~~please read and forward~~
NO ONE IS ILLEGAL
Today in Australia, there are thousands of people who are imprisoned, often for
months, always for indefinite periods, without charge and without trial, who
are not able to access the courts to review either the merit of their
imprisonment or its duration, and whom the Federal Attorney-General, Daryl
Williams, has said do not have a right to be informed of any of their remaining
rights, including the right to seek legal advice upon their imprisonment.
The Government and Opposition refer to these people as 'illegal immigrants'.
This is a calculated lie. As a 'Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on
Migration' Report explicity says, the incarceration of asylum seekers is "the
deprivation of liberty other than as the result of a conviction for an
offence."
This is why Philip Ruddock resorted to the slander against asylum seekers,
depicting them as carriers of diseases whom 'the public' must be protected
from. We can only wonder at why he imagines that anyone's illness might even
require or justify incarceration as distinct from treatment, or even why he is
intent on presenting asylum seekers as vermin.
Ruddock believes that we will tolerate anything against those whom he makes
such allegations. He believes that xenophobia is the quickest path to
political legitimacy and conducive to our blindess if not active support.
When hundreds of refugees took desperate action to break out of their enforced
political and geographic isolation and demanded freedom on June 10th and 11th
across Australia, we understood that it was well past the time when we could
ignore such a call. The Opposition's spokesperson on migration said that those
who went over and through the barbed wire in June would not receive any
sympathy from 'the Australian public'.
We refuse to go along with the politicians' attempts to construct their
political constituencies -- to define the shape and demeanour of 'the
Australian public' -- on the basis of hatred and racism.
We refuse to blame asylum seekers, migrants and indigenous peoples for the
policies of austerity and declining incomes that those same politicians are
responsible for.
We refuse to be conned into the sadistic game of locking people up in order to
hide a transfer of millions of public money into the coffers of the global
incarceration giant, Australian Correctionals Management/Wackenhut.
-------------------------
Justice for Asylum Seekers has invited people to join them on FRIDAY, 23rd of
JUNE, outside the DEPARTMENT OF IMMIGRATION OFFICE on LONSDALE ST in the CITY,
at 1.15pm.
-------------------------
CLOSE THE DETENTION CAMPS - GRANT ASYLUM SEEKERS THE SAME RIGHTS AS EVERYONE
ELSE - OPEN THE BORDERS
Xborder
</end>
LL.VF
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