Student conference to welcome refugees
BY FEDERICO FUENTES
PERTH The collective organising the July 7-13 Students and Sustainability (S&S) conference, to be held at Murdoch University, has declared that it will give sanctuary to escaped asylum seekers, in defiance of the government's laws.
Resistance activist and S&S collective member Claudia Quinell told Green Left Weekly that the collective decided to take this symbolic stand because we believe that the federal government's policies are inhumane and racist towards refugees. We want to say clearly that we do not accept the government's racism and are willing to break Howard and Ruddock's laws by protecting any escaped refugees.
The S&S conference will involve several hundred students and environmental activists from around the country, who will discuss key issues facing the green movement.
Attending the conference will be environment activists from Papua New Guinea and East Timor. A number of plenaries, forums and workshops will look at issues such as Indigenous rights, corporate globalisation, refugees, environmental sustainability, nuclear issues and the movement against war.
After the conference, a large contingent of participants will travel by bus to the Port Hedland refugee prison, in Western Australia's north-west. A protest is being organised to show solidarity with the refugees detained there.
The protesters' buses will stop at a number of places before they reach Port Hedland. First stop will be the US-Australian spy base at Kojarena, which was used to intercept telephone calls to the MV Tampa last August and September. Kojarena also conducts major intelligence gathering in South-East Asia.
The second stop will be the Ningaloo Reef in Coral Bay, the world's longest coast-fringing coral reef, which is being threatened by the development of a tourist resort.
From Green Left Weekly, July 3, 2002.
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