Socialist Alliance activist and feminist Liah Lazarou gave the speech below to Adelaide’s Reclaim the Night rally on October 26.
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Australia
The statement below was issued by asylum seekers on Nauru following their protest on the afternoon of October 29. Republished from the Refugee Action Coalition Sydney.
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ASYLUM SEEKERS IN NAURU
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
We heard several times from different authorities that the sending of us [to Nauru] is an argument of giving lessons to those who have intention of coming to Australia through the sea by people smugglers.
We've been told opportunity, prosperity and more freedoms came to Australia under the banner of capitalism and the “free-market” in the 1980s and 90s after the economic slump of two recessions.
But when neoliberal ideals and rhetoric are set aside, a grim picture of the great, and ever growing, divide between the rich and poor in Australia emerges yet again.
Between 1920 and 1980, inequality in Australia was shrinking, until a perceived sense of national stagnation took hold and the Hawke-Keating Labor government made the leap into the global free market.
Australia’s big electricity generators are feeling the squeeze of electricity demand falling in recent years and growing competition from renewable energy.
This year, some environmentalists criticised the federal government for scrapping the “contracts for closure” negotiations, which would have made the federal government compensate operators to close up to 2000 megawatts of coal-fired power stations. However, more than 2000 megawatts of coal power plant has now been closed or “mothballed” across the country without paying the contracts for closure.
Globally, millions of women experience violence — whether in the form of intimate partner violence, rape and sexual coercion, stalking, trafficking, forced prostitution, exploitation of labour, or other violations of women's bodies and psyches.
The high prevalence of violence against women both reflects and reinforces women's lower status in society.
To end the violence against women, we need to confront both the violence directly and the structural causes of women's lower standing that makes women vulnerable to the violence.
In what one longstanding Perth feminist activist described as the biggest Reclaim the Night march in Perth in 20 years, over 300 people — women, children and men — rallied and marched in Fremantle on October 26, for an end to violence against women.
What is feminism and why do we need it? Filmed in Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart and Perth.
The threat facing Western Australia’s Kimberley region received national attention on October 5 when 10,000 people attended a concert for the Kimberley in Melbourne’s Federation Square.
The John Butler Trio and Claire Bowditch performed and Missy Higgins and former Greens leader Bob Brown spoke to the crowd. The concert was organised by The Wilderness Society to raise support for the protection of the iconic area.
Refugees held in indefinite detention on Nauru shared the following letter on their Facebook page on October 26. They addressed it to human rights commissioners, communities of oppressed people and “world independent news channels”.
It has been published with minimal edits.
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An Iranian man became the fourth asylum seeker to attempt suicide in Australia’s detention camp on Nauru on October 24. He was cut down from hanging himself by guards and other refugees. Other acts of self-harm have also broken out on the island. On October 25, one detainee told Green Left Weekly that another man who injured himself with a razor did not get any medical care.
The wave of self-harm and hunger strikes has hit the detention camp after only a month of the Labor government’s return to a “Pacific solution” for refugees.
More than 3000 people formed a human sign at Bulli Showground on October 21 to spell out: “Protect H2O, Stop CSG!”'. It was the third major action organised by Stop CSG Illawarra, after its mass human sign at Austinmer Beach last May, and Bridge Walk to stop coal seam gas across Sea Cliff Bridge last October.
The Australian parliament building reeks of floor polish. The wooden floors shine so virtuously they reflect the cartoon-like portraits of prime ministers, bewigged judges and viceroys. Along the gleaming white, hushed corridors, the walls are hung with Aboriginal art: one painting after another as in a monolithic gallery, divorced from their origins, the irony brutal. The poorest, sickest, most incarcerated people on earth provide a facade for those who oversee the theft of their land and its plunder.
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