PM John Howard designed the Pacific Solution to hold the people of the Tampa behind walls of razor wire. The Aboriginal political leadership now calls on the good people of this land to support the call from the refugee-rights movement to take a stand on November 16 to serve a very clear notice on Howard that we will not allow him to pursue his horrific campaign against asylum seekers, and that we will not allow him to wage an unjust and illegal war against the sovereign people of Iraq.
From that fatal moment when Howard claimed victory on election night, Aboriginal people have been talking up the need to mobilise across the nation so we can send "Dear John" a very clear message from within our camps. We know that Howard is an arch racist and we know he is absolutely dedicated to the destruction of ATSIC, the complete marginalisation of the Aboriginal political leadership and the forced removal of Aboriginal people from the mainstream national community.
Now that Howard has complete control of both houses of parliament he will very quickly move to implement his terrorist agenda and will attempt to crush our political infrastructure and strip our critical survival programs. We cannot allow that to happen. We too will be mobilising in Canberra for the first scheduled sitting of the new parliament on November 16. If we do not mobilise, if we do not show Howard that we are still committed to our struggle for liberty, our people will pay with the blood and suffering of generations yet unborn.
In 1967 the people of the Australian nation voted in overwhelming numbers to right the wrongs of history and bring the Aboriginal people into the fold of the national community. The good people of the Australian nation will not stand back and allow this prime minister to betray that magnificent legacy. Every child born on this land shall be given every right to live and to learn and to prosper regardless of their colour, race or political belief.
We will not allow Howard to implement his "final solution" for the Indigenous peoples of this land. We will march and we will demonstrate and we will resist whilst we still have breath in our bodies, in order to defend the rights and the needs of oppressed peoples everywhere.
On November 16, let's come together in a rainbow convergence, a living sea of hands on the laws of federal parliament, with each upraised hand saying "Stop, Howard — you have no mandate!" Now is the time to rebuild and strengthen our activist networks and take the resistance to the streets. Join us — get on the bus to Canberra!
Sam Watson
[Murri activist, writer, film-maker and Socialist Alliance Senate candidate for Queensland.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 27, 2004.
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