BY ARUN PRADHAN
It is not difficult to understand the motives of people who want to break refugees out of the desert prison at Woomera — or any other refugee prison. But is it the way we'll force the government to abandon its racist refugee policy?
The break-outs during the Easter Woomera protests were spontaneous — they took most protesters by surprise. Protesters reacted to the unplanned escape as many would, by helping escaped refugees get away. For this, many are being prosecuted.
Although some feared this would cost the refugees' rights movement support, those protests actually helped to refocus national and international attention on one of the worst examples of Australian refugee policy — the concentration camp in the middle of our desert.
Groups such as the Victorian Refugee Action Collective (RAC), of which I am a member, took the position that “bad laws must be broken”. We encouraged people to reject immigration minister Philip Ruddock's threats, and to help escaped refugees. We even publicised our $2000 donation to help them resettle.
Federal government spin-doctors seeking to convince Australians of the need for mandatory detention are up against a widespread sympathetic reaction to the Easter protest.
In a blunt warning to the government, the July 1 Canberra Times editorial summed up the likely public response to the latest Woomera break-out, which occurred with the help of activists outside on June 28. The Canberra Times editorial said: “[The activists involved in the recent breakout] are acting, as they and many others would see it, unselfishly [which] clearly separates their civil disobedience from ordinary criminal conduct. These people, in short, have the makings of martyrs.”
But Ruddock, in his characteristic way, labelled the breakout “indefensible” and is “not ruling out” laying charges. Prime Minister John Howard, in Germany at the time, was more defensive, arguing that he, personally, didn't “like” mandatory detention but that it was the only way to deal with the refugee crisis.
The immediate challenge for refugees' rights campaigners is to build the broadest support for our main messages: that the camps are travesties of justice, that mandatory detention is unacceptable and that asylum seekers and refugees should be treated sympathetically.
While we defend detainees who choose and manage to escape, we should be clear that organising breakouts of 10, 20, even 50 refugees is not going to change things for all refugees, nor should it be our main strategy.
Some refugees' rights activists have begun to argue that civil disobedience should become the main focus of the movement. RAC activists began this debate the week after Easter, when some argued against organising another march and rally for World Refugee Day and counterposed a “Woomera-style protest” at the Maribyrnong detention centre.
After much debate, RAC decided to support both events: a city-wide rally for World Refugee Day and the following week a “festival” at the detention centre. The left-wing group Socialist Alternative put out material advertising that their “red block” would be “tearing down the fences at Maribyrnong”.
Sandra Bloodworth argued in the May-June issue of Socialist Alternative that “to close the camps we have to make it impossible for the government to maintain them in any order” and that without “serious” acts of civil disobedience the campaign would be “directionless and take a step backward”.
Other activists, including myself and other members of the Democratic Socialist Party, were concerned that such a breakaway group would endanger protesters and narrow down support for the RAC and the broader campaign. We argued that if most RAC activists believed that civil disobedience could help build the campaign, we needed a serious, collective plan for a mass civil disobedience action.
The last time mass civil disobedience was successfully used in Melbourne was in the 20,000-strong blockade of the World Economic Forum in September 2000.
The success of that action hinged on several things:
1. One of the key organising groups, the S11 Alliance, publicly announced its intention to blockade the building;
2. We were organised — a range of groups and individuals helped with legal observers, medics, stage, communications systems, picket organisation and coordination; and
3. We organised the action around political demands which justified and tried to win people to the course of action we had chosen.
Applying such lessons to the Maribyrnong action, we proposed a mass, symbolic breach of the detention centre's outer fence and a peaceful sit-in on Australasian Correctional Management (ACM)-controlled property. We also argued that the intention to breach the fence should be publicised well in advance and that we organise picket coordinators, legal observers and a “tactical group” of nine people from the RAC to work with other groups and individuals in adapting plans as necessary on the day.
We recognised that we would need large numbers to carry out this action and so would have to win the political battle in advance by publicly justifying our planned civil disobedience.
However, the compromise motion that finally won support from the majority of RAC activists was a more open-ended one that simply argued for an attempt to breach the fence. The RAC elected a tactical group to help make it happen.
On June 28, about 300 people attended a high school student walkout. As people arrived at Maribyrnong, members of Socialist Alternative agitated for people to go straight to the fences. This hasty attempt to attack the fences was severely driven back by mounted police. After this, the protesters were wary of further attempts to tear down the fence.
Finally, Socialist Alternative members led an attack on an adjoining fence owned by the neighbouring Telstra complex. This was “successful”, but left many wondering about the obsession with tearing down fences.
The tactical group, which included activists who are interested in civil disobedience but are not a part of the RAC, met the following day at the Maribyrnong Festival. The group agreed that another attack on the fences was unrealistic given there were only 500 protesters and a large police presence. Instead, we decided to organise a sit-in on the road adjacent to the detention centre and demand the release of a detainee from solitary confinement. This action was supported by the crowd and the majority participated in it.
Clearly the tactic of “tearing down the fences” at Maribyrnong did not strike a chord with many refugee supporters. But this does not mean that mass civil disobedience will not succeed at another time.
Other forms of civil disobedience are already being used in the campaign and are likely to become more important. They include the sanctuary network to assist escaped refugees, and to campaign against deportations — particularly those of temporary visa holders whose cases will be reassessed from October. Such tactics are illegal, but are supported by many who would not necessarily describe themselves as activists, but whose disgust at the government's policies has led them to conclude that bad laws have to be broken.
The key point is that some activists seem to view civil disobedience as an end in itself or a more radical and effective form of action, when really it is just one of many tactics the movement can use. They do not understand that to be really effective, civil disobedience has to assist in the building of an independent, mass campaign for change.
The antics of a handful of activists — no matter how “militant” or “radical” — is not going to shock or persuade the government into backing down. If the tactic of using civil disobedience isn't carefully thought through and politically motivated, it can jeopardise, even destroy, important alliances that the campaign is starting to build up.
Tens of thousand of people are moving into action against the government's refugee policy. We've had some good turnouts at rallies across Australia — 50,000 on Palm Sunday and some 14,000 on June 23 — but we'll need hundreds of thousands if we're to force the government back and free all the refugees.
[Arun Pradhan is an activist in Refugee Action Collective Victoria and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, July 10, 2002.
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