For 50 days, Tamil and Iranian refugees have maintained a protest camp outside the Department of Home Affairs in Melbourne’s Docklands. Their demands are permanent protection and justice for all refugees—more than 10,000—left in limbo by the federal Labor government. 
The encampment has stood firm despite hostility and racism. Early in August, two refugees were attacked and hospitalised by passers-by. The same week, 25 neo-Nazis tried to crash the encampment, carrying a banner that read: “Fuck off we’re full”. They were chased away by hundreds of refugees and their supporters. 
Abbas, a 26-year-old Iranian refugee whose idea it was to start the camp, told Red Flag that organisation and support from the community have been vital. “We have a WhatsApp group with 150 people. Every day, we ask for volunteers to sleep overnight and cook meals”, he explained. The group chat is also used to delegate tasks like cleaning, and a community roster has been established for supporters who want to help protect the encampment at night. 
Rallies and marches now play a more central role in the life of the camp. There are one or two each week. The last three Friday evenings, more than 300 people have marched in defence of the camp and in solidarity with the refugees.
Two refugee activist groups—12,000 Captive Souls and the Tamil Refugee Council—joined with several other organisations to organise the rallies. These include groups that have spent years campaigning for refugee justice, such as the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, which led the fight to free detained refugees from the Park Hotel in Carlton in 2021, and newer groups like Unionists for Palestine. 
Abbas says everyone is welcome in the fight for refugee rights: “People at the camp are really happy when people show up in support and solidarity. Everyone is welcome, and the more the merrier because it means that people will pay attention to us”.
The latest march was full of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs; drummers and young Tamils with megaphones led the way to the Labor Party’s Victorian office, also in Docklands.
While the refugees and their supporters have done well to keep their spirits high during the encampment, there was no escaping grief this week. Mano Yogalingam, a 23-year-old Tamil refugee, killed himself in Dandenong on 28 August. 
Mano was an activist who spent many of his last 45 days at the protest encampment. He was honoured in speeches, and a message was made clear: the fight for permanent visas and against the Australian government must continue until all refugees are free. 
Madushiska, a 15-year-old Tamil refugee, said in a speech:
“We are here, refusing to give up, refusing to be silent. This fight doesn’t stop once speeches are over. Our encampment is keeping the flames of resistance alive, day and night. If you are tired of just talking about change, join us. We need every voice, every hand, every heart. Together, we can show them we won't back down until every refugee is free.” 
You can support the refugees by attending the encampment at 808 Bourke St, Docklands.

Renee Nayef 

Amid tragedy, refugee protest encampment continues

In June, I became the first and only Victorian university student suspended for leading a Gaza solidarity encampment. In the last week of August, after months of bureaucratic disciplinary procedures and a fightback against the university, that suspension was overturned. 
Our solidarity encampment was four days old when Deakin University charged me with misconduct. We set up tents in the centre of campus, establishing a peaceful protest expressing opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and joining the global solidarity movement with the Palestinians. We also wanted to pressure the university to break partnerships with weapons manufacturers.
Deakin aspires to be Australia’s “most progressive university”. However, it was one of the most authoritarian universities in the country in terms of handling the encampment. Management taped off 200 metres of the campus walkway to block students from getting close to the tents. 
Security guards asked any student walking through, even those on their way to class, to show their identification card. The university repeatedly deleted emails about the camp from staff inboxes, issued misconduct warnings to every student identified as having slept at the camp, and initiated lengthy discipline processes against two students. 
The university trampled on the right to free speech, the right to peacefully protest, even the right to a fair trial. 
The chair of the misconduct committee that suspended me recused herself from the hearing of another student immediately after being accused of political bias. 
I was not provided with any complaints made against me before or during the hearing. After much campaigning—by me, other students and staff—and with the help of the Human Rights Legal Centre and the Jewish Council of Australia, who wrote to Deakin on my behalf, the decision was declared a mistrial. 
I won the right to another hearing with an entirely new committee, which overturned my suspension. 
This is a huge win for the right to protest on campus. The encampment at Deakin was one of nine encampments established around the country, all of which faced backlashes from university managers and supporters of Israel. 
In Victoria, more than 30 students were threatened with discipline. Now, all of us have won and can continue standing up for Palestinian justice and for an end to the horrific bombing of Gaza. 
It’s appalling that Deakin dragged me and other students through months of bureaucratic disciplinary procedures for protesting against genocide. But I know that we’re on the right side of history. 
Every university in the Gaza Strip has been bombed. Students like me have a responsibility to stand up for the students there who are being denied a voice—or their lives. 
Renee Nayef is a member of Students for Palestine and Socialist Alternative.

How Deakin University tried to trample on students’ rights—and failed

Refugee protesters have established camps outside the electorate offices of Labor MPs across the country, demanding permanent protection visas. 
For two weeks in Melbourne, dozens of refugees and asylum seekers have slept in tents at the doorstep of (now former) Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s office in Oakleigh. This was an escalation of a year-long campaign against O’Neil and other Labor Party figures, provoked by the ALP’s decision last year to exclude more than 12,000 asylum seekers from access to permanent protection visas. 
12,000 Captive Souls, the Tamil Refugee Council, and Refugee Women Action for Visa Equality are some of the activist groups involved in organising peaceful protests, sit-ins and occupations, and even a 650km protest walk from Melbourne to Canberra. 
Abbas, a 26-year-old asylum seeker from Iran, said that they had no choice but to camp. “We started by protesting one week here and one week there. Now we’ve said we aren’t going to leave until we get a result”, he told Red Flag. 
One of the main demands of the campaign is the abolition of the Fast Track process and the Immigration Assessment Authority, which the ALP promised to scrap while in opposition in 2021. 
The IAA is unpredictable and complex, and can sometimes leave people waiting up to seven years for a judicial review, stuck applying for bridging visas every six months in the meantime. 
This year's federal budget abolished the Fast Track system and the IAA. But for the 12,000 refugees who have already passed through the defunct system, who have been left stranded in the country for over a decade on bridging visas or no visa at all, the announcement has offered no end to their uncertainty, and no pathway to permanent protection. 
“All of the refugees who were unfairly assessed have been told nothing can be done for them”, Aran Mylvaganam, co-founder of the Tamil Refugee Council, told Red Flag. 
Amin, another Iranian asylum seeker involved in the encampment, told Red Flag:
“The thing I’m worried about is that the Labor government doesn’t have enough time. The election could be in the next year, even if they start reviewing all of our cases one by one from today, they won’t be able to finish all of us, unless they are elected again. 
“The Labor government has political purposes for doing this. How broken is the system that I can have two daughters, both born in Australia, one is six and the other is eight months old, one has no Medicare and no visa, the other has Medicare and a bridging visa. They want to use refugees in the next election to collect some more votes. It’s so hard—nothing has changed. Everyone is struggling.”
Despite this, the refugees continue to fight. After the prime minister announced a cabinet reshuffle, the Melbourne protest was relocated to the Department of Home Affairs in Docklands. And another camp will be established at new Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Giles’ office in Sydney. 
The protesters encourage supporters of refugee rights to visit them.

Refugees still fighting under Labor

When Amin was 25, he fled Iran to seek asylum in Australia. The federal government, led at the time by Tony Abbott’s Liberal Party, had just amended migration laws to deny people arriving by boat the right to permanent protection. Instead, they might be eligible only for three- or five-year temporary visas and put through the Fast Track System—a misleading name for a defective and Orwellian refugee status determination process. 
While the change was instituted in December 2014, it also applied to <a href="https://asrc.org.au/policies-old/permanent-protection/">more than 30,000 people</a> who had arrived in 2012 and 2013.
Now, more than a decade later, Amin and thousands of others remain in limbo on bridging visas, or with no visa at all. Last month, he was one of dozens of refugees who participated in a three-day sit-down strike outside Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s office, demanding action and answers from the federal Labor government. 
The office, in Melbourne’s south-east, has been a frequent target of 12,000 Captive Souls, a campaign group that has organised a string of protests against O’Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles. 
The protests come in the wake of a decision by the Albanese government last year, allowing 19,000 refugees on temporary protection and safe-haven enterprise visas to apply for permanent residency and citizenship. The announcement excluded an estimated 12,000 asylum seekers, some who have been living and working in Australia for more than a decade, leaving them ineligible for permanent protection. 
“We thought our saviour was going to be Labor. But it was under Labor that the Medicare of my six-year-old daughter was cut”, Amin told Red Flag at the demonstration. He’s 36 now and has two Australian-born daughters who are denied access to a visa and government services like Medicare. 
“We did a lot to campaign for Labor, pushing other people to vote for them. They promised to do something for us, but I have changed my mind now, and Labor is much worse than the Liberals”, Amin said. 
The Fast Track System puts the fate of thousands of refugees in the hands of a state bureaucrat who conducts a “merit review” in a closed office. The process is arbitrary and can take years. In the meantime, the asylum seekers are left in limbo and must re-apply for temporary visas every six or twelve months. 
“Imagine in January, you have your visa in your hand for six months, but you don’t have Medicare”, Amin continued. “You have to apply for Medicare, that takes two or three months. Then there’s only three months left. Two months pass, then it’s time to apply for a visa again.” 
The treatment of refugees and asylum seekers by the Australian government is notoriously cruel and has been lauded even by <a href="https://redflag.org.au/node/5253">neo-Nazis in Europe</a>. 
“After eleven years, I’m frustrated; I’m exhausted. Being here, talking about these things, it makes me so nervous. You don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, not even in three months. This state of limbo is so painful”, Amin said.
“So many people are hopeless. They are in despair. We’ve been trying and trying, but no results. But still we come out here to get attention. If we don’t have hope, we can’t keep going.”

Refugees still desperately fighting under Labor

Human Rights Watch, an international investigative and reporting organisation, says that it has “significant human rights concerns” about Australia’s treatment of refugees and Aboriginal people. 
Essentially a rap sheet of crimes, HRW’s <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/australia#:~:text=Australia%20is%20a%20vibrant%20democracy,some%20significant%20human%20rights%20concerns.">2024 World Report</a> begins with the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. In June, the last person held on Nauru was evacuated to Australia after eleven years in detention, only for new groups of people to be sent back to the island just three months later. 
$1.5 billion has been pledged over the next four years for offshore detention facilities, in which refugees and asylum seekers previously have been subjected to sexual abuse and extreme violence.
In November, after the High Court ruled that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful, the government implemented a new “preventive detention” regime. It places additional restrictions and surveillance on freed people, forcing them to wear electronic tracking bracelets and abide by curfews. Failure to comply with these conditions would constitute a visa breach, punishable by jail. 
The report also addresses discrimination against Indigenous people, noting that Indigenous people are overrepresented in the justice system, making up nearly one-third of the prison population while being just 3 percent of the national population. 
At least nineteen Indigenous people died in custody in 2023, the highest number in fifteen years. This included a 16-year-old boy who died after self-harming in Unit 18, the youth wing of a maximum-security prison in Western Australia, while prison staff were watching movies. 
In September, the Queensland Labor government suspended the Human Rights Act for a second time so that children could be held indefinitely in adult police watch houses. Changes in youth justice laws reportedly have led to more children being detained than can be accommodated by existing facilities.

Australia’s human rights abuses

More than one-third of Australians experienced “moderate” to “severe” food insecurity in the last twelve months, according to a new study. 
The <a href="https://reports.foodbank.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/2023_Foodbank_Hunger_Report_Summary.pdf">2023 Foodbank Hunger report</a> reveals that 3.7 million households, an increase of more than 380,000 households from last year, struggle to consistently access adequate food. 
Nearly 1.5 million households were categorised as moderately food insecure, meaning that they felt anxious about food or have compromised their meals. The other 2.3 million reported being severely food insecure, meaning that they have skipped meals or have gone days without eating. 
Seventy-seven percent of people who experienced food insecurity did so for the first time, with unprecedented attacks on working-class living standards adding pressure to existing struggles. 
The report found that, among those facing food insecurity, the increased cost of living was the key contributor. This included rising prices for food and groceries, followed by energy costs, increased rents and higher mortgage repayments. The people bearing the brunt of the crisis are increasingly younger, 81 percent of people who experienced food insecurity being under the age of 45. 
More than half of all renters can’t afford to eat balanced meals. More than 80 percent of people impacted are employed, highlighting that having a job does not insulate people from hunger. 
“I went hungry, which caused an insulin overdose, and had to be rushed to hospital. Luckily, I was able to get some food in the hospital”, related a young renter in Sydney.
Meanwhile, it was revealed last week that Defence Minister Richard Marles charged taxpayers for a $115 breakfast while in the United States recently, including $34 for two eggs and $20.44 for an orange juice.
It speaks volumes about the priorities of the federal Labor government.

Australia going hungry 

Refugee women desperate for visas are walking 650km from the office of Immigration Minister Andrew Giles in Melbourne to Parliament House in Canberra. 
The group of mainly Iranian and Tamil refugees are demanding permanent protection for all refugees without visas, work and study rights for all refugees, permanent settlement in Australia for refugees brought from Nauru and Papua New Guinea, and the abolition of the misnamed Fast Track System and the Immigration Assessment Authority. 
Refugees who arrived in Australia more than a decade ago have not, under the Fast Track system, been provided with a timeframe or process to achieve permanent residency. Some have waited almost seven years for a federal court date—the only way to appeal a rejection from the IAA. 
As they began their walk, they received communication from a refugee group mediating for Andrew Giles’ office, with an offer from the minister to meet individually with the women and find a solution, under the condition they did not go ahead with their protest walk. In a brave display of solidarity with the thousands of other refugees affected, the offer was refused. 
“They were not prepared to do that”, Aran Mylvaganam from the Tamil Refugee Council told Red Flag. “They said it’s not good enough and that people are relying on their walk; until they get a promise regarding the situation of everyone, they will continue walking.
“They want more than words. They’re used to empty words from Labor politicians, so they were quite determined to keep going, build momentum, and see if they can challenge the policies that the Labor Party continue to maintain.” 
One woman has been hospitalised less than a week into the walk, and despite advice that she return to Melbourne and recover, she has insisted on staying in accommodation nearby until she can re-join. 
Their determination is clear. 
Geetha Ramachandran, co-founder of Refugee Women Action for Visa Equality, which organised the walk, epitomised this determination in a speech at a rally at Andrew Giles’ office in Thomastown before the walk commenced: “I am marching to bring the suffering to an end. Not just for me and my family, but for all left behind. We all have the same goal: we need permanent protection!”
The walkers plan to reach Canberra on 18 October and are asking that people join them on their walk to Parliament House.
Stay up to date about their progress at facebook.com/RefugeeWAVE.

Refugee women walk for freedom

Hundreds of refugees rallied outside Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s office in Oakleigh, in south-east Melbourne, on Monday, demanding permanent visas for those who have still not gained protection more than a year after the election of the federal Labor government. 
The ALP made much of its announcement last year to allow up to 19,000 refugees to stay permanently in the country. That decision applied to temporary protection visas and safe haven enterprise visa holders who arrived by boat before 2014. According to the Refugee Council of Australia, ten months on from the announcement, only about one-third of those refugees have <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/family-reunion-still-out-of-reach-for-refugees-granted-permanent-visas/#:~:text=The%20Department%20of%20Home%20Affairs,permanent%20visa%20by%20February%202024.">received a permanent visa</a>. 
But an estimated 12,000 more asylum seekers, mainly Tamils and Iranians, are ineligible to apply for the new, permanent resolution of status visa. They continue to live in limbo on bridging visas, or without any visa, and are denied access to basic health and government services. 
“I came here by boat in 2013 with my wife”, Amin, an Iranian asylum seeker, told Red Flag. “At that time, I didn’t have any kids. But my little one was born in 2018, and since then she hasn’t had any Medicare, she doesn’t have any kind of visa—she doesn’t have any identification actually.” 
The refugees say that young people on bridging visas are being denied access to any future education in Australia. “My school told me that, because I’m on a bridging visa, I cannot apply for uni. How is that fair? I completed ten years of schooling here. People here have access to HECS loans, why not us? Our parents pay taxes too”, said Laxy, a Sri Lankan refugee. 
The protesters’ demands include permanent settlement for refugees brought from Manus Island and Nauru, and the abolition of the “fast track process” and the Immigration Assessment Authority (IAA). 
The IAA was introduced in 2014 as an alternative to the existing, lengthy process—but people seeking asylum often fare much worse under the new system. It involves several stages. First is an application through the Department of Home Affairs. If that’s unsuccessful, they must appeal to the IAA, which is unpredictable and complex. Only a judicial review can overturn a rejection from the IAA, a back-and-forth process that can take years.
“They accept some, they reject some; I came here with my family, and they rejected all of us except for my brother. We were in the same boat, same case, everything the same. It doesn’t make sense. There are no actual rules here. If the case officer likes you, you can stay. If they don’t like you, you get rejected”, Maryam, member of 12,000 Captive Souls and organiser of the protest, told Red Flag.
“I’ve been waiting for my court hearing for four years now. We are like a sucker ball from one office to another, and each time that they kick this ball, it takes us three or four or five years back. How many more years? I was 25 when I came, now I’m over 35. These are our lives.” 
In 2021, the ALP <a href="https://alp.org.au/media/2594/2021-alp-national-platform-final-endorsed-platform.pdf">committed to abolish</a> the fast track process and the IAA, admitting that the system is procedurally unfair and inconsistent. More than a year after Labor’s election, not only is the promise unfulfilled, but this year’s federal budget pledged an additional $4 million in funding to the IAA. 
Monday’s protest marked the beginning of a five-day action, which will culminate on 22 September at the office of Immigration Minister Andrew Giles in Thomastown. At 10am, people will rally to demand justice, protection and certainty for the thousands of refugees left in limbo.
From there, a long march, organised by Refugee Women Action for Visa Equality, will begin. A diverse mix of refugees have pledged to walk all the way to Parliament House in Canberra.
In a press release, Geetha Ramachandran, spokesperson for Refugee Women Action for Visa Equality, said: “It’s time for our government to listen and take meaningful action to protect and support all refugees. The suffering and uncertainty must end.”

Refugees organise a week of protest

“If you’re here now, get ready to come back to more of these over the next few months, because what we are fighting for is our life, and the life of our university”, Dr Kim Davies proclaimed to fellow staff at Deakin University’s second strike of this year. 
Members of the National Tertiary Education Union participated in a week-long teaching ban and a 24-hour strike on 20 July. Staff members, students and fellow unionists attended rallies held at the Burwood and Geelong Waterfront campuses. 
The action came in the wake of eight months of failed enterprise bargaining, and an attempt by university management to bypass the NTEU with a non-union ballot. The ballot offered a 2.9 percent salary increase per year—a pay cut in real terms—and failed to meet key demands around Indigenous employment, job security and improved workloads. The NTEU ran a successful “Vote No” campaign that defeated management’s deal by a two-thirds majority. On 7 June, NTEU members passed a motion calling on management to make significant progress by the end of the month. This progress was not made. 
Staff are fighting for better pay, decasualisation, restrictions on restructures and changes in workloads. These changes include overall reductions, work from home rights and the establishment of democratic committees to determine workload models. Staff are currently not afforded enough time to complete key duties, and casuals estimate that half of their working hours are unpaid. 
“We want improved casual conditions, we want superannuation equity at 17 percent, we want all hours paid for all hours worked, we want sick leave for casuals, we want penalty rates for casual professional staff on the weekend”, said NTEU casual representative Audrey Statham in her speech at the strike. “We have been saying this since the beginning of bargaining, and on all of those things they continue to say no, and that is part of why we are here today. To say we won’t take it.” 
Students held placards that read “student solidarity with staff” and “give back stolen wages”. Saravina Afaj, a student activist at Deakin, spoke to the importance of student/staff solidarity: “we should be united in this fight, the interests of staff and students are one and the same, because education should not be a commodity only the few of us can afford, because staff should not be overworked and underpaid ... a win for the staff is a win for students, a win for you is a win for us!”

Deakin University staff back on strike 

Indigenous deaths in custody are at their highest in fifteen years. This is just one of the findings of the Productivity Commission’s updated <a href="blank">Report on Government Services</a>, which also found that overcrowding in state-owned and managed Indigenous housing is five times worse than the national average for public housing. 
In 2021-22, eight of 22 deaths in custody involved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The report found that public perceptions of the integrity, honesty and fairness of the police have reached a ten-year low. It also revealed extreme disparity in housing conditions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Nationally, 3.6 percent of community housing and 4.5 percent of public housing is overcrowded, an increase on previous years. But overcrowding in Indigenous community housing is 14.1 percent, which increases to 26.6 percent in state-owned and managed Indigenous housing. 
Racist politicians, including Liberal leader Peter Dutton, have crafted a narrative that the Voice to Parliament seeks to make Indigenous people a specially privileged caste. In May, Dutton said in a speech to parliament that the Voice “will have an Orwellian effect where all Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others”. South Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic complained that “Indigenous children are taught that they are being held back by ‘systemic racism’”, in a March <a href="blank">Spectator article</a>. 
But the Productivity Commission’s report lays bare the reality that Aboriginal communities are deeply and violently oppressed by the structures of Australian society. This oppression reaches into all facets of life, and it is getting worse. The number of respondents living in state-owned and managed Indigenous housing whose “dwellings are of an acceptable standard” has fallen from 73.2 percent in 2018 to 63.7 percent in 2021. <a href="blank">Australia’s Institute of Health and Welfare</a> reports that one-fifth of those living in state-owned Indigenous housing experience poor air quality, lack of power and safe drinking water, inadequate waste facilities and major structural problems. Nine percent of Indigenous households had no access to facilities to prepare food in 2021, and almost 5 percent had no access to facilities to wash their clothes.
The highest levels of overcrowding occur in remote areas of the Northern Territory. “We have been promised new houses many times and for many years”, wrote Yanyuwa Garrwa artist Miriam Charlie in a 2020 Overland article. Charlie is a resident of Borroloola, a remote community in the Northern Territory. “Housing is an important promise for people at Borroloola: for safe homes, for good health, for young people’s education. They build houses for shopkeepers and for government employees in Borroloola. But not enough houses for Aboriginal people.”
“Old people are getting older; they’ll die soon. A lot of people are going to die waiting for houses. We have been waiting for too long.”

Amid tragedy, refugee protest encampment continues

How Deakin University tried to trample on students’ rights—and failed

Refugees still fighting under Labor

Refugees still desperately fighting under Labor

Australia’s human rights abuses

Australia going hungry

Refugee women walk for freedom

Refugees organise a week of protest

Deakin University staff back on strike

Report reveals worsening conditions for Indigenous communities

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