The Virtue of Protest: Democracy, Refugees and Australia’s Parliament
NOVANEWS
By Dr. Binoy Kampmark
There is no greater single human rights dilemma facing the Australian parliament at the moment: refugees, declining, mouldering, decaying in detention centres in carceral conditions, being shifted, carted, moved from one base to another, from one nation state to another. Camps funded with Australian tax payer dollars. Camps run by privatised security firms and brutal local police forces.
The message from protesters of the Whistleblowers Activists and Citizens Alliance to Parliament was unvarnished in its simplicity: “We are here today because we have become world leaders in cruelty.” There were also chants of “close the camps” and “bring them here.”
Members of the WACA also managed to superglue themselves to the railings in Parliament’s public...