BY FEDERICO FUENTES
PERTH — "The way we treat our most vulnerable and powerless will mark our society for years to come", Carmen Lawrence, ALP MP for Fremantle and the shadow minister for indigenous affairs, told 600 refugee-rights protesters on February 2. Condemning both the government and the ALP's refugee policy, she told the crowd that she was "ashamed" she had not spoken out sooner and pledged that, from now on, she would be active in the refugee rights campaign.
The emergency rally was called at just a week's notice, in response to escalating protests in refugee detention centres. It was broadly endorsed — supporters included Lawrence, Anglican Archbishop Peter Carnley, the Democratic Socialist Party, Socialist Alliance executive member Chris Cain, the Ethnic Communities Council of WA, the Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN) and the socialist youth group Resistance.
Resistance member Claudia Quinnell argued that protesters should "follow the lead" of detained refugees. "It is up to people like us to come out onto the streets and show that there is opposition to the bipartisan refugee policy", she said.
In one of the most stirring moments in the rally, 11-year-old Tom Wade asked to speak. "I spent five years in Bahrain", he said. " In that country they don't have elections for the prime minister. Yet here where we can elect our prime minister and we have full democracy, we treat refugees worse than they do in Bahrain."
"I challenge [immigration minister Philip] Ruddock to spend three months in the detention centre, and I bet he will come out crying", he added.
WA Greens MLC Jim Scott also addressed the protest, speaking against proposed new police powers. "If we don't stand up and fight from today", he said, "we will see our rights further erode".
Following the rally there was a spirited march through the city, protesters chanting: "Compassion not detention, free the refugees!"
RRAN has called another refugee rights protest outside the immigration department at noon on February 12, in solidarity with convergence for refugees' rights in Canberra that day. For more information phone Virginia on (08) 9218 9608.
From Green Left Weekly, February 6, 2002.
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