioner Chris Sidoti; former Liberal minister Ian McPhee;
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers and Oxfam-Community Aid
Abroad.

The fact that prominent people, both liberal and conservative, are speaking
out is a positive thing. It gives further momentum to the public debate,
and helps to shift ordinary people's attitudes, but this alone is not enough
to convince the government that it has a crisis on its hands.

So long as large numbers of opponents of the government's policy remain
passive, the legitimacy of the government's policy is not fundamentally
challenged. When people like McPhee and Whitlam speak out, it places some
pressure on the government because it breaks the stifling consensus and
draws the government's refugee policy into question. But it is mass protests
which escalate that pressure dramatically because they demonstrate unambiguously
that opposition to the government's refugee policy is getting a mass hearing.

Two years ago, during the post-election massacres in East Timor, the
Australian government was prepared to stand by and do nothing in order
to protect its cosy relationship with the Suharto dictatorship. Public
horror and outrage among ordinary Australians grew rapidly. People were
prepared to come out to rallies in their tens of thousands.

In the space of a few weeks, the government faced a complete crisis
of legitimacy. It held out for as long as it could in order to safeguard
its relationship with the Indonesian dictatorship, but at a certain point
it was more costly to risk a loss of political legitimacy in Australia
as people watched their government, with the capacity to stop people from
being killed in their thousands, refusing to respond.

The rapid rise in mass protests in solidarity with East Timor forced
the Howard government to do something very much against its wishes — to
break the bipartisan policy of collaboration with the Indonesian military
and send Australian troops to assist the East Timorese people's struggle
for national independence.

The lesson of this experience is that mass protests can force a change
in government policy.

Minor changes to the treatment of refugees could be won fairly quickly
given the current climate, if the current momentum can be sustained. Perhaps
Australasian Correctional Management will lose its contract to run the
detention centres. It is possible that Woomera detention centre will be
closed, if we can mount sufficient mass pressure. But that would be a very
partial victory. By all accounts, Curtin detention centre is as bad, if
not worse than Woomera.

An end to the mandatory detention of refugees will take a more sustained
campaign, however. But it is a campaign which has better prospects of winning
than at any time since the introduction of mandatory detention in 1992.

There are many disparate groups organising in defence of refugees' rights,
but the strength of this campaign lies in the unity between these groups.
The February 12 protest, for example, is a joint effort between a wide
range of these groups.

While Canberra convergence on February 12 is likely to have a substantial
impact, it is only one step in a protest movement which must continue to
build and grow in the coming months.

The Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting will be held near Brisbane
in the first week of March, which offers an important opportunity for protest.
Refugee groups are organising a protest around the demand to suspend/expel
Australia from the Commonwealth for human rights abuses.

Refugee campaign groups in many cities are planning big public meetings
in the coming months. Palm Sunday protests on March 24 will be a focal
point for protest in some cities.

Over the Easter weekend, there will be a protest at Woomera, with a
national day of refugee solidarity coinciding with it on March 31, including
protests in Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. The Sydney protest, to be held
outside Villawood refugee prison, will be an international protest, involving
hundreds of guests and participants attending the Second Asia-Pacific International
Solidarity Conference.

May 1, the traditional day for marking international workers' struggles,
will offer another opportunity for protest on the refugee issue.

From Green Left Weekly, February 13, 2002.

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