Photos by Ali Bakhtiavandi
About 60 people attended a March 27 forum in Melbourne titled “Smuggled to freedom: behind the anti-people smuggling rhetoric”. The forum was organised by the Refugee Action Collective Victoria and heard from a number of former refugees and supporters, as well as Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young.
Award-winning writer Arnold Zable told the meeting: “I’m alive today because my mother was a queue jumper.”
Peter Farago, a one-time “people smuggler” from Hungary, said: “People smugglers are the travel agencies of the poor and oppressed. I’ve been a people smuggler and I’m proud of it.”