La Trobe supports refugee safe havens

BY KARL MILLER

MELBOURNE — At a student general meeting on September 4, La Trobe University students voted overwhelmingly to declare the campus a refugee safe haven. With 131 students attending, the meeting was, however, 19 votes short of quorum. The safe haven campaign was initiated by the La Trobe Refugee Action Collective, as part of campaigning for refugees' rights.

Four motions were put to the meeting.

The first motion called for the university to be declared a refugee safe haven. Speaking in favour of the motion, Tim Doughney pointed out that the government was breaking international law.

The next motion called on the university to offer free education for refugees holding temporary protection visas. Edwin Wise declared that TPV holders were second-class citizens in Australia. Access to free education, he said, would be offering them a step towards freedom.

La Trobe education officer Kim Halpin, a member of Resistance, motivated motion three, which called on the university to refuse to ever cooperate with the running of detention centres. She called on people not to cooperate with immoral laws.

The final motion involved donating the proceeds of a fundraising concert to both the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the underground network of recently escaped refugees.

Adam Bottomley pointed out that to uphold the Coalition's law of persecuting refugees was in defiance of the human rights laws of compassion and justice, laws far more important than those built on political opportunism, fear and lies.

From Green Left Weekly, September 11, 2002.

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From GLW issue 508