The following is abridged from an address by Sydney-based Afghan refugee Riz Wakil to the November 16 convergence at federal parliament in Canberra.
Thank you for coming here on the first sitting day of parliament to say: "It doesn't matter who won the election — No Australian government has a mandate to brutalise asylum seekers and refugees."
Despite the Coalition being returned to government, the refugee-rights movement had an important victory this year. It forced [PM John] Howard's government — against its will — to grant permanent residence to almost all Afghan refugees in this country. The government would have been much happier sending us all back to Afghanistan, but the constant commitment and campaigning of the refugee-rights movement over the last half decade, your refusal to be silenced by politicians' and media lies, made it impossible for Howard and his mates to get their way.
It is important that we recognise this victory, because it tells us that we can make a difference over time. We can force the government to back down even when it doesn't want to.
After the federal election, we can no longer use the Senate to block or reverse the government's inhumane anti-refugee legislation. We have to take this job into our own hands — the hands of the people, not the politicians.
So we will have to use every available avenue outside of parliament to create so much public support for policy change that the government simply cannot afford to ignore us. They might have control of both rooms in the building behind us, but they don't control the many more spaces in all our schools and campuses, our workplaces, our communities and our streets.
We cannot wait another three or four years to change the parliamentary line-up. There are still hundreds of asylum seekers — including many children — locked up in detention centres who won't last that long. There are still thousands of refugees and asylum seekers who have not been granted permanent residency, let alone citizenship. And there are still millions of traumatised and oppressed people outside of Australia in urgent need of a safe haven, many of whom will literally die if we wait.
Now more than ever we must keep speaking out, keep the issue on the public agenda, keep educating and organising more people to demand that mandatory detention is abolished and every detention centre is closed, that temporary protection visas are replaced with citizenship rights, and that the so-called "Pacific solution" is dismantled.
But as we do this, we also have to be clear that solving the personal problems of those asylum seekers and refugees who've been fortunate enough to make it to Australia is nowhere near enough. To really achieve our goals, we have to create a situation where any peoples suffering war, poverty and persecution in any other country can find sanctuary and a better life in Australia.
The Australian government is doing exactly the opposite. It is not just making it almost impossible for asylum seekers to get into Australia, it is also creating countless more refugees. The government's participation in the occupation of Iraq, and its support for the United States' war of terror on the Third World, creates more destruction, more displacement and more refugees.
And don't think these problems are going to end in Iraq with the elections next January. They certainly did not end in my country after the US-sponsored elections last October. War still ravages many parts of the country. Unemployment, poverty, lack of education and health care are still the norm, and women's and other human rights abuses continue.
Thousands of my Hazara brothers and sisters, who cannot survive in devastated Afghanistan, have fled to Iran or Pakistan, where they continue to be exploited, persecuted and killed every day.
Five years after the overthrow of the Taliban government, Afghanistan shows — just as Iraq will show — that without real self-determination, without real democracy, and without real equality in the world, all talk of "liberation" and "freedom" by the powerful countries is just propaganda intended to justify their control and plunder of our countries, and to justify the barriers they are erecting to prevent their victims from claiming sanctuary in the rich countries.
The government and Labor Party's enthusiastic support for the so-called "war on terror" is creating second-class citizens in this country too — political refugees in our own country. Muslims and people of Middle Eastern background are being presented as untrustworthy, or violent or outright terrorists. Racism and fear has been whipped up to divide us one from the other, because the more that Australians are scared of people from different ethnic backgrounds, cultures and religions, the more the government will be able to get away with its warmongering foreign policies and its brutal domestic policies of imprisoning refugees and anyone else who speaks out against it.
Thanks to the work of the refugee-rights movement, and the anti-war movement, fewer people believe the lies politicians tell to justify these crimes against humanity, and John Howard no longer represents majority public opinion on the treatment of asylum seekers or even the occupation of Iraq.
We represent the majority, and we will continue to speak out, to tell the people of Australia and the world the truth, until the demands for justice are met.
Rallies like today's are a very important part of doing that. By taking public action, we are saying what the majority believe — that the government has no mandate to lock out or lock up asylum seekers, or to occupy other countries. By speaking out today we are also encouraging others to take a stand, to say "No" to this parliament and join the "parliament of the streets", which can and will stop the wars and free the refugees!
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, November 24, 2004.
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