Photos by Ali Bakhtiavandi
About 60 people attended a March 27 forum in Melbourne titled 鈥淪muggled to freedom: behind the anti-people smuggling rhetoric鈥. The forum was organised by the Refugee Action Collective Victoria and heard from a number of former refugees and supporters, as well as Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young.
Award-winning writer Arnold Zable told the meeting: 鈥淚鈥檓 alive today because my mother was a queue jumper.鈥
Peter Farago, a one-time 鈥減eople smuggler鈥 from Hungary, said: 鈥淧eople smugglers are the travel agencies of the poor and oppressed. I鈥檝e been a people smuggler and I鈥檓 proud of it.鈥