BY SIMON CUNICH
& MARK CUNICH
WOLLONGONG
More than 80 students from The Illawarra Grammar School attended a lunchtime
concert and meeting in support of refugees' rights on September 6. At the
meeting the students voted unanimously to make the school a refugee safe
haven. The event was organised by the TIGS Social Action Group, a student
group that campaigns around human rights, in particular refugees' rights.
A student band performed a reworked, refugee-friendly version of Island in the Sun. During the concert, black armbands were sold to commemorate Tampa Day and 50 students signed a petition calling for an end to mandatory detention of children asylum seekers.
The feature speaker at the meeting was Lauren Carroll Harris, an activist from the Newtown Performing Arts High School and a member of Resistance. She pointed to the need for students to join the campaign to free the refugees because refugees our age could be studying or working next to us as equals, but instead they are being held by the Australian government in detention centres.
The students voted unanimously in favour of the proposal to offer sanctuary to refugees at the school. It was a clear statement of solidarity with refugees and determined opposition to mandatory detention. The students also hope to have it approved by the principal before the end of the term.
Carroll Harris applauded the move and pointed to the fact that education is about more than just receiving good grades or getting a degree or a good job. It is also about becoming an informed and concerned citizen. Currently the refugee-rights movement is an important way for us as students to achieve this.
Students from the TIGS group will also be approaching other schools in the Illawarra to organise a student protest on the anniversary of the SIEV-X drownings on October 19. The event will take place on October 18, before the commemoration march and rally organised by the Refugee Action Collective.
From Green Left Weekly, September 11, 2002.
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