People for Constitutional Rights demonstrated outside the High Court in Melbourne this morning in support of the human rights of asylum seekers.Calling for a boycott of Australian goods and services and a boycott of Australia by overseas students until the human rights of asylum seekers are recognised, members and supporters raised a banner and handed out leaflets. A similar action is planned for Wednesday 6 July at 11.30am at Federation Square.
From the flyer handed out at the protest:
Australian citizens are bundled off the streets, incarcerated on detention centres, refused adequate psychiatric care and deported. Refugees and asylum seekers are held indefinitely behind barbed wire in the middle of the desert or are held in specially built detention centres on islands off the coast of Australia or in the middle of the Pacific. Boats full of refugees sink in waters off the coast of Australia resulting in the deaths of hundreds of men, women and children.
A significant majority of Australians have washed their hands of any responsibility for their government’s actions and continue to re-elect governments and support opposition parties that support draconian legislation that has created the infrastructure and bureaucratic indifference that has allowed this horrible litany of events to be carried out in our name. A small minority of Australians have pursued every legal and political avenue available to them in an attempt to ameliorate the unnecessary suffering that the government’s legislation is causing. The Australian High Court supports the government’s right to detain asylum seekers indefinitely; the Department of Immigration continues its brutal program against asylum seekers.
Having exhausted every option available to us in Australia, it’s time that we call on the support of good people around the world to place economic pressure on Australians and the Australian Government and Opposition, to stop this nightmare. No More! Enough is enough!It’s time that campaigns are launched around the world to ask tourists to stop coming to Australia, to ask international students to study elsewhere and to ask overseas businesses to suspend their trading arrangements with Australian [companies] until legislation is passed through Federal Parliament that treats asylum seekers as human beings and gives them back those inalienable rights they should be able to enjoy as people seeking asylum.
Link –
http://anarchistmedia.org/
The banner:
Handing out leaflets:
Closeup of placard:
