Messages for Refugee Week

Shame on tv reporters that ignore all this and yet focus on minor expressions of protester negativity.

Shame on those who fail to tell the story of human compassion, the creative musical and artistic expression, the order and self discipline of protests. Shame on media there only to witness minor expressions of frustration.

Shame on the media ghouls wanting argy bargy with police and not kindness. Shame on those who "other" people who have a need to express their concern, trauma or care.

Shame on the "tut-tutters" sitting in their living rooms still scandalised that protests occur during Covid. Shame on them for identifying with the "needs" of crowded supermarket-, Bunnings-, Ikea-, footie-, school- and church-goers ... but not of altruists concerned about indefinite detention or BLM. Shame on their silly dullness.

Shame on Labor for failing to put hard boundaries on LNP questionable contracts for detention, Sovereign Borders hard nuts and Dutton who would ramp up security legislation and remove mobile phones from detainees. Labor is complicit in the erosion of human rights in this nation. Not once did Keneally discuss the abuse by proxy in PNG's Bomana Transit Centre where men were bullied and starved to shadows of their former selves without access to phones. Dutton paid the Papuans to do it so as to circumvent Aussie law. This nasty experiment only ended when UNHCR stepped in. Keneally needs to visit the detainees, to check her privilege and campaign against the indefinite, mandatory detenton that has seen a frail 78 year old woman languish behind bars for 11 years.

The 8th year of Sovereign Borders and offshore abuse begins in Jul 2020. People who still carry the weight of trauma they escaped in their homelands and the scars of abuse received in our care are still being denied freedom.

The typical 8th anniversary gift is bronze or pottery. Some also exchange salt or linen. Perhaps we need a pottery jar of vinegar brine or bronze cuffs and matching neck chains for those that perpetuate the nastiness of offshore detention.

No more linen shrouds for offshore detainees. No more heartbreak and salt in the wounds of families broken by Immigration.

Shame on us all that there is no end in sight.

Shame on us for milking cash from richer migrants and then abandoning them during Covid. And shame on us for denying migrant workers the means to live during lockdown or the adjustment to life in a new land.

The vibrant activists on the streets of Brisbane prove that we can care, we can be better than this.

All those deprived of their liberty for so long have expressed is gratitude to activists.

Moz is right. It only with love we can fix this.