Anti-racism

[For five months, 254 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers have refused to disembark the rickety cargo boat Jaya Lestari 5 which was towed into the Indonesian port Merak, after being intercepted by the Indonesian navy at the request of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. One pregnant woman onboard is due in early March. Her daughter has chicken pox and the rest of the 31 children on the boat are at risk of the disease. On February 12, the asylum seekers on the boat issued “A call for urgent action by the Indonesian and Australian governments”, which is reprinted below. The statement calls for a “just solution” for the stranded Tamil asylum seekers.]

By James Crafti

On January 26 (“Australia Day”), two members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), Sam King and Van Rudd, demonstrated outside of the Australian Open Tennis Championships at Melbourne’s Rod Laver Arena to highlight Australia’s racism. The protest involved the pair dressing up in Klux Klux Klan outfits with the “Australian Made” logo and the slogan “racism made in Australia”.

By Kathy Newnam

Hundreds of people gathered on February 14 for the launch of a “protest house” established by the Alyawarr people at the protest camp at Honeymoon Bore — 350 kilometres north east of Alice Springs. The camp was set up in July 2009 when Alyawarr elders led a walk-off from the Ampilatwatja community in protest against the federal government’s racist treatment of the community.

By Kerry Vernon

A January 25 Darwin inquest into the deaths of five asylum seekers — after an April 16 explosion last year on a boat (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel 36) carrying 49 asylum seekers and two Indonesian crew near Ashmore Reef and under the control of the Australian naval vessel HMAS Childers — was adjourned on February 19 until March 17, when Northern Territory coroner Greg Cavanagh will present his findings after hearing evidence for three weeks from more than 30 witnesses.

Going Rouge: An American Nightmare
Edited by Richard Kim & Betsy Reed
OR Books (2009)
335 pages (pb)
$26.95rrp
Reviewed by Dani Barley

By Nick Everett

On January 19, one week after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, Agence France Presse reported that hundreds of Haitians looked stunned as several helicopters landed 100 US soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division in the grounds of the Presidential Palace. “I haven’t seen them distributing food downtown, where the people urgently need water, food and medicine”, said Wilson Guillaume, a 25-year-old student. “This looks more like an occupation.”

By Kerry Vernon

Demonstrations were held in Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Auckland, Toronto and London and email/postcard campaigns in the US and Malaysia on January 18 to mark 100 days since 254, mostly Tamil asylum seekers, left on a boat heading for Australia were intercepted by the Indonesian navy. This happened after Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd personally asked Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to prevent the asylum seekers landing on the Australian mainland and invoking Australia’s refugee obligations.

By John Pilger, in London

The farce of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet Earth with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine.

By James Crafti

On January 26 two members of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, Van Rudd and Sam King received international notoriety for a stunt highlighting Australian racism where they wore Ku Klux Klan (KKK) costumes with “racism made in Australia” written on them. The action was held outside the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on what is officially designated as “Australia Day” — commemorating the arrival in Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788 of the “First Fleet” of 1332 British colonial settlers (half of whom were prisoners).

By Sam King

At least 164,000 Tamil men, women and children were being held in military internment camps — without access to humanitarian agencies, independent monitors, media or local civil authorities — when Stephen Smith, Australia’s foreign minister, visited Sri Lanka on November 9, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.