If you're anti-war, be pro-refugee
War creates refugees

As Bush, Howard and Blair unleash war on Iraq, the UN estimates the war could create 900,000 refugees, and the building of massive refugee camps in Iran, Jordan and south eastern Turkey has already started.

It seems that the governments most gung-ho for war are also the most brutal when it comes to accepting refugees. British PM Tony Blair aims to halve the number of refugees Britain will accept over the next 12 months and now, in the style of the "Pacific Solution", says he'll ship would be asylum seekers to Eastern European states like Albania.

They say the war's about weapons of mass destruction, "regime change" and the war on terror. In reality it's about the West getting its hands on Iraq's massive oil reserves, and installing a dictator more compliant with US interests. Democracy has nothing to do with it. Saddam was the US's man in the Middle East during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, and the US was dead silent as he gassed Northern Iraq's oppressed Kurdish population.

As for the "war on terror", this war will unleash terror on the Iraqi population. Just as happened in Afghanistan in 2001, the destruction caused by Western bombs will force countless ordinary Iraqis to flee their homes. Médecins Sans Frontières say there are 34.9 million people fleeing their homeland, either as internally displaced persons within their own countries, or as refugees. Many of them are the victims of previous military conflicts.

Howard government attacks refugees

These facts make a mockery of Ruddock and Howard's branding of legal asylum seekers as "queue-jumpers". There is no queue for escaping from war or political persecution.

Howard has the hide to say the bombing of Baghdad is about liberating Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's "evil" regime. If there was any logic in the government's thinking, the Liberals would welcome people fleeing Hussein's tyranny as freedom fighters. Instead, they lock them up. The government want us to think of refugees as potential terrorists. This is another lie. Even ASIO admits that not one of the 6000 asylum seekers who've arrived in Australia by boat over the past two years has posed any kind of security risk.

Since the ousting of the Taliban, Ruddock has claimed that Afghanistan is "safe" for refugees to return to. At the same time, the Dept of Foreign Affairs proclaims that the country is far too dangerous for Australian tourists to visit. "Regime change" in Kabul has not eased the refugee crisis, with 4 million Afghans still in Pakistan and Iran. If Saddam is toppled, Ruddock will claim that Iraq too is "safe". Iraqi detainees and Temporary Protection Visa holders will then be pressured to return to the rubble that was their homes.

The Refugee Action Collective stands for:

• Ending mandatory detention and closing the detention centres;
• Providing permanent residency and full rights for refugees, not temporary protection visas which restrict access to welfare and family reunion;
• Funding resettlement, not detention (here or in the Pacific);
• Stopping the racist scapegoating of refugees.

In the context of war, we in Australia need to increase our active opposition to the Howard government's inhumane refugee policies, and to boost the pressure on Crean to break the ALP's bipartisan support of racism.
After the bombardment of Iraq is complete, Australia's barbaric asylum seeker policies will still be with us. The national protest at the Baxter detention centre from April 18-20 over Easter (see over) and the demonstration on Sunday June 22 for World Refugee Day are opportunities to broaden the massive public sentiment that exists against Bush and Howard's war to a fight to end mandatory detention, the Pacific Solution, and to stop deportations.

For more information call 9659 3505 or email refugeeaction@hotmail.com