The Socialist Alliance has joined the call for the dropping of all charges against four people accused of helping asylum seekers who had escaped from detention to obtain false passports so they could get to a country that would offer them protection. The charges carry a maximum penalty of two years' imprisonment or a $5000 fine.
The asylum seekers arrested by the federal police during their raids on the activists' homes in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on December 1 must also be released without charge.
The Australian government's treatment of asylum seekers is acknowledged around the world to be inhumane and contrary to many international treaties on human rights. Its regime of mandatory detention and forcible deportation is so brutal that many asylum seekers would rather starve themselves to death than suffer years of isolation and trauma before being returned to persecution and possible death in their country of origin.
When such gross injustices become the law, resistance to those laws becomes a moral duty. Any effort by refugee-rights activists to assist asylum seekers to find safety and freedom is an act of humanity and is entirely morally justifiable.
Socialist Alliance members around the country have volunteered their homes as sanctuary for asylum seekers. Like the majority of people in Australia, the alliance condemns the government's incarceration of people whose only crime was to be born in a poor, war-torn country and who we believe have a basic human right to freedom, equality and a secure, decent life.
The Socialist Alliance will be actively supporting the campaign to have the charges against these activists and asylum seekers dropped, and we will continue to build the growing movement demanding that the government abolish mandatory detention, close all of the detention centres, and welcome and support refugees.
[This statement was issued by the Socialist Alliance national co-convenors on December 5.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, December 15, 2004.
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