Refugees Day should see practical support for them and not propaganda for electoral gains

While we never agreed with the right conservative Liberal party, but we have no choice but to agree with Tony Abbot’s demands. Tony Abbot demanded yesterday that the Greens stop talking about opposing Malaysian solution and instead take actions to enforce the government to abandon Malaysian solution and all steps to undermine the refugees and asylum seekers rights.

This year’s celebration of World Refugees Day is coming where the government of Australia supposed to be Left-Centre collation of Labor-Greens-Independents. But instead of celebrating any progress on ending scapegoating of asylum seekers and attacks on Multiculturalism, the attacks indeed intensified. Such intensification of attacks was met with no meaningful opposition from the Greens, which promoted itself as “progressive”, “Left” and “pro-refugees”.

“The Social Justice Network (SJN) will boycott the rally tomorrow as we view the rally to be no more than a cheap media stunt to promote the Greens and its political opportunism” said Jamal Daoud, spokesperson for SJN. “We note here that the Greens senator is the only politician invited to speak at the rally. We also note that the list of organisations endorsing the rally have every Greens local group on it, with no other political endorsement of other political parties or organisations supporting refugees rights”

“We will have no problem to give the Greens space to outline to Australians and protestors the practical steps taken by the Greens to end the attack on the refugees and asylum seekers. But instead, the rally will give a platform for the Greens senator to vend more lies about the Greens declared policies on these issues”

We note that there is big difference between policies and politics. The Greens currently have huge influence on the Labor’s decision, if they were genuine to enforce change of current Labor politics. The Greens in fact a partner in this minority government and with one call from Bob Brown or Sarah Hanson-Young to Julia Gillard, they can in fact enforce total change of current politics. The Greens can demand abandoning of Malaysian solution and all harsh Labor policies, if Julia wants to continue governing the country.

Without Adam Bandit, the minority government will collapse and fresh election will be called. The Labor definitely is not ready for such election and will definitely budge to such demands. The government could refuse or resist demands of sole independent MP, Andrew Willkie, when he demanded dramatic changes to big and influential pokies industry. The Greens should follow the footsteps of Andrew Willkie.

The SJN calls on all community members to ignore the rally tomorrow, such rally that wants to give the Greens progressive blanket they do not deserve. We believe that progressiveness should be practical steps to achieve solutions and results, and not only a set of code words.

We, as a group that fights on the frontline for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers, cannot endorse a rally that aims to deceive masses and give them misleading sense of comfort that there are politicians inside the parliament defending these rights. The Greens, as part of minority government that persecute asylum seekers and refugees, became part of the problem and not part of any solution.

When the Greens take any practical step to stop the asylum seekers persecution, we will be the first to promote these steps to be progressive and things to be praised and promoted. But for now, the Greens should be condemned for making this highly humanitarian issue an issue for electoral gains.

We should also note that we, in the SJN, were ahead of Tony Abbot to demand practical steps from the Greens to stop the Labor’s attack on refugees and asylum seekers rights.

Instead of participating in the media circus and stunt tomorrow, the SJN will continue to take practical steps to highlight the suffering of refugees and asylum seekers.

For media contact, Jamal Daoud can be contacted on 0404 447 272