Karen Fletcher, Melbourne
A rally and march against racism on Sydney Road in Melbourne's City of Moreland attracted more than 120 people on April 1. Chanting "Migrants are welcome, racists are not", the marchers drew smiles and waves from shoppers and shopkeepers in the halal butchers, Lebanese bakeries and Turkish kebab and coffee shops that line Melbourne's most Middle Eastern street.
Called by the local Socialist Alliance branch and supported by Trades Hall Council and the Greens, the rally heard from local federal MP Kelvin Thomson that three more local residents had been arrested in raids by federal and Victorian police the night before. The raids were another instalment of Operation Pendennis, a joint Australian Federal Police-Victoria Police operation focussed on a radical Muslim prayer group in the Moreland area.
Law student Rayain Abdul told the rally she had recently been asked by a stranger in the street where her "loyalties" lay — presumably because she was wearing a veil. She said that it is possible to be loyal both to Australia — her country — and to Islam — her religion — but she is concerned that many people are coming to believe that this is impossible.
Rally chairperson and Socialist Alliance activist Jody Betzien said comments earlier this year by federal Liberal frontbenchers Tony Abbott and Peter Costello implying that Islam is irreconcilable with Australian "values" and "culture" were cultivating racism and racist violence, and the rally had been called to demonstrate opposition to that project.
Ray Fulcher from the Civil Rights Defence Committee spoke about the sentencing the previous day of Melbourne resident Jack Thomas. Thomas was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for accepting money and a plane ticket home to Australia from al Qaeda. The evidence upon which his conviction depended was obtained from him under torture in Pakistan.
Fulcher said the laws used against Thomas and the 13 men arrested in Operation Pendennis were designed to free police and prosecution lawyers of the need to present evidence of violence, or planned violence, so that they could imprison people on the basis of their beliefs. The laws and the arrests are "anti-Muslim" rather than "anti-terrorist", he said.
Local resident and Socialist Alliance member Vannessa Hearman said that as a woman of Indonesian background she had noticed a marked increase in racism in recent years. She emphasised that the rally should be just one part of a united push by anti-racist people in Moreland to create a counterweight to government-sponsored racism and division. "We need to work seriously together to build confidence in our community that we can defeat racism", she said.
From Green Left Weekly, April 5, 2006.
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