VIDEO: Tampa crisis - 10 years on

Monday, September 19, 2011

Item: 7619

It was the incident that divided a nation and led to the Australian Howard government’s Pacific Island Solution. The Refugee Action Coalition organised a forum marking the tenth anniversary of the Tampa boat crisis and it’s political remnants in Sydney. Rashida Yosufzai reports.

SYDNEY (Reportage/Pacific Media Watch): Refugee advocacy groups have welcomed the Australian High Court’s permanent injunction on the Gillard government’s Malaysian asylum seeker swap deal.

The ruling found the Malaysian aslyum seeker swap deal invalid on the grounds that it did not abide by the Migration Act.

Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) said the decision is a damning blow to the government’s refugee policy.

“It’s disgraceful that [Immigration Minister Chris] Bowen has insisted that he was proud of the Malaysia deal. This was an arrangement that outsourced our human rights violations to one of South-East Asia’s worst human rights abusers,” Rintoul said in a statement.

In a forum three days before the ruling, Rintoul and fellow refugee advocates came together to call for an end to the government’s Malaysia solution.

As Reportage’s video coverage of the event shows, some in the refugee movement were pessimistic about the outcome of the court ruling.

“We welcome that the high court temporarily delayed the Malaysia solution, but I have to be honest, I’m not overly optimistic that the High Court is going to find on the asylum seekers’ lawyers side,” said Mark Goudkamp, an activist from the RAC, addressing the forum.

“…not unlike what John Howard did with the Tampa, [the government] is in militaristic mode, ready to get people on planes if the High Court decides [against the lawyers].”

The forum was convened to mark the 10th anniversary of the Tampa affair.