Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish refugee author-activist, will be the keynote speaker at the Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) 2024 national conference in Kyneton, Victoria, from October 11–13.
Boochani’s address on collective resistance and activism will set the framework for discussions.
RAR coordinates the activities of its more than 60 regional and rural refugee rights and support member groups.
The biennial RAR conferences have been the movement’s only national grassroots get-togethers since the 2020 pandemic.
Asylum-seekers and refugees with lived experience will lead the discussions in half of the panel sessions. Some will travel to the conference from the encampments and pickets outside MPs office demanding all refugees caught up in the so-called Fast Track program are settled.
Last year RAR played a vital on-the-ground support role for refugees’ protest walks from Ballarat and Melbourne to Canberra.
The topics for the conference break-out sessions include: What does effective advocacy look like in 2024?; Coming together to change the Fast Track legacy: Fairness and Permanency Campaign case study; Campaigning for a Human Rights Act and Royal Commission on Australia’s treatment of refugees; and Indonesia, Nauru and PNG – where are we?
Support for refugees stuck in Port Moresby (and before that on Manus Island) and in Indonesia, where nearly 13,000 people have been living for a decade, will be an important discussion, as will stopping Labor from renewing offshore detention in Nauru.
Moz (Mostafa) Azimitabar will present his and Farhad Bandesh’s film Freedom is Beautiful on the evening of October 12.
[Conference registration is $200 or $125 concession (catered, except breakfast) with single day registrations also available. For more details and to book go to the RAR webpage. Accommodation options include the conference hub in Mount Macedon at the Victorian Emergency Management Institute.]