En Passant

Funding the defence killing machine; attacking workers and the poor – these are Labor’s real values; these are Labor’s priorities.

A hunger strike is underway at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation detention centre. More than two dozen asylum seekers have been granted refugee status but are being held indefinitely due to negative ASIO reports. The refugees say they will refuse food until a solution is reached. Most of these people have been incarcerated for between two and three years. Here are details of a vigil in support.

The refugees sent the following message to the media on Monday via the Tamil Refugee Council.

Surely we need ‘behaviour protocols’ to protect us from all these vicious brutal Liberals roaming freely in the suburbs? I have advised the police but they appear not to take seriously my concerns about vilification, lies, incitement to violence and dog whistling. Perhaps the fact almost all the members of this bloody and violent Liberal gang are rich and white has something to do with their inaction.

Only the working class on the march, fighting for its own interests, can defend our society from the racist downward spiral it is on.

Internal Department of Immigration reports have confirmed what refugee activists and advocates have been saying for months: Nauru is a torturous hell hole that is destroying the lives of the refugees sent there writes Socialist Alternative.

There is a series of myths, tropes and catch phrases about refugees in Australia writes Emma Norton in Socialist Alternative. They are repeated by politicians and the media to such an extent that they have entered the consciousness of much of the population. The majority are lies and twisted half-truths which serve to justify the inhuman detention regime and further the scapegoating of refugees.

For the 130 Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi and Sri Lankan refugees on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, this Christmas season is an uphill battle to keep spirits up in a grim environment writes Socialist Alternative. On Christmas Day most Australian children wake up to a morning of opening presents; the 15 children on Manus Island wake up to a vastly different reality: their daily malaria pill. In this remote tropical island without air conditioning, adequate medical treatment, or privacy, the best gift the Australian government could give asylum seekers this festive season is the most basic and simple of all: freedom.

There’d be one sure way I reckon to break the drug smugglers’ business model and all that goes with it, like Customs Department corruption. Legalise drugs and treat addiction as a health issue. They did that in Portugal and the results have been a great success. Maybe we could do something similar for refugees too [...]

In short period we have seen asylum attempted suiciding, self-harming, mentally disturbed, stressed, naked themselves, protests and hunger strikes. So what will be result in the future?

We request to the government and people of Australia save our lives and future.

Regards
Asylum seekers on Nauru

Our task is great. Our struggle is important. To end the criminal refugee policies of our one percent we must build bigger and bigger demonstrations to force Labor to treat asylum seekers humanely and end the death trip it forces them into. While there are the various magnificent refugee groups working brilliantly for asylum seekers there is no significant revolutionary left in Australia that could defend refugees as part of its more general defence of workers and the oppressed.

Now more than ever we need a socialist alternative to give hope to refugees and those who support them and lead a real fight with a long term goal of having tens of thousands of people shutting down the centres of the major cities or striking to close down Australia’s concentration camps.

We Asylum Seekers on Nauru request to the people of Australia to help the Oppressed and helpless asylum seekers in Nauru Hell to help them in shutting down of Nauru. Today on 1/11/2012 we have started hunger strike for unknown time, it is clear that we are dying here on every moment. Please save our lives.