BY CLAYTON MCDONALD, TONY ILTIS & SEAN MARTIN-IVERSON
MELBOURNE — "We have lost hope in the Australian government", said refugee Fahim Fayyazi, a member of Afghanistan's Hazara minority of the attitudes of his fellow asylum seekers. "Our only remaining hope is the [Australian] people".
Fayyazi's hope must have been strengthened by the reception he and other refugee-rights advocates received when, in the course of three days, 3600 people in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth attended pro-refugee public meetings. The size of these meetings is a welcome indication that, far from the pro-refugee campaign abating, more people are prepared to take action to oppose the government's racism. Participants at all the meetings were urged to attend the next big refugees' rights protests on June 22-23 (see advertisement on page 9 for details).
Fayyazi was speaking in the Melbourne Town Hall at a May 22 meeting themed "Refugee Rights are Human Rights". At 7pm, the scheduled start time, the queue to get in was still stretching for two city blocks. By the time the meeting did begin, more than 2000 people had packed inside.
The meeting began with a moving traditional ceremony in which Aboriginal elder Joy Murphy Wandin welcomed a group of refugees, who she described as "four wonderful young men".
Expressing his "deepest gratitude" for the welcome, Fayyazi spoke of his fear of being deported to face persecution and possible death in his home country and appealed for people's support.
Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, the meeting's keynote speaker contrasted the present policy to those used to deal with previous large-scale migrations, in the 1940s and the 1970s. "Open access hostels didn't imperil the community [then]", he said, "so why should it be imperilled today?"
The second keynote speaker, former human rights and equal opportunities commissioner Moira Rayner, picked up the cudgels from Fraser, concentrating most fire on the detention of children. It was, she said, a sign that a society is not fully civilized: "We must not be like those who failed to notice the cattle-trucks and crematoria".
The keynote speakers were followed by questions from the audience to six prominent refugee-rights supporters, including Judy McVey of the Refugee Action Collective (which initiated the meeting), Afghan-Australian Nouria Salehi and ACTU president Sharan Burrow.
The May 21 public meeting in Brisbane, organised by the Refugee Action Collective, was attended by 800 people. Held the day after East Timor gained formal independence, many speakers drew lesson's from that country's fight for freedom.
The last time he'd seen the main auditorium as full was for a meeting to promote that struggle, said Democrats senator Andrew Bartlett, adding that he believed public opinion is not as "narrow and bigoted" as the "disgraceful Prime Minister" and could be turned around.
Chairperson Ross Daniels pointed out that campaigning in Australia had helped force the government to change policy on East Timor, proving that ordinary people could make a difference.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow said she felt shame that Australia, a rich nation, could jail people coming from desperate situations. Other speakers addressed the need to campaign against the proposed detention centre at Pinkenba, near Brisbane's airport, even before it is built.
Another 800 people packed into a Perth forum titled "Refugees in Australia: Beyond the Rhetoric" on May 23, to hear politicians, academics and media personalities debate the pros and cons of the federal government's harsh stance on asylum seekers.
Opening the address, Phillip Adams spoke passionately against the "disgraceful" stance taken by both the Coalition and Labor. "This country was born in legislative bigotry" and its much-vaunted tolerance was only "micron-thick", he said, but he found encouragement from the thousands of letters he'd received from people pledging to harbour refugees on the run.
"You've got to go out there and struggle", he urged the audience. "Refugees need to be welcomed, for our sake as much as theirs ... because, if we don't, we'll all end up looking like Phil Ruddock."
While Indigenous academic Joan Winch, human rights lawyer Mary Anne Kenny, artist Stuart Hamaz and even Labor MP Carmen Lawrence were all highly critical of mandatory detention and anti-refugee policies, Senator Ross Lightfoot, representing immigration minister Philip Ruddock, sought to defend the policy.
Claiming that the government's policies provide "the best possible outcome for the largest number of refugees globally" and that Australia has one of the world's "most generous" attitudes to refugees, Lightfoot made little headway with an audience that quizzed him aggressively during question time.
The meeting was organised by Amnesty International WA Refugee Team and UWA Extension.
From Green Left Weekly, May 29, 2002.
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