ChilOut Rally
10 Jun 2004There were some excellent speakers, I especially thought that the refugee speakers were… powerful. I was impressed that there were representatives from all significant parties there, regardless of the official policy of their respective organisations.
It’s reassuring to know that there are some people in politics capable of compassion over paranoia and selfishness. Asylum seeker does not mean terrorist, nor does it mean queue jumper, in many, many cases.
When I arrived at the rally, a little late, one of the first speakers I heard was telling of how a fourteen year old kid had tried to hang himself, and then to cut himself, and starve himself. Our detention centres are doing this to children – from a purely selfish Australian perspective, seeing that nine out of ten of these kids will eventually be let in to this country anyway, think about the kind of people our centres are turning them into.
I’m not going to convince anyone either way on this one, anyway. People dodge the issue by saying “but what about the parents” – what about the children? But it’s okay to put them in detention: if we do it long enough, the problem will go away.
Do corpses need visas?
Compulsorary viewing: http://www.chilout.org/gallery/childrens_art1.html