Refugee supporters will rally across the country on Saturday 18 June and Sunday 19 June to Welcome Refugees and call for the closure of Manus Island and Nauru, and end of offshore detention. The rallies will mark the beginning of Refugee Week. (Details below.)
In the last few weeks of the Federal election campaign, a Coalition desperate for votes has very deliberately played the refugee card.
First Peter Dutton went on Sky News to assert that ‘illiterate and innumerate’ refugees took Australian jobs. That effort backfired badly, as Dutton was widely condemned by refugee and migrant community leaders.
But as the Coalition has languished in the polls, the Coalition has decided to have another go – with scare-mongering about Labor’s policy to scrap temporary protection visas for boat arrivals, and issue permanent visas in their place.
They have also attacked Bill Shorten’s promise of greater transparency regarding refugee issues and to allow journalists to go to Nauru.
Coalition Minister Mathias Cormann attacked Shorten and repeatedly asserted that refusing to allow journalists to attend the camps was an essential part of Operation Sovereign Borders and maintaining government secrecy over so-called ‘operational matters’.
But it has emerged in the last two days that a TV crew from A Current Affair, that could only gain entry with Australian government approval, is now on Nauru. The presence of a channel Nine TV crew so close to the election raises serious issues about government manipulation of the media.
It has also has drawn comparisons with the government facilitating the intrusive visit of Australian journalist, sympathetic to government policy, Chris Kenny, at the height of the controversy of the Coalition government denying an abortion for a raped Somali refugee.
There have been reports of the TV crew ignoring requests from refugees on the island to cease filming.
“The government anti-refugee binge in the dying days of the election smacks of the actions of a hypocritical Coalition desperately resorting to the same fear-mongering that was such a feature of the Abbott government,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.
“The government is acutely aware that its refugee policies are under siege. It continues to defy a PNG Supreme Court order that immediate steps be taken to close Manus Island. And today, Friday 20 June, will be the 90th day of protest across all the detention and refugee camps on Nauru.
“The national rallies will be an important marker in the election campaign to demonstrate the broad community support to immediately bring all the asylum seekers and refugees from Nauru and Manus Island to be resettled on the Australian mainland.
“The offshore detention policies that are supported by both Labor and the Coalition have to end. The campaign to ‘bring them here’ will build through the election and deal with any government that we face after 2 July.”
The rallies will also draw attention to the plight of the 29,000 asylum seekers, still prevented from making protection applications and who are condemned to live in limbo in the Australian community without work rights. The policy is taking a terrible toll, as tragically, another Hazara asylum seeker has committed suicide in a Sydney park last week.
BRING THEM HERE RALLIES
Refugee supports will rally across the country on Saturday 18 June and Sunday 19 June to Welcome Refugees and call for the closure of Manus Island and Nauru, and end of offshore detention. The rallies will mark the beginning of Refugee Week.
Brisbane: 11am, Saturday 18th June, King George Square, Brisbane
Melbourne: 1pm Saturday 18 June, State Library, corner of Swanston and LaTrobe Streets, Rally: Close Manus, Close Nauru, Bring Them Here! – No Votes In Abuse,
Sydney: Sunday 19 June, 1pm, Sydney Town Hall. Speakers include: Margaret Pomeranz (former host of At the Movies); Iraqi refugee, Lee Rhiannon (NSW Greens Senator), Sophie Semmler (Young Labor for Refugee Rights), Evan Davis, former teacher on Nauru.
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713