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Project SafeCom presents:

Don't Mention the Refugees

an Open, Guided and Shared Forum
by you -
with Margo Kingston and Andrew Wilkie

at the Perth Social Forum
Fremantle Town Hall
Saturday 19 March 2005
11:00am to 1:00pm

PLUS the movie premiere of

Spell Me Freedom

Spell Me Freedom

Spell Me Freedom - a remarkable movie debut by media students and refugees from Perth. Spell Me Freedom signifies a first for an Australian movie where refugees as actors build, re-build and tell the story that should be told again and again to an Australian and international audience." (click image for details)

forum thoughts

We unlawfully lock up the most powerless and we make it legal. We create a War on Refugees in the western world, we undermine International Conventions and International Law, we justify the exclusion of refugees from our process of globalisation by simply locking them up and warehousing them, and Australia points the way to 'refugee solutions' that are now suggested in Europe.

What are we doing? Is this the end of Conventions and civilisation as we know it, is this the end of the Rule of Law - or is it simply resistance from archaic governments, fanatically holding on until 'the old' breaks apart?

In Australia, is Cornelia Rau helping to take the building blocks apart, helped by Petro Georgiou with his dissenting Liberals and Dick Smith - who now visits Baxter - or is all this just more familiar 'bleeding hearts nuisance'?

And, perhaps most importantly of all, are you powerless to do anything? Are there opportunities to directly alter the course of Australia's history? And if so, how can you do that? Can we make politicians accountable?

Expanded:

Don't mention the refugees: it was the most dominant theme of the 2004 federal election campaign, and the PM John Howard campaigned as hard as he could on it, and once again the ALP followed suit: Mark Latham had one nice afternoon remark reserved for Australia's indigenous people, but not a word about refugees, while even The Greens' Bob Brown was pretty quiet about them throughout the six weeks. Kim Beazley, since taking back the helm of the Labor leadership has avoided the topic as if it is an infectious disease.

Don't be mistaken: what we do in Australia to refugees amounts to an equivalent of the Guantanamo Bay praxis of taxpayer-funded, court-approved and politically driven human rights abuses, an ongoing breach of International law and Crimes under the Torture Act, while in terms of the UN Refugee Convention we commit a gross manipulation of what it intends to set out, while neither the ALP nor the Liberal/National Coalition ever mentions article 14 of the International Declaration of Human Rights. We are Human Rights Criminals.

Political manipulation florishes abundantly, especially if we include the sustained withholding of information you should have available at your fingertips under your democratic "Right To Know", and the breach of the democratic contract is generously assisted by politically biased media editors right around Australia, while justabout all of your neighbours believe that boat-people are "illegals": the myth that became one of the most successful public opinion manipulations of the Howard years - but where Howard could build on the xenophobia introduced by the ALP's Gerry Hand and the ongoing ambivalence of Australian refugee policy.

Lock 'em up - for men, women and children, for as long as it takes, and if need be, for the rest of their lives: It may be unlawful, but it's legal, and the High Court last year confirmed that it has no mandate to undo the 'permanent detention' laws that were created by politicians: the Migration Act has been crafted too cleverly, with the express purpose of politicians wanting total control, over and above the Australian court system.

Globalized civilisation has no discontent for you: from your computer in Duncraig you buy a laptop from a US-owned company in Texas from an online store in Melbourne with your credit card from Sioux City, through your bank in Subiaco which processes your payment in Sydney: two weeks later it arrives in the mail, made in Taiwan. You're a global citizen in a globalized world, and the current trade and commerce mindset makes it less disturbing if we lock up and exclude those who cannot manipulate this global and western-dominated world like we can. We all happily contribute to the freedom for the movements of goods and of capital, but not of refugees.

Meanwhile, Howard's senior advisor Lynton Crosby is in the UK selling Australian-made refugee wedge-politics as an election platform to the threatened Tories, the Dutch announce a deportation of up to 26,000 refugees who have lived in the community for up to a decade with undecided outcomes, and in Italy's government the echo of 'shooting them out of the water' still reverberates through parliament while the European Union hopes to circumvent international law and tries to replicate Philip Ruddock's 'refugee warehousing' policy. Fortress Europe's success is built on the model introduced to the world community by Australia.

Does all this signify a permanent end to rights for refugees, or is what is happening just an expression of the fact that governments stubbornly hold on to archaic notions of 'border', because they resist a new era, that's already here, and to which belongs the notion of open borders - seeking to exclude portions of the world population that they see as 'less desirable' for their economies? Are they desparately halting the floodgates of globalisation? Is this 'the end' of civilisation, or simply 'a new beginning' that's being resisted?

Further reading:

See also:

17 March 2004: Reflections on the Global Justice Movement after Mumbai - An article by Marco Hewitt, Perth WA upon returning from the Mumbai World Social Forum. "George Monbiot believes we may be on the verge of a new 'metaphysical mutation', a rare moment in history which sweeps away old systems and revolutionises the way people think, the world over."

Photos of the Forum

Margo Kingston
talking Web Diary
The Forum
in action
Andrew Wilkie
Margo Kingston
Margo
explaining
Andrew Wilkie
Jack Smit
Jo Vallentine
warning
Jack Smit
Cedric Beidatsch
Jack Smit

The Perth Social Forum - 18-20 March 2005 - Fremantle Town Hall

'People coming together to change the world ... starting in Perth': the Perth Social Forum

The Social Forum phenomenon that's been sweeping across the globe since the first World Social Forum in Brazil in 2001 over the last four years has finally arrived in Perth. The inaugural Perth Social Forum will be taking place over the weekend of the 18th - 20th of March in and around the town hall in the port city of Fremantle.

Kicking off with a 'Reclaim the Streets' march through Fremantle on Friday evening, the PSF weekend will feature a range of keynote speakers, including Margo Kingston (author of 'Not Happy John' and 'webmistress' of the Sydney Morning Herald's web diary), Australian intelligence whistleblower Andrew Wilkie and Patricia Ranalds, director of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network - AFTINET. Another major event will be the panel 'Our World is Not for Sale! - Public Services and Resistance to Privatisation'.

However, a key element in the Social Forum process is its emphasis on direct grass roots community participation, rather than agendas set by a small group of 'experts' or 'leaders'. Monthly Open Space Forums have been held in Subiaco over the last seven months as an experiment in direct participatory democracy, and in an effort to engage the wider community in the collective development of the PSF programme. An Open Space Forum will run continuously throughout the weekend to enable participants to spontaneously organise workshops or discussions on issues of shared concern. The PSF will thus provide activists with a rare opportunity to share knowledge and skills, learn more about other campaigns and ultimately, to form alliances to strengthen the global movement against the narrow neo-liberal model of globalisation.

This alliance-building will take place during workshops or in the 'Ideas Marketplace' comprised of community and activist group campaign stalls in Fremantle's picturesque St John's Square. Over thirty workshops have so far been offered on issues such as 'Fair Trade in Coffee' (Oxfam/CAA) and others.

There will also be an amazing lineup of workshops on offer, exploring issues such as "Militarism and the War on Terror in the Indian Ocean Region" (Professor Simon Adams, Notre Dame) and "the Occupied Social Centre Movement in Italy & Sydney"; on "The historical and current situation in Kurdistan" (Iraqi Support Group of WA) and "Learning from and remembering past struggles or, why historical consciousness is essential" (Society for the Study of Labour History). Other highlights will include sessions on disability rights, media subvertising, and a training workshop for participants in the Baxter Detention Centre Convergence, to be held over Easter the week after the PSF.

Throughout the weekend there will be a continuous open space which will enable participants to spontaneously organise workshops or discussion groups on issues of shared concern. Over the last eight months the PSF organising collective has been holding monthly open space forums in an attempt to not only engage the wider community in the development and implementation of the PSF plan/programme, but to introduce more and more people to the relatively new concept of 'open space'.

One of the crucial differences between the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the World Social Forum, which was originally developed to counter the World Economic Forum's former's narrow focus on economics: a crucial difference between these two types of gatherings is the Social Forum's very strong arts and cultural program which runs alongside often weighty political debates in the main plenary/workshop program.

The PSF will thus mirror the WSF's inimitable celebration of global arts, music and culture, with a range of performances, exhibitions, markets and interactive displays including a 'people coming together uniting to change the world' paper mache sculpture, a 'freemarket' - similar to a trash and treasure but with no money changing hands -, a free speech podium and a message wall. Although PSF cultural activities will be scattered in close proximity to the Fremantle Town Hall, most of the activities will take place in the adjoining St John's Square.

Like other social forums, the PSF will provide activists with the rare opportunity to share knowledge and skills, learn more about other campaigns and ultimately, to form alliances to strengthen the global movement against neo-liberal economic globalisation. This alliance-building may take place during workshops or in the 'Ideas Marketplace' (comprising community and activist groups' campaign stalls) which will also be situated in St John's Square.

The final PSF rally on the 20th of March, the last day of the PSF, will incorporate the traditional Palm Sunday peace march as a way of commemorating the second anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq along with the millions of other people expected to protest around the world.

A multicultural dinner benefit will be held at the Tropicana Cafe, Fremantle, on Saturday evening 12 March.