Capital moves, while the pass laws remain
with our bodies against the camps
on May 7 >> link arms against racism and neoliberalism
Faced with their own disappearance, people inside and outside the camps have
resisted with the only means they have left: their bodies. Hunger strikes,
sewing their mouths together, pushing against the wire, enduring solitary
confinement, wearing the blows of a baton or the injection of drugs, even
setting their own bodies alight. With their bodies, with their resistance
they have fought their invisibility, their illegality.
With our bodies, we propose to join their struggle. We invite you to link
arms with our brothers and sisters inside and outside the camps.
On may 7, the Minister for Immigration will try to speak at the Centre of
Public Policy. We will place our bodies between him and the meeting. Our
civil disobedience will form a human chain across all entrances to the
forum. Our chain, like all borders, will not be completely closed. People
attending the meeting will be free to pass. All will have a visa except
Phillip Ruddock.
Join us: 4pm onwards
Monday May 7, 2001
Centre for Public Policy
Cnr Queensberry St & Leicester St
Carlton
For more info: 0403 483 595 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please circulate this email : More information below
Capital moves, while the pass laws remain
As the movement against mandatory detention of people seeking refuge grows,
there has been much focus on both the treatment of people inside the
concentration camps and on what should constitute the proper grounds for
refugee status. Most in the movement would say more people should be given
refuge, others say refugees should be treated differently. Essentially these
demands revolve around debates over who is a 'bona fide' refugee and who is
not.
But we wish to pose different questions. How can a person be illegal? Why
can people not go where they choose? Why does the movement of capital grow,
while the movement of people become more difficult?
People inside the camps have answered these questions. They have moved. They
resist with the only thing they have control over - their bodies - in
protests, hunger strikes and acts of self harm. In this sense our campaign
outside the camps should take its lead from them.
The exploitation of the world's multitudes, is only made possible by our
restriction behind borders. Capital derives its profit and power from the
theft and plundering of the land and the exploitation of labour. Once this
was organised by the colonial powers of Europe, now they are joined, by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) the World Bank, and Washington with their
structural adjustment programs and free trade treaties. This means massive
impoverishment of the global South, displacing millions from their homes and
making the survival of billions harder and harder. Some countries are
economically devastated, in others there is war and genocide. As the world
is homogenised, the laws we live by are increasingly the values of the
market place. And while there are few borders for trade and the movement of
capital, restrictions on the movement of people are tightened.
Never the less, Millions of people cross borders in search of survival or a
better life. Few make it to the countries of the North. Many die: swallowed
by the ocean, suffocating in trucks, shot by border guards. Others are
turned back at the walls of Fortress Europe, the wire of the Mexican border
or herded back on to planes at Australian airports. Risking their lives some
make it, but though they have their lives, they are denied livelihood,
stigmatised as 'illegals'. As capitalism marches on all over the world, more
and more people will be left with nothing; more will be forced to move.
So we are faced with a choice. A global society organised as a Great
Confinement or one in which people are free to move. One in which people
are trapped, free for capitalism to exploit them, without rights, without
freedom. Or one in which our diversity, communication and creativity is
unbounded. Any discussion of refugees must at its core be an examination of
this choice, of capitalism.
The campaign to free refugees from detention centres must include the demand
for freedom of movement for people everywhere, for we are all people of the
world, citizens of the coming global community.
Close the camps : full rights for migrants : open the borders
--
with our bodies against the camps
on May 7 >> link arms against racism and neoliberalism
They have moved. They have crossed mountains, rivers and oceans. Risking
their lives they have come. Asking for nothing except a place to exist, for
dignity.
Instead they are concentrated and interned in prison camps. Thousands of
people locked up without trial in the desert camps of Woomera, Port Hedland
and Curtain, in the suburbs of Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. If eventually
released they are treated as second class citizens, with few rights, subject
to racism and legalised discrimination, forced to subsist on the margins of
society. They are made illegal, without rights, non-persons.
But surely, we say "someone can not be illegal; they can break the law,
commit illegal acts, but they are not illegal?" Yet, governments persist in
their attempt to make them illegal because someone who is illegal has no
rights, because someone made illegal does not exist. If a person is denied
their humanity then anything becomes possible, their mistreatment or even
death is outside "the law". They are made invisible.
Faced with their own disappearance, people inside and outside the camps have
resisted with the only means they have left: their bodies. Hunger strikes,
sewing their mouths together, pushing against the wire, enduring solitary
confinement, wearing the blows of a baton or the injection of drugs, even
setting their own bodies alight. With their bodies, with their resistance
they have fought their invisibility, their illegality.
With our bodies, we propose to join their struggle. We invite you to link
arms with our brothers and sisters inside and outside the camps.
On may 7, the Minister for Immigration will try to speak at the Centre of
Public Policy. We will place our bodies between him and the meeting. Our
civil disobedience will form a human chain across all entrances to the
forum. Our chain, like all borders, will not be completely closed. People
attending the meeting will be free to pass. All will have a visa except
Phillip Ruddock.
Join us: 4pm onwards
Monday May 7, 2001
Centre for Public Policy
Cnr Queensberry St & Leicester St
Carlton
** Our initiative is part of a number of actions at the meeting, other will
protest in their own way. We support this diversity of action and hope those
who do not wish to join the chain will still come and protest in their own
way.
We are citizens of the coming global society. We will stand in solidarity
for the dignity of humanity, against neoliberalism and all its borders and
cages.
Full rights for all migrants : Close the camps : Open the Borders
No One Is Illegal
April 24, 2001
Other coming actions:
June 3: National protest against the camps
Easter 2002: possible national protest at the Woomera concentration camp
For more info on borders checkout: www.antimedia.net/xborder
--
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