Melbourne's biggest refugee rights rally yet

BY GILLIAN DAVY

MELBOURNE — In the largest demonstration for refugees' rights held
here so far, 4000 people rallied on February 2 in City Square to demand
that immigration detention centres be closed and that the refugees be freed.
The action was organised by the Refugee Action Collective (RAC).

“On February 12, thousands of people from all over Australia will be
knocking on the politicians' doors in Canberra, to tell them: 'You are
criminals and we won't allow you to continue'”, rally chairperson Rachel
Evans declared. Evans called for the refugee concentration camps across
Australia to be closed and demanded that the federal government's racist
mandatory detention policy be scrapped.

After a welcome from the Wurundjeri people, presented by Annette Xiberus,
the crowd was addressed by Phillip Newman, archdeacon of the Anglican Church,
and Brian Pound of the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance. Pound argued
that proposals to relocate women and children into the community was no
solution. “We don't just want women and children out. We want everyone
out. Families shouldn't be broken up”, he declared.

Leigh Hubbard, Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary, debunked the
government's false arguments about “queue jumpers taking our jobs”. He
acknowledged that the trade union movement had been silent during the November
federal election campaign. He pledged that the March executive meeting
of the Australian Council of Trade Unions would commit the union movement
to challenge the mandatory detention policy, which is shared by both the
Coalition federal government and the Labor opposition.

After hearing from comedian Rod Quantock and RAC's Pierre Moro, the
protesters marched through the central business district. While the head
of the rally marched up Bourke Street, thousands still packed Elizabeth
and Collins streets and City Square. Lively chants of “Open the borders,
close the camps, free the refugees!” convinced many by-standers to join
the demonstration.

Outside the hated the Nike Superstore, protesters heard Alex Kouttab
from the Australian Arabic Council passionately observe that, “Australia
is jealously guarding its ‘lucky country mentality' with little compassion
and no understanding of conditions in the rest of the world”. A speaker
from the Islamic Council of Australia warned against the federal government's
proposed anti-terrorist laws.

As the march arrived at the State Library, Victorian Greens' immigration
spokesperson Chris Chaplin addressed the throng. He said that the $3 million
spent each week by the government on the incarceration of asylum seekers
could be better spent on community housing and resettlement assistance.

The demonstration ended with a rousing speech by the Socialist Alliance's
Graham Matthews. “Stop it! Stop the war on refugees!”, Matthews declared.
He explained that the war being waged by the Australian government on the
poor people of the world is part of a much broader imperialist war — led
by the United States — against all the peoples of the Third World.

After rally participants agreed to return to the streets again, Matthews
declared, “We will force this government to back down by mobilising in
our hundreds of thousands until they stop the war on refugees”.

From Green Left Weekly, February 6, 2002.

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From GLW issue 479