BY TIM STEWART
Public outcry and protests against racist laws, human rights violations and Third World debt have dogged heads of government over the past 30 years during the biannual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and as CHOGM meets next month at the Hyatt Regency Resort on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, activists are again preparing to take their campaigns to the world stage.
At past CHOGMs, South Africa's apartheid regime, dictatorial governments in the other African states and Australia's treatment of Aborigines have been exposed to visiting journalists and dignaitaries.
For example, during CHOGM 1981, held in Melbourne, supporters of Aboriginal rights were able to highlight to foreign journalists the apartheid-like conditions facing Indigenous Australians.
When CHOGM comes to Coolum, north of Brisbane, on March 2, activists will be calling for the expulsion of Australia from the Commonwealth for its systematic mistreatment of asylum seekers.
The release of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report into the Woomera detention centre, the calls by organisations such as Oxfam-Community Aid Abroad and Centacare Catholic Welfare Agency that are critical of the Australian government's refugee policy provide further ammunition for a campaign to isolate John Howard's government on the world stage.
The CHOGM Action Alliance, which is coordinating the protests on the opening day of CHOGM, is planning a mass peaceful protest at the entrance roads of the Hyatt Regency Resort.
While it's clear that the Howard government should be made to back down on its policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers and forced to repeal the bi-partisan Border Protection (Validation and Enforcement) Act of 2001, the protesters' demands won't be limited to the issue of refugees. Activists are also calling for a cancellation of Third World debt, an end to the US-led war on Third World countries and a treaty as a first step toward justice for Aboriginal people.
CHOGM Action Alliance spokesperson and Democratic Socialist Party member Maria Voukelatos told Green Left Weekly that "to force a backdown we have to expose the government and Labor's racist immigration policies to the world".
"We're calling for CHOGM to live up to its claimed 'resolute opposition to racial discrimination' by expelling Australia from the Commonwealth, just as it did to South Africa", Voukelatos added.
"When CHOGM was planned last year, much noise was made about the human rights abuses of Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe and its treatment of critical journalists. Well, what happened last month in Australia? We had an Australian journalist arrested while covering events at the Woomera detention centre and the government giving orders to push the media one kilometre away from the detention centre.
"The point of mass protests is to escalate public opposition to the Australian government during this international summit.
"Refugees are being made scapegoats of globalisation. People seeking asylum are overwhelming from the Third World, and it's our duty as citizens of a rich nation to at least open our borders to them", Voukelatos concluded.
At the height of the Woomera crisis last month, John Howard said Afghan asylum seekers sewing their lips together were "morally intimidating" Australians. Protesters outside CHOGM 2002 should aim to make the Howard government a moral pariah in the eyes of the world for its intimidatory policies toward asylum seekers.
From Green Left Weekly, February 13, 2002.
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