Build Support for Refugee Rights in the Union Movement
Oppose the “Aussie Workers First” Economic Nationalist “Consensus” that Targets Migrant & Overseas Workers & Ends Up Breeding Hostility to Refugees
Free the Prisoners of Immigration Detention
15 March 2016 – Opposition to the racist Australian regime’s brutal treatment of refugees is growing. On 30th October last year, 250 hospital workers at Westmead Children’s Hospital united together on hospital grounds with placards demanding the release of all children and their families from immigration detention. This resistance from health workers strengthened when last month, nurses, doctors and other hospital workers at Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital laudably refused to release 13 month-old baby “Asha” from their care until the immigration minister guaranteed that she and her family would not be immediately deported to Nauru. Last year, after being born while in detention in Australia, four month old Asha, the daughter of Nepalese asylum seekers, was heinously sent to imprisonment in Nauru, where she sustained an injury requiring treatment here. The action of the health workers at Lady Cilento was supported by a picket of refugee rights supporters and the backing of several unions, including health workers’ unions.
Such union involvement is crucial. Earlier, at last October’s Sydney refugee rights rally, the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association had a very visible contingent. Now unions from the MUA to the NTEU university workers union have endorsed the upcoming March 20 refugee rights rally in Sydney.
However, the refugee rights struggle needs to get a lot more trade union power behind it. It is notable that as soon as baby Asha was released from Lady Cilento Hospital into community detention, immigration minister Peter Dutton insisted that she and the other 267 asylum seekers receiving medical and mental health treatment in Australia would be sent back to the detention camps in Nauru and PNG’s Manus Island. These camps are truly hell-holes. Meanwhile, refugees on Nauru are facing attacks from police and racists amongst the Nauruan population. Ten days ago, an Iranian refugee received a deep head wound after being struck across the head by a machete wielded by a group of local thugs yelling, “F_ck the refugees.” Racism and violence in Nauru and PNG’s Manus Island are itself a product of the Australian imperialist ruling class’ savage colonial oppression that has devastated these countries and torn apart their social fabric.
During the decades of direct Australian colonial rule of PNG, the Australian imperialists treated the PNG locals with the same racist contempt with which they subjugated Australia’s own first peoples. After PNG gained independence in 1975, Australian-owned mining corporations like BHP and CRA (now part of Rio Tinto) continued to loot the natural mineral wealth of PNG without paying any decent royalty to the local people and without any regard to their wishes. Meanwhile, in a classic neo-colonial arrangement, Australian judges, bureaucrats and “advisers” continued to impregnate PNG’s state organs while successive Australian governments pressured local authorities to privatise both PNG public services and its land held by kinship groups – leading to greater inequality and dysfunction.
Nauru’s history of colonial subjugation is perhaps even more severe – if that is possible. After World War I and up until independence in 1968 (except for a brief period of Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945) Nauru was decreed to be a colonial “mandate” to be jointly run by Britain, Australia and New Zealand. However, eager to grab Nauru’s rich phosphate resources for itself, the Australian rulers pushed for the lead role. Thus, it ended up that every single one of Nauru’s Administrators was appointed by the Australian government. The Australian imperialists proceeded to loot Nauru’s phosphate resources. The Australian exploitation was so severe that initially they provided what amounted to just 0.3% of the value of phosphate mined as royalties to Nauru. Instead, the Australian colonial Administrator ensured that Nauru’s phosphate was sold to Australia at ultra- low prices so that it could be made into fertiliser for Australian agriculture. The amount that the capitalist rulers of Australia, and to a lesser extent Britain and NZ, ripped off Nauru is estimated to be close to $A800 million at today’s prices. To put that in perspective that is $80,000 for every one of Nauru’s 10,000 citizens! However, what was just as harmful was the arrogant refusal of the Australian ruling class to rehabilitate the lands damaged by the phosphate mines. As the Nauruan government’s application in a 1989 legal case against the Australian government at the International Court of Justice noted, Australian mining operation without rehabilitation left “… on the mined out lands nothing but a forest of limestone pinnacles, varying between 5 and 15 metres in height. The land was thus rendered completely useless for habitation, agriculture, or any other purpose ….”
In response to repeated demands by the Nauruan people that the Australian government rehabilitate the lands, Australia “offered” to resettle the entire Nauru population in Australia’s Curtis Island (just off the coast of Rockhampton)! To add further humiliation, the Australian authorities refused to guarantee that the resettled community would have the right to preserve their social identity. Unsurprisingly, the Nauruan people rejected this insulting proposal to clear them out of their homeland and assimilate them. However, by the time Nauru gained formal independence, the damage had been done. The land now could not be used for agriculture or for any other purpose other than phosphate mining. The mining provided wealth for a while but three decades later once the phosphate was all mined out, Nauru was left bankrupt with collapsing social services and an unemployment rate of 90%. Today, Nauru – like resource rich Australian neocolony PNG – has an average life expectancy below that of impoverished India or Pakistan. Having been robbed and damaged by Australia’s capitalist rulers, Nauru became vulnerable to Canberra’s proposal to gain income by turning itself into a prison for asylum seekers. With the moral fibre of the society thus ripped to pieces by the fact that a significant part of the population have been turned into virtual concentration camp guards and with the official unemployment rate still well above 20%, despair, racism and violence have now become rife within Nauruan society – and refugees are copping the worst of it.
Yet it is not only refugees that the Australian government imprisons in overseas detention centres who are suffering under this regime’s racist immigration policies. In Christmas Island, New Zealanders facing deportation have been subjected to Guantanamo Bay-like torture. A typical case is that of 21-year-old Czarion Strang who had served a year’s sentence on assault charges after a pub brawl, most of which he was allowed to serve at home with his mum because the judge deemed him not to be a threat to society. After finishing his sentence in Brisbane he was secretly dragged off to Christmas Island where, as a NZ opposition politician described:
He was made to live in his undies and given dry cereal to eat with no utensils. He was hosed down with a fire hose and left in his wet undies. They cranked the air conditioning up so that he froze ….
BuzzFeed News, 8 November 2015
This medicine order cialis online http://deeprootsmag.org/2016/09/12/you-can-go-home-again/ has been designed as a cost-effective alternative for impotence patient. Sildenafil citrate should be used free viagra online strictly as directed by your physician. It increases the blood circulation in order cialis from canada recommended for you the male reproductive system. Stress is one of the main causes deeprootsmag.org cheapest levitra for heart disease, erectile dysfunction, low libido etc. If this is what the Australian capitalist state authorities are doing to citizens of NZ – a close ally of Australia and a “First World” country – imagine what they are doing to others imprisoned in immigration detention centres! No wonder those incarcerated are self-harming. Australian paediatrician, Professor David Isaacs, who was invited by the Australian government to work at the Nauru detention centre, has described how he saw a six-year-old child imprisoned on Nauru try to hang herself with a fence tie. It is not only those migrants and refugees detained but also those who are crushed by the frightening uncertainty of bridging visas who are being driven to suicide. Last October, Khodayar Amini, an asylum seeker on a bridging visa burnt himself to death as he feared he would be re-detained or deported after hearing that police and immigration authorities wanted to interview him. Khodayar self-immolated while on a call to refugee advocates, telling them:
“Red Cross killing me, Immigration killing me…I want to kill my life…I don’t have any option…they don’t give me chance…I can’t stay in detention centre…
Refugee Rights Action Network Media Release, 18 October 2015
This is part of why we in Trotskyist Platform insist that the refugee rights movement must not only demand the freedom of all those in immigration detention – whether they be refugees, migrant workers or others facing deportation – but must demand an end to all deportations of refugees and migrants. Everyone who makes it here must be able to stay – and not on the precarious bridging visas but with the full rights of citizenship.
It is Working Class Action and Not Pro-Capitalist Parties or Enlightened Upper Class Elements That Can Spearhead the Struggle against Racist Policies and Attacks
The Turnbull government has maintained all the vicious racist policies of the former Abbott government. Malcolm Turnbull might sound less aggressive and more liberal than the right-wing hardliner Abbott but he is every bit as committed as Abbott to upholding the Australian capitalist order – an order that is racist to its very core. Meanwhile, the ALP opposition fully supports all significant aspects of the Liberal/National party government’s war on refugees. Furthermore, it was the ALP that in 1992 first introduced mandatory detention and in the period of the second Rudd regime introduced the extreme measure that every single refugee arriving by boat would be sent offshore and have no chance of re-settlement here. The horrific treatment of refugees that we see today is in good part an ALP “innovation.” Unlike any of the other parties sitting in parliament, the Greens have at least voiced opposition to the worst aspects of the war on refugees. The problem, however, is that the Greens, based as they are on the upper middle class and liberal wing of the capitalist class, uphold the capitalist system which is the root cause of the racist attacks on refugees and, indeed, of the brutal oppression of Aboriginal people and the racism suffered by coloured “ethnic” communities. Based on individual, private ownership of the means of production and dog-eat-dog competition, the workings of the capitalist economy naturally divide people along all sorts of lines – be it race, gender, nationality or sexual orientation. Moreover, the ruling capitalist class seeks to keep the masses whom it exploits distracted from the true cause of our privations and economic insecurity by consciously spreading nationalism and racism to divide and divert us. We see that not only here but in Europe. There capitalist politicians from the hard-right Hungarian government to the social democratic Socialist Party government in France have unleashed brutal attacks and fear-mongering propaganda against refugees as a way of diverting the masses’ frustration at the high unemployment and economic insecurity resulting from the crisis-ridden system that they administer. In the U.S.A, meanwhile, Donald Trump – a proto-fascist capitalist billionaire who promises to ban all Muslims entering the U.S. and to build a massive wall to keep out Mexicans – is in the running to be the next president. That is why the Greens’ program of speaking up for refugees while upholding the capitalist system is like a doctor treating the symptoms of patients suffering from a highly infectious disease while simultaneously upholding poor sterilisation practices: the good doctor sincerely wants to help the patients but in the process spreads the very same disease that is causing their suffering.
But, just as it is in the interests of the capitalist exploiting class to scapegoat refugees and ethnic minorities, it is in the interests of the union movement to combat such racist attacks. For racism is poison to workers’ unity and without such unity the working class is unable to effectively fight for its rights. Furthermore, when one section of the working class – like refugees on bridging visas, guest workers and international students doing part-time work – do not have secure residency, it deters them from engaging in militant union struggles. That is why it is in the interests of our trade unions to launch industrial action to demand freedom for all those in immigrant detention and full citizenship rights for everyone residing here. Such action, by hurting the profits of the greedy capitalists could force these corporate bigwigs to tell the governments that serve them to back off from their racist attacks. To build up to such union action, support for the refugee and anti-racist cause must be greatly enhanced amongst union ranks. To help this cause the refugee rights movement must change tack and openly – in the slogans it calls actions on – appeal to the class interests that the working class have in standing up for refugee rights. This may well turn off some upper-class liberals and upper-middle class elements who support refugees but are anti-union. So be it! It is the working class and not liberal elements of the ruling class that has both the power and the absolute need to stand against racist discrimination and scapegoating.
Sowing the seeds of mass struggle in defence of refugees and other detained migrants requires challenging the very ideological root of anti-immigrant sentiment – whether in hard-core form or in “softer” notions like “genuine refugees should be freed but not economic migrants.” The ideological root of such sentiments is the nationalist notion that the interests of “Australians should be put first,” which – within the currently pro-ALP led union movement – translates into “jobs for Aussie workers first” over guest workers and overseas workers and calls to “stop exporting jobs overseas.” Even union leaderships that have taken the biggest stand against the war on refugees, like the MUA, push such divisive rhetoric. When the China Australia Free Trade Agreement (CHAFTA) was being finalised last year, several unions ran a nationalist campaign to say that local workers will lose out to Chinese workers under CHAFTA because Chinese companies investing in large projects may be able to bring in Chinese workers. Yet, favouring one group of workers over another – in this case locally based workers over overseas workers and guest workers – is a total violation of the very essence of unionism, which is the idea that only if workers stand united as one can they effectively fight for their rights. Instead of the divisive and ultimately losing strategy of setting local workers up against their overseas counterparts, our unions must fight to unite all workers in the struggle for improved conditions and jobs for all workers. When there is a legitimate possibility of bosses retrenching higher paid local workers for lower paid guest or overseas workers the slogans should not be the divisive and deliberate pandering to nationalism of “save Aussie jobs from being exported” but, instead, demands of “no job losses,” “jobs for all workers” and “the best and equal conditions for all workers.”
However, economic nationalism is far from the preserve of just the current pro-ALP union leaders. The Greens are rabid in pushing protectionism and joined the nationalist-based opposition to CHAFTA. So did many left- wing groups active in the refugee rights campaign like Socialist Alliance and the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) – even though the latter expressed worries about the openly anti-communist and xenophobic character of some of the opposition to CHAFTA. How harmful such economic nationalism is was seen at last year’s July 31 anti-CHAFTA rally in Sydney. The nationalist logic of the rally was so strong that present at that rally were not only trade unions and social democratic-influenced left groups but, according to the Socialist Alliance’s Green Left Weekly (Issue 1064), none other than the fascist Party for Freedom (PFF) – an extreme anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim outfit that calls to “sink refugee boats”. Pro-refugee left groups like Socialist Alliance and the CPA marched in this same nationalist rally that the extreme racist PFF marched in just twelve days after these very same left groups were part of an anti-racist counter-rally against a disgusting racist demonstration by the PFF and its fellow “Reclaim Australia” anti-Muslim allies.
The struggle for refugee rights is not some struggle separate from the fight against racism and nationalism more broadly. Hostility to refugees, economic nationalist notions of “Aussie workers first,” racist fear-mongering against Muslims and the brutal racist subjugation of Aboriginal people are all closely related. If one is promoting “Aussie workers first” nationalism then one is breeding the nationalist sentiments that will inevitably rebound against refugees. That is why the struggle to mobilise the working class in defence of refugees and other incarcerated migrants requires a fight to replace the nationalist, Laborite politics that currently dominates our trade unions with a class-struggle internationalism that truly sees workers of all countries and ethnicities as one. It also requires junking ALP acceptance of capitalism with a union leadership and program that is genuinely committed to the fight to overturn capitalism – the system that spawns racial oppression and anti-refugee and anti-immigrant policies.
Contrary to what some Greens politicians claim – that Australia’s treatment of refugees is a stain on an otherwise democratic country with a “proud human rights record” – the bitter truth is that the horrific treatment of refugees by the Australian authorities is symptomatic of an extremely racist regime and society. The incarceration of refugees is mirrored by the extreme high levels of imprisonment of Aboriginal people – including Aboriginal children. The brutality meted out to imprisoned refugees is even exceeded by the violence and abuse that police and prison guards unleash against Aboriginal people – which has seen many Aboriginal people like Eddie Murray, TJ Hickey and Mulrunji Doomadgee simply murdered by police while others like 22 year-old Julieka Dhu – who died in a WA watch-house in 2014 (after being detained for outstanding traffic fines!) – have died due to murderously criminal abuse like being denied medical care. Meanwhile, the hostility that pro-capitalist politicians and the media whip up against refugees is trumped by the racist fears they have created against Muslims and periodically against many different sections of coloured “ethnic” communities. Dangerously, as in Europe and the U.SA, official racism is paving the way here for the growth of violent far-right racist forces.
We urgently need the workers’ movement to mobilise to fight for freedom for refugees and all imprisoned migrants, for the rights of citizenship for everyone who makes it here, for the scrapping of racist, “anti-terror laws,” for true fighting unity as one with overseas and guest workers and for full support to the Aboriginal peoples’ resistance against racist subjugation. To help win union ranks to this struggle, it is high time for the refugee movement to openly appeal to workers’ class interests and to openly proclaim that the refugee rights struggle is a struggle in the interests of the working class. It is high time too that we build internationalist, militant anti-capitalist caucuses inside our trade unions – linked to a revolutionary workers’ party – that can fight to put our workers’ organisations on to the “Workers of the World Unite” path proclaimed by the famous Communist Manifesto, a manifesto which still alone illuminates the road to both workers’ liberation and the liberation of all of the world’s oppressed people. For international socialist revolution to free workers and the poor from unemployment, poverty and insecurity! Free the refugees, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples from racist attacks! And free the peoples of the so-called “Third World” from U.S./NATO/Australian imperialist interventions (as in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia and Syria) that cause the suffering and chaos that force them to flee their homelands in the first place!