by LIAM ARMSTRONG
For decades, Australian governments have kept refugees locked up in detention centers on offshore islands and the mainland. But refugees and their supporters have shifted public opinion by exposing cruel conditions and challenging the racist government policy.
On Easter in 2002, about a thousand activists converged on the Woomera detention center in the desolate South Australian desert. They tore down the center’s fences, helping thirty-five refugees who were facing deportation escape.
The Woomera breakout took place a decade after Paul Keating’s Labor government had legislated to allow for the indefinite, mandatory detention of any person who arrived in Australia without a valid visa. Many people see it as an early high point in the campaign for refugees’ rights. In combination with hunger strikes and riots inside the detention Center that the detainees themselves had initiated, the action helped to catapult the asylum seekers’ cause into the national spotlight.
Nearly thirty years after Keating’s move, the movement to free the refugees imprisoned by it celebrated another victory. In January 2021, fifty-six refugees who had been medically evacuated from offshore detention to the Australian mainland met their supporters on the steps of the Park Hotel in the heart of Melbourne to celebrate their newly won freedom.
However, many refugees remain imprisoned in detention centers around the country and offshore. It’s a crucial juncture for refugee rights activists and the Australian left. As these recent victories show, resistance led by refugees and solidarity campaigning led by their supporters outside can combine to challenge four decades of racism.
Demonization and Oppression
John Howard legislated to detain refugees offshore after his November 2001 election win. In August of the same year, the Howard government refused entry to Australian waters to the MV Tampa, a Norwegian cargo ship that had rescued 438 refugees after their ship became stranded. In what became known as the “Tampa affair,” Howard seized the opportunity to justify the Pacific Solution, according to which the Australian authorities would detain all sea arrivals in centers in Pacific island nations. As Howard infamously declared: “We will decide, and nobody else, who comes to this country.”
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