‘I will not be silenced. It is lawful for people seeking asylum in Australia to arrive without visas and to seek refuge.’ These words caused a hush to pass over the crowd of 15,000 outside the Sate library in Melbourne last Sunday during the Walk for Justice, an annual demonstration demanding a more compassionate government policy for asylum seekers. The conditions she described on Nauru for detainees were truly horrifying.
The speaker was a former Nauru detention centre worker who had to remain unnamed because of legal reasons and she was just one of a number of speakers who addressed our crowd before we walked the length of Swanston Street, holding banners and chanting: ‘Asylum seekers welcome here.’
Our group, Surf Coast Rural Australians for Refuges, of which I am a member, left home by train early on Sunday morning, intending to connect on the train with members of other Rural Australians for Refugee members from Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula. But it was standing room only when the train left Geelong due to the cricket World Cup also scheduled in Melbourne on the same day. However, lots of texting back and forth allowed us to meet up at Southern Cross station and make our way to the Sate Library.
There was such a variety of groups gathering already; mostly total strangers, yet we were like members of a familiar tribe meeting up again. There were groups from all over the city and country, youth groups, church groups, Grandmothers against Detention in purple, Jews for Refugees, families with children in prams, cyclists, people of all ages and races. Most of us were probably unused to this feeling of solidarity, more accustomed to writing lonely letters and emails to politicians or signing online petitions about asylum seeker policies and hoping against hope it might make a difference. We realised at last that we might be a minority but we were not alone.
Speakers from diverse groups protested against the government’s compulsory detention of asylum seekers and for allegedly failing to provide basic care to thousands of people locked in centres in Nauru and Manus Island – Mary Crooks from the Victorian Women’s Trust, Rev. Ian Smith from the Victorian Council of Churches. This march is also known as the Palm Sunday march, when church groups particularly recall the day Jesus made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem with people throwing palm branches in front of him as a welcome. Of course the same crowd seven days later was baying for his blood. It just shows you can’t trust a mob, armed only with their white- hot ideology.
One of the most moving speeches was from a former refugee Mohammad Ali Baqiri who arrived in Australia as a child from Afghanistan without his parents and said the government was acting without compassion or dignity towards people fleeing desperate situations. “This same government continues to damage our national image and hurt our reputation,” he said. “We desperately need leaders with a human approach who offer care and protection to those who need peace and security.”
We then marched to the Queen Victoria Gardens on St Kilda road, holding placards and shouting slogans. It was more of a leisurely stroll on a perfect Melbourne sunny autumn afternoon than an angry mob. There’s something empowering about walking the length of Swanston Street in the middle of the road, ignoring traffic lights, holding the traffic at bay. We were raising the finger, in the nicest possible way, to the majority of Australians who appear unconcerned about the government’s asylum seeker policy.
Near the corner of Burke Street, chalk artists were attracting crowds with their beautiful works of art on the footpath. Plane trees along the route were dropping their yellowing leaves, autumn moving towards winter. Would the climate on asylum seeker policy in Australia, I wondered, inevitably change as the seasons always do? One thing, however, was clear to me. This crowd of 15,000 were not going quietly and could yet be a force to be reckoned with.
Great to read your account, John. Have attended several past peace marches on Palm Sunday and it is very empowering to stop those cars for an hour and take over the streets.