BY SIMON BUTLER
Afghan temporary protection visa holder and refugees' rights activist Riz Wakil is embarking on a whirlwind speaking tour on university campuses along the east coast.
Wakil, who is an activist in Free the Refugees Campaign in western Sydney, has been invited to speak by a number of campus-based refugees' rights committees in Melbourne, Canberra, Geelong, Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle and Brisbane. He intends to urge students to take an active role in opposing the persecution of refugees. In particular, he will ask students to wear a black armband to shame Prime Minister John Howard on Tampa Day (August 26) and to support the call for universities to be declared refugee safe havens.
In the wake of the Coalition government's re-imprisonment of the Baktiyari brothers, and the recent revelations that the Refugee Review Tribunal has systematically ignored evidence of persecution, activists are confident that Wakil will pull some big crowds as more people begin to question the policy of mandatory detention.
We have been telling students at La Trobe that they've heard what Prime Minister John Howard has to say about refugees and they've heard what immigration minister Philip Ruddock has to say. Now we're asking them to come and hear the other side of the story from an Afghan refugee, Marcus Pabian, an activist in the La Trobe University Refugee Action Collective, told Green Left Weekly.
Wakil was born and grew up in the town of Jaghori in Ghazni province in central Afghanistan, which is a majority Hazara area. He was forced to flee Afghanistan because he was known as an opponent of the fundamentalist Taliban regime. He has two brothers who are also political activists. One lives in Pakistan, the other is of no fixed address (always on the run), and he has a sister living in Pakistan. His parents also live in Afghanistan.
He was able to complete only one-and-a-half years' formal schooling in Afghanistan. After that he was taught at home, mainly by his sister. He could not attend school for longer because some family members were known leftists and non-believers in Islam.
After leaving Afghanistan with the financial help of his family in early 1999, he spent a few months in Pakistan, then three months in Indonesia before getting an illegal fare to Australia.
He arrived at Ashmore Reef after a seven-day boat trip in November 1999. The authorities kept the refugees on the boat for five more days before they were taken ashore and incarcerated in Curtin detention centre.
He was then forced to spend nine months in Curtin. For seven months of that he was forced to work as a kitchen hand. He is 23 years old.
Wakil now works full-time in a printing company in Sydney until his temporary protection visa expires in January.
Wakil told GLW that he is happy to miss out on two weeks of pay because he thinks the tour can help build a stronger movement against racism. The aim of my tour is to convince people to oppose mandatory detention and the deportation of refugees. But that is not all. I also want to convince people that they have to get involved themselves in the campaign to free the refugees, he said.
[Riz Wakil's speaking tour will go from August 12 to August 23. Check the calendar on page 23 for details in your city.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 14, 2002.
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