Students from UTS and Sydney University held a protest today outside the opening of the Australia-China Relations Institute to highlight the cruel treatment of asylum seekers and condemn the proposed Cambodia Solution.
As Julie Bishop, Foreign Minister and Bob Carr, former Labor Government Foreign Minister, entered the auditorium, along with the Chinese ambassador, students and refugee activists gathered around the entrance to demand the Australian government fund health and education, rather than paying for camps and deportation.
Caitlin Doyle-Markwick, spokesperson for the Sydney Uni Anti-Racism Collective said, ‘Australia has a responsibility, and has the resources, to process and resettle refugees quickly and without detention. Instead the government is locking people up indefinitely in uninhabitable conditions in offshore processing centres, in Nauru and on Manus Island in PNG. The recent murder of 24 year old Iranian refugee Reza Berati and the extreme violence against other refugees on Manus at the hands of Australian employed security guards highlighted the brutality and unsustainability of this system.’
‘Julie Bishop is now in talks with the Cambodian government to resettle asylum seekers who come to Australia. Cambodia is one of the poorest nations in the region, with a high rate of poverty and unemployment and entrenched corruption within the government. In 2009 Cambodia illegally deported 20 Uighar refugees back to China, including two children, for which the Chinese government publicly thanked the Cambodian government. Australia is happy to discuss freer trade with China while it denies the world’s most vulnerable people from their right to seek asylum from persecution.
‘Meanwhile the government has been doing deals with the murderous Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka to prevent Tamil people fleeing government persecution and coming to Australia for protection. Bob Carr was involved in screening out Tamil refugees, and claimed that Iranian asylum seekers fleeing war were economic migrants, claims that have since been proven false.
‘Australia is the wealthiest nation in the region and cannot continue to shirk its responsibilities onto its poorest neighbours. The budget that has just been handed down by the Abbott government will see thousands of people in Australia put out of work and plunged into poverty, forcing them to pay thousands of dollars more for health and education. They claim that this will solve the budget deficit, yet they have pledged billions of dollars to maintain the centres on Manus Island and Nauru.
‘Students today demanded that the government process asylum seekers quickly, and redirect the billions wasted on the incarceration of refugees towards education’.
Video of today’s action: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152417934274875
For more information contact: Caitlin Doyle-Markwick 0421 180 853
