World Refugee Day will be marked in Melbourne by a rally and march to demand justice for all refugees and the scrapping of the horrific new detention centre being built on Christmas Island.
Asylum seekers who have experienced offshore processing will address the rally, along with Greens Senator Kerry Nettle and David Manne from the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre. The march will start at noon on June 17, at Melbourne museum, and finish at the World Refugee Day Festival at Fitzroy Town Hall, organised by Multicultural Arts Victoria.
The rally, organised by the Refugee Action Collective (RAC), will come just days after the presentation in Canberra of a petition of more than 10,000 Australians who oppose the Christmas Island prison.
RAC believes the time has come to get people back into the streets to protest Australia's treatment of asylum seekers. Recent developments show that the Howard government's retreats last year on the worst aspects of its refugee policies were only temporary.
The construction of the Christmas Island detention centre, a prison able to hold 800 people including infants and children, and equipped with high-tech surveillance equipment, proves this.
Other signs of the government's cold-blooded disregard for the humanity of asylum seekers include Howard's recent statement that he doesn't want people with HIV being admitted to Australia and the bizarre refugee swap planned with the United States. The swap, in which the US will take people held on Nauru and Australia will take Haitians and Cubans seized while trying to enter the US, may explain the US authorities' interest in the Christmas Island detention centre.
Meanwhile, all the worst features of Australia's refugee policies are intact: mandatory detention, temporary protection visas and "offshore" processing. It is obvious that they will all be used again, with their full force, when the political situation allows.
All supporters of refugee rights should be working to see that this does not happen. The World Refugee Day rally is a good starting point to rebuild the campaign for human rights for all asylum seekers.