BY SARAH STEPHEN
Since the MV
Tampa incident one year ago, a broad and vibrant protest movement
has developed. It is matched by no other social movement in recent years.
The movement has swelled well beyond the ranks of those who have formed the backbone of progressive struggles in recent years. The Children Out of Detention (ChilOut) network, for example, has drawn together many people who have never before been involved in any protest movement, but who feel so morally angered at the mistreatment of children in detention that they were compelled to get involved.
An enormous range of public figures have spoken out against government policy, and professional groups have issued reports condemning the effects of detention.
Three thousand supporters of refugees' rights converged on Canberra for the opening of federal parliament on February 12, many travelling from Sydney, rural NSW and Victoria. The Palm Sunday marches on March 24 marked the biggest refugees' rights national mobilisations so far, with 50,000 people participating. Demonstrations to mark World Refugee Day (June 23) numbered over 13,000 people.
These large city-wide and nation-wide protests have been punctuated with a myriad of smaller actions — pickets of events being addressed by immigration minister Philip Ruddock; public meetings ranging from 20 to 800 people, addressed by a range of guest speakers, including legal and medical experts, ex-military personnel and refugees; the regular Saturday morning campaigning stalls in the outer suburbs of major cities and the establishment of networks of people prepared to assist escaped refugees.
Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly spoke to a range of people involved in the refugee rights campaign about their thoughts on the year since Tampa.
“It's been a long and depressing year since the international spotlight shone on Australia”, said Margaret Reynolds, a former Labor senator and president of the United Nations Association of Australia. “A privileged nation turned its back on traumatised people. At the time many voices were raised in opposition to this bizarre example of political opportunism. But there was an election due and the voices of reason and compassion were insufficient to change government and opposition commitment to crass populism.”
Reynolds remarked that for the first time, Australia seemed to her like a foreign country. “Its intolerance, selfishness and xenophobia have been revealed in an extreme form. But I am ever-optimistic about the wonderful resilience and commitment of so many Australians who have refused to accept the myths and lies about asylum seekers.”
Anne Coombs, co-convenor of Rural Australians for Refugees, told GLW: “The remarkable thing about the refugee support movement in the past twelve months has been the large and diverse number of pro-refugee groups that have sprung up and the thousands of people who have flocked to join them. At a time when Prime Minister John Howard confidently believed that public support justified his actions, tens of thousands of Australians became activists — many of them for the first time — because they so passionately opposed his policies.”
Clinical psychologist Zachary Steel told GLW that he dated the beginning of the new movement from the ABC Four Corners program which highlighted the plight of six-year-old Shayan Badraie, which was four weeks before Tampa. “It was the first time ever that the suffering had been put in a way that people could understand. Shayan was clearly an innocent. He was only being kept alive by medical intervention, he'd lost the will to live.
“The tide of opinion started turning. There were two factors which triggered that; the first was incredible human suffering, and the second was people's horror at the administrative disregard for that suffering. Ruddock referred to Shayan several times during the program as ‘it'.
“The backlash was Tampa, and it was a huge backlash. Tampa was an awakening to people that we are living in the equivalent of the South African apartheid regime. The Australian government resorted to the same arguments, the same vilification.
“But people have been resisting, and the resistance has grown. It's been a remarkable 12 months.”
GLW asked Andrew Hall, initiator of Public Servants for Refugees, why he thought the Howard government's campaign has been so effective in winning support for some of the most vicious policies. Hall explained: “People are feeling powerless after years of cutbacks and austerity, where the real queues are getting longer and longer — at the banks, in hospital waiting rooms, for welfare assistance.
“This has fostered support for the misguided belief that stopping refugees ‘jumping queues' will somehow improve their own situation. And there has been no real opposition from the traditional political parties, peak bodies and trade unions. They've been unwilling or unable to raise alternatives to the scapegoating of refugees for social problems. It is only now, when more opposition is coming from the grassroots, that things are starting to change.”
Arun Pradhan, an activist with Melbourne's Refugee Action Collective, commented: “Australian racism is one of the most consciously built and effectively constructed in the Western world. From the declaration of terra nullius to the White Australia policy, to the foundations of the Labor Party, racism is what this country was built on. What's happened since Tampa has just been the latest instalment.”
Julian Burnside, a Melbourne lawyer, is one of the relative newcomers to the movement. He told GLW: “Tampa moved me to get involved. Like everyone else, I saw what was happening and was shocked. The treatment of asylum seekers is an affront to the conscience of humanity. I was upset about the absurdity, the inhumanity of it.”
Burnside donated his services to the legal challenge during the Tampa crisis. “Then I became aware of the larger problem of refugees. I was troubled by the waterfront dispute in 1998, but I had an even stronger reaction when I found out what was going on with refugees. The unequal power relations were much more exaggerated. Since then, I've been simply unable to let go of the subject. Another great strange development was that I found myself speaking at public meetings everywhere, when I'd done no public speaking before. I think I can do more good like that than by going to court, because the law is so bad.
“There are only two explanations for what's going on — either people don't have any idea what the government is doing in our name, or the majority of Australians are prepared to regard asylum seekers as non-human, and not deserving of the basic human decency we would expect for our friends, even our enemies.
“It's more than just a fear of strangers. It starts with the government's attempts to demonise them, calling them ‘illegals', ‘queue-jumpers', the sort of people who would throw their children into the ocean, all of which are a way of discounting their right to normal human decency. It's the same process as the holocaust — first you dehumanise a group of people, then you can treat them as you wish.”
Explaining the success of Howard's campaign against asylum seekers, Steel noted: “The government knew it had bipartisan support. Labor has been too cowardly to stand up on the issue. On every point they can't make up their minds; they're not prepared to support or condemn the government. Opinion is totally manufactured by political debate, and for Labor not to realise that is disingenuous; they are fully aware of it. They're just gutless.”
Referring to the example of public support for the 4000 Kosovar refugees taken in on temporary visas in 1999, Steel argued that “the public was behind them 100% because the government made the effort to explain their suffering, explaining why we should help them. Yet when the government scare-mongers and says that people are terrorists, that they will rape our women, people tend to think that maybe the government is right, maybe we shouldn't
let them in.”
Asked if she thought the movement had made advances in the past 12 months, Reynolds replied: “What impresses me is the way in which so many caring Australians have responded to the plight of those in detention as well as those released on temporary protection visas. Ordinary Australians have ‘adopted' detainees [by] writing letters and sending gifts. Rallies, meetings, concerts and a diverse range of media commentary have ensured that Australians cannot hide from facing the effect of reactive policy. So as we mark Tampa Day — a day of national shame — we should also retain pride in the magnificent efforts of so many Australians whose humanity will ensure that justice will eventually prevail.”
Describing what he thinks sets the refugee rights movement apart from other social movements of the past few decades, Hall explained that it “seems fresher and bolder, and much less constrained by some of the forces that dominated and restrained movements only a decade ago”.
“The movement has been remarkably successful in bringing evidence to the Australian community”, Steel argued. “For example, the movement has been responsible for ensuring that every medical and health professional organisation has released statements condemning mandatory detention”, pointing out that this included some relatively conservative organisations.
Pradhan remarked: “I was totally shocked and very impressed at how fast the movement recovered after huge ideological attacks — first the government's response to the Tampa, then September 11. At that time, I felt the debate had shifted significantly to the right. The seeds of this movement, growing in that context, are a real testament to people's compassion and determination.”
“Maybe 30% of people oppose the government”, said Burnside. “But they oppose the government passionately. The other 70% support the government, but indifferently — out of habit, out of misinformation. Their ideas are not firmly held or based on a strong grasp of reality, which is what happens when you throw misinformation into a pool of prejudice. If we're going to win, it will be due to the passion of the minority.”
“I think the strengths of the movement are the localised initiatives that are happening”, said Pradhan, citing as examples the public servants for refugees network, high school students initiating Ruddock-free zones and councils declaring themselves refugee safe-havens.
“Another strength is our ability to begin to disseminate information and give people the facts, which is beginning to expose the barrage of government lies.
“There are a number of things, though, that we've yet to see develop.
“Within the trade union movement, some leaderships have taken a courageous stand and publicly supported the refugee campaign. Notable unions to do so in Victoria are the CFMEU and the AMWU, whose rank and file are traditionally hostile to such issues. Winning their membership away from a century of racist Laborism is a long process.
“Churches and religious organisations were among the first to take a public stand, yet with the exception of Palm Sunday demonstrations, they haven't flexed their considerable muscle in a way that could really threaten the government. Their support remains, but it is often passive.
“Young people are often the motor force behind social movements, but in the refugee campaign their involvement has been surprisingly slow to develop. The notable exception is on high schools; but the malaise of campus politics has had an impact on the involvement of university students. Without turning this around, the movement will not move forward.
“During the anti-Hanson demonstrations, migrant communities initiated protests and self-organised, linking in with broader anti-racist campaigners on a mass scale. That sentiment has not been recaptured in the refugee campaign. We've seen support from some sectors, but the migrant communities themselves are yet to mobilise in a consistent way.”
Coombs pointed out that “the movement has a long way to go to turn [the government's] policies around, but it has made considerable gains in informing the public, the first step. Turning around public opinion is the only thing that will have an impact on the government.
“Twelve months ago, many Australians who opposed the government's handling of Tampa were afraid to speak out. We were told we were overwhelmingly in a minority, and this made us feel voiceless, powerless and hopeless. Coming together has given us the courage to speak out. Discovering we are not alone, that thousands of our neighbours feel the same way, has inspired us to do what we can to turn around this government's bizarre and inhumane policies.”
Hall said he thought the refugees' rights movement needed to reach out to those who are still convinced that the government is doing the right thing through a “combination of large public protests across the country, and thousands of smaller actions in our workplaces, schools, churches and campuses, that raise dissent against government policies as well as having the discussions that raise the political and personal issues involved”.
Steel added: “I think we should look at the experience of apartheid and resistance to it because it is very similar. There is a complete polarisation of views, and pressure [on the government] is mounting. We exposed what was happening in the desert camps, we proved that it was possible to bridge their isolation by getting on buses. Now things will have to shift.
“People worked on the assumption that if we were able to show the harm that was being done, things would change. They initially gave the government the benefit of the doubt — maybe they didn't know what the consequences of their actions were. It's clear now that the government doesn't actually care what the public damage is. Harm is being done wilfully. Our strategy needs to change to take that into account.
“It's now a clear moral battle. It's not just about bringing things to the government's attention. It has to be more courageous, including the use of civil disobedience. We need to keep building up pressure, in particular not letting Labor get away with it.
“Ruddock has been pushed more and more into a corner to make more outlandish, nonsensical statements. Our task is to uncover their real motives, and not let them get away with their Orwellian doublespeak. In South Africa, [apartheid] simply became unsustainable, and collapsed because it could no longer continue to justify itself.”
Pradhan said: “The movement hasn't yet been able to manifest itself as a growing public opposition. It's still largely a sentiment, an untapped sentiment. A powerful mass movement around this issue will rapidly change Labor's policy, and that hasn't happened yet. The party is caught between their business masters on the one hand, and trying to provide an acceptable face to the movement, which they haven't had to do for a while.
“The weakness of the refugee movement is that people don't know their own power. Although Australia has a history of struggles and short-lived campaigns, people haven't had real experience of an ongoing movement. Disempowerment has led to people not prioritising a unified and public struggle. Within the movement and among campaigners it often leads to 'politics of frustration' — short-lived acts of desperation without a view to building a broader movement. There's not a sense of confidence that a broader movement is possible, or that it can win. To develop that confidence, you need both an international perspective an ability to look at the process of change in other countries and the way it is brought about — and a broader historical perspective, to look at experiences throughout the whole span of Australian history.”
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 21, 2002.
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