'Welcome refugees'

"Welcome refugees", "No Indonesian solution" and "Bring the Tamils to Australia", were the main slogans for at a rally organised by the Refugee Action Coalition outside the immigration department on November 9. It followed a rally a week earlier.

Fifty people protested against the Rudd government's inhumane refugee policy and called for those being held on boats or in Indonesian camps to be processed in Australia.

Speakers from the National Union of Students, the Tamil Youth Organisation and Labor for Refugees addressed the crowd. Tamil refugee spokesperson Alex, linked in by phone from the boat in Merak, Indonesia, said 10 women had started a hunger strike that day to call for speedy processing of their refugee claims in Australia.

From GLW issue 818