By Jane Salmon
Palm Sunday rallies bring together Jew and Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, many varieties of Christian, humanists and atheists to share a vision of ecumenical cooperation and tolerance.
The rallies traditionally promote human rights and equity while also condemning war. Thinkers, believers and visionaries speak to each topic all over the country.
Sydney’s rally today was no exception. Josephite Sister Susan Connelly had plenty to say about the monetary drivers of military expansion. “Christ”, claimed Connelly, “would not be impressed by corporate or political greed”. Money lenders in the temple got mentioned. She emphasised the arrival of Jesus to Jerusalem on a humble donkey rather than the high horse of imperial or even colonial victors.
Humanitarian leader and national
soccer veteran Craig Foster spoke about the importance of reconciling our nation’s history with our beliefs and political actions before we can look to a truly harmonious future. He mentioned the referendum with regret.
Mr Foster said Australia could yet become a model of multi-cultural diversity and acceptance for the whole world.
Foster mentioned that prolonged detention ordeals are based on a tissue-thin rulings or bits of legislation that can be changed with the stroke of a pen. There is one tiny step or key between prolonged suffering and relative liberty. Foster witnessed such a transformational moment when Manus detainee Farhad Bandesh stepped past a formerly locked gate after 8 years of various types of imprisonment. The moment features in the film “Freedom is Beautiful”.
Palm Sunday refugee rallies happening around the country today.
Emphasising the right to seek asylum, the Refugee Convention, those still without permanence, Medevac refugees living month to month, and the importance of acknowledging recent progress and continuing reform. pic.twitter.com/0cOZUUAm1Y
— Craig Foster (@Craig_Foster) March 24, 2024
Offshore ordeals and turnbacks of the past 13 years continue on Nauru and in PNG. Foster crisply mentioned that denial of permanent residency for 11,000 more refugees constrains real freedom still.
Temporary visa conditions include limited work and study options, disrupted Medicare, fear of deportation, legal double standards, lack of family reunion, reduced financial credit and the absence of a clear way forward.
The joy of seeing Tamil walker Neil Para get not only work rights but the chance to host his ageing parents for a few months is proof of the momentous power of Permanent Visas. That the Para children can also aspire to work and higher learning is a great relief.
The national tendency to blame migrants for all our woes was also mentioned by Foster today. Scapegoating and inundation narratives seem heightened when asylum seekers come by boat.
Preventing drowning at sea is as simple as providing humanitarian aid to Rohingyans in squalid refugee camps where people struggle to manage on less than US 27 cents per day. The option of offering regional processing pathways for prospective Australians (to prevent the resort to maritime travel) is too often ignored.
Any refugees escaping from especially harsh regimes who broke our laws were given not only a jail sentence but then an extra, indefinite period of debilitating (rather than rehabilitative) immigration detention. Double jeopardy.
Now there is political outcry that a handful of these possibly-less-than-perfect people may be freed by High Court rulings. Ooher. This beat-up completely obscures the great things many thousands of other refugees have done while working through Covid as essential employees, taxpayers, volunteers, bringers of fresh skills, insights, culture and experience.
It is disproportionate. Only today, some Palm Sunday refugee speakers first gave blood in Melbourne. I doubt many politicians have the stamina or stomach for that.
Medical, anti-AUKUS, Arab, spiritual, whistleblower, anti corruption, refugees in Indonesia or PNG and other themes were represented today.
The Palm Sunday rally kilometres walked in capitals and regional centres around the country will be added to the distances walkers for logged for The Big Walk 4 Refugees. This means that fit refugees and their supporters have lapped Australia’s circumference 4 times. They are literally running rings around reflexive fear mongering politicians.
On Tuesday 26th, some of those refugees with lived experience, will go to Canberra to explain the reason for their participation.
It is, as Foster says, up to Federal Government to take the next, not-so-big step and grant permanent visas to all who have been living here long term.
Is the stroke of a pen so very strenuous?
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
Thoughtful article.
Plenty more refugees to come, likely from Palestine.
Paul W
I was reading that the UAE, Qatar and the Saudis, with all their resources, were saying that they would go in and rebuild Gaza and effectively create the much maligned Palestinian state but only if Israel pulls out and if border security is an issue that this be handled by a UN peacekeeping force.
It will of course require US backing and no vetoes in the Security Council.
Surprised that a journalist would misspell Muslim, especially using the Yankism ‘Moslem”, which at best makes Islamists hate ‘The land of the freaks and the home of the brainless’, even more because they can’t even make the effort to get their faith name correct.
Moslem
formerly common but now old-fashioned, increasingly rare, and sometimes OFFENSIVE variant of MUSLIM
John, whilst I see no problem with it we wish not to cause offence so I’ll change it.
John C, re. the spelling ‘snafu’, a couple of things… (a) Jane Salmon is not a ‘journalist’ per se, and (b), given the letters ‘u’ and ‘o’ sit very close to each other on the upper row of the qwerty keyboard it’s kind of understandable if she gets it ‘wrong’… crikey, who amongst us is perfect at anything, let alone bashing out a 720 word essay without a typo or two?
American English spelling, on the other hand… hah… something else altogether.
We unwittingly use words that are fine for most people but offensive to others.
Take the words “settlers” or “colonists” to describe the first British occupants on our continent. First Nations people find those labels offensive. They weren’t settlers or colonists: they were invaders.
Yet so many don’t use the term “invaders”.
I know Terence.
The real reasons why what has happened there has happened, is to do with petroleum and isolation of Russia and China, for reasons good bad and indifferent, not the quasi heroic schlock the politicians and media have gabbled on about.
At least, IMHO.
Roswell, my lengthy comment was blocked.
Look at what you have written about the first British occupants of Australia.
Humans have been settlers since the invention of Agriculture. We have evolved as a social species to make new colonies whenever our numbers increase beyond the capacity of our native lands to support us. We have been invading the rest of the world ever since we left Africa.
We don’t know who the first invaders of Australia were. They were more likely to have been our newly discovered extinct cousins the Denisovans who left Africa long before we did. There is archaeological and genetic evidence that the Denisovans reached Australia where Homo sapiens interbred with them just as they did with the better known Neanderthals of Europe.
We do know that all Australians today are new invaders such as immigrants or refugees or are descended from older invaders. Humans are not indigenous to Australia. Humans did not originate here. They invaded.
What you have written doesn’t offend me but it saddens me that you have unwittingly used words that deny our common humanity.
Blocked? What are you talking about?
And if you don’t like the fact that First Nations people are offended then I’ll offend you: fuck off.
I’m sick of your racist, white supremacy shit.
Sully, we’ve been here before, and I realise the difficulty of conveying new concepts to others, wedded to our opinions as we are, but language matters, the choice of words matter, and the construction of sentences in order to convey points of view matters if one is at all concerned about the veracity of one’s observations as opposed to carelessly playing with language to, you know, score one over the other guy just because… or whatever:
A quick reference to a couple of dictionaries in respect of the word ‘invade’ furnishes the following…
March aggressively into another’s territory by military force for the purposes of conquest and occupation
To intrude upon, infringe, encroach on, violate
Occupy in large numbers or live on a host
Penetrate or assault, in a harmful or injurious way
(to) enter (a country) as or with an army so as to subjugate or occupy it.
(to) enter in large numbers, especially intrusively. (of a parasite or disease) attack and spread into (an organism or bodily part).
(to) intrude on
The movement of humans out of Africa into other lands is not classifiable as invasion.
The early inhabitants occupying this continent were not invaders.
Under the laws of this country since colonisation by the English, immigrants are not invaders.
From the perspective of the indigenous first settlers, the subsequent arrival of white colonists is objectively accurate as being defined as invasive and the colonists being invaders. It’s also acceptable that this perspective continues to the present day.
Language counts, and needs to be used carefully and correctly. It’s not a something to be carelessly used, given it’s humanity’s primary means of communication.
Roswell, that was very rude.
I’m offended that it wasn’t rude enough.
Oh dear… “Humans are not indigenous to Australia. Humans did not originate here. They invaded”. Let’s revisit Terra Nullius where the English invaders could claim the land because the inhabitants weren’t ’human’.
What did they invade, pray tell?
Diprotodons? Witchetty grubs? Rocks?
I thought it was reasonably well accepted that the ‘First Fleet’ of eleven vessels with 1500 persons onboard, roughly half being in chains was a penal settlement of what was considered an unoccupied land, following the precedents set in the Americas and elsewhere : not an ‘invasion’ in the contemporary understanding of that term [e.g. the invasion of Gaza by the IDF whilst tagged as ‘self defence’ is more like an invasion] – language is important.
What occurred here was a progressive occupation of a continental landmass, and a dispossession directly impacting the first settlers, by an ultimately more numerous and more dominant and technologically advanced group.
We as a species are indigenous to this planet and we have engaged in migration and settlement since we first branched out from Africa. That is if you accept the “Out Of Africa” hypothesis that all modern humans stem from a single group of Homo sapiens who emigrated from Africa 2,000 generations ago and spread throughout the planet over thousands of years. These settlers we believe replaced other early humans (such as Neanderthals), rather than interbreeding with them.
I agree with Canguro, language is important !
TM, “progressive occupation of a continental landmass” sums it up, all achieved without any kind of treaty. The bosses of the First Fleet knew well this country was never ‘terra nullis’, that’s why they set up their admin camp on Norfolk Island (HQ Au). 254 years on, nothing has changed. Aussies except for First Nation people, are in effect, part of a foreign occupation force (just don’t tell the citizenry please).
Good comment, Terence Mills.. Agree, much of it is to do with semantics.
I should have mentioned last night that I was impressed with Canguro’s comment, as I am with yours too, Terry.
My own comment at 7:40pm yesterday was shameful, but you might appreciate I was somewhat angered.
Anthony, I think I read on a post here that one of Cook’s instructions was to enter into a treaty with the Indigenous inhabitants.
He must have misplaced the memo.
Roswell, yes, the internet. Cook would have worked out pretty quick he’d need a couple of dozens of linguists onboard to negotiate 100s of treaties with 200 plus language groups, so he told his bosses – yea, nah, the country is ‘terra nullis’ and it might be an idea to temporarily hedge our bets in case the natives get restless and make demands. Let’s use Norfolk as admin centre. And so it was.
Funny that, Anthony.
Look after, Roswell.
At uni we learnt that much of the treatment of indigenes in the various European colonies followed the example John Locke’s drawn up treaty with Indians in the Carolinas back about 1690 where the natives lived in a sort of natural grace and were thus prone to “supervision ” from Europeans.
Locke nuanced his comments, but the gate had been left open for dispossessions.