Refugees have been camping outside Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke’s office in Western Sydney for 50 days. On Sunday, 1,000 protesters marched through the streets of Punchbowl demanding permanent visas for all refugees in Australia. This was an even bigger showing than the last protest on day 27 of the encampment, and a boost to the resolve of the remarkable refugees who have withstood a lot to get here. 
They have withstood patronising lectures from Tony Burke, who told them off for disrupting the neighbourhood and instructed them to be patient. They have withstood the cold nights and hot days out in Punchbowl, as well as the financial pressure of missing work to join the camp. One Afghan man, Mirwais, has withstood three heart surgeries and years of waiting under bridging visa conditions that restrict his access to urgent medical care. Mohammad, another Afghan refugee, joined the encampment for the first time on Sunday, because he was made to withstand an entire adolescence on Nauru, was made to see kids younger than him drink from shampoo bottles to escape their suffering, and is still waiting for permanent protection here now as a grown man. 
A speech by Dr Niro Kandasamy of the Tamil Refugee Council and Sydney University’s National Tertiary Education Union referred to the long-term resilience of Tamil refugees, who make up a large proportion of the encampment, and the ongoing alliance between the Labor government and the genocidal Sri Lankan state. Rally chair Renuga Inpakumar reminded the crowd that they are now part of a national movement that shows no signs of stopping. Refugees are camping outside Treasurer of Australia Jim Chalmers’ Brisbane office, in Adelaide there is an ongoing protest outside the immigration office, and in Perth, refugees continue their encampment outside Labor MP and ex-cop Sam Lim’s office. Like Burke, Lim has only patronised and insulted the refugees <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/labor-mp-comments-to-refugees-labelled-disrespectful-amid-permanent-residency-calls/yckwfe0ql">by asserting</a> that he came to Australia from Singapore “the proper way”, and outrageously suggesting that refugees who take their own lives should “have a strong energy to carry on” and be grateful that they are living under a “good government”. 
If the national encampments prove anything, it’s that refugees possess incredible strength—despite everything that the Labor Party has put them through—to fight for a life that doesn’t just have to be agonisingly withstood.

Annabel Pettit

Sydney refugee encampment rallies for permanent protection

Refugees in <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/refugees-fighting-for-permanent-protection-in-sydney">Sydney</a>, <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/amid-tragedy-refugee-protest-encampment-continues">Melbourne</a>, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth have set up permanent protest encampments outside the offices of Labor MPs to demand permanent protection for all refugees in Australia. Red Flag spoke to Kalyani Inpakumar, NSW Tamil Refugee Council coordinator and an organiser of the Sydney camp outside Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke’s office, about the situation facing refugees, how the protest has developed in recent weeks and plans for the future.
What inspired you all to organise the encampment here in Sydney and what did the beginnings of it look like? 
The encampments started in Melbourne because of Claire O’Neill, the former minister for Home Affairs, being there, and when Tony Burke got the portfolio, we got a call from the Melbourne Tamil Refugee Council asking if we could start something here. I got the word out within the community and asked people if they were interested in doing it. About 40 of us had a Zoom meeting with the Melbourne organisers, and the consensus was that we should go ahead. Then I held a meeting with about 70 people to start organising the Sydney encampment. These are refugees I’ve been working with for the past two to three years, and I told them that it was important they all take ownership of the encampment. 
They decided to nominate ten people from the group who would be at the forefront of organising different aspects of the encampment, like talking to the media, getting the word out and arranging food and water. From the beginning, we didn’t want to accept food from people unless they come and stay at the encampment, because we want people to be a part of the protest and not feel like they are just donating to charity. 
For the first couple of weeks, all of the ten leaders stayed every night, and now we rotate so that three will be staying at the encampment on any given night. On their encampment night, it’s their responsibility to bring a group of friends along, so there will be about fifteen people camping every night. Some of these leaders are part of cricket or soccer clubs, so they have been going to their clubs and asking if people can come and do a night. They do a 24-hour shift at the encampment, and the following day, the next three leaders and their group of contacts will stay, and so on. That way people only have to take a day or two off work a week and the encampment is sustainable. 
What has the experience for all the refugees participating in the encampment been like for the last 37 days? Could you describe particular challenges you’ve encountered or notable experiences?
What I’ve found is that the refugees have risen to the occasion; they have been so organised and proactive. They come up with solutions to issues at our daily camp meetings and plan what we need to do to go forward. At first, we had challenges with the police, but that’s more or less sorted now. The most challenging thing is not knowing when it’s going to end because we are waiting for something that is not within our control. 
What kind of response has the encampment received from the general public, either here in Punchbowl or more broadly? And what about Tony Burke’s response to your protest?
This is a very multicultural area, so it’s been good. We’ve had people from the shops downstairs come and give us water and fruit, and the general public has been quite helpful. 
Tony Burke told us, “I’m working on it, but I can’t make any promises because I like to keep a promise”. One positive thing that came from Tony Burke speaking with us though is that in the past we’ve had issues with getting refugees to attend rallies because there is this perception that if you come to a protest then you could be sent back to your old country. 
So it was good for refugees to see that wouldn’t happen. When Tony Burke came to speak to us about the noise of our chanting and drumming, we said that the issue we have is with the government, not with the people who live here in Punchbowl, and that he needs to understand we have been pushed to do this after fourteen years of waiting.
 The only reason the minister or anybody is listening to us is because of the encampment. If we stayed at home and kept quiet, nothing would happen, another few years would have come and gone. It is sad to see that he is not able to give us a deadline for when things will happen. When he says to us, “You know, I’ve only had the portfolio for one month”, we say, “Yes, but you’ve been in power for two and a half years. You’ve known about this issue for fourteen years. You were the minister for immigration in 2013!”.
A few weeks ago, you organised a rally that brought 700 people to the encampment. Could you talk about how this came together and what your plans are for future protests?
Yes, we pasted the flyers all over. The Bangladeshis and Iraqis helped get the word out all around Toongabbie and Pendle Hill. We handed out flyers and got on community radio stations. We are hoping for even more people at the next rally, which is happening here on Sunday, 22 September. We will be starting at Tony Burke’s office at 2pm for speeches, then marching through Punchbowl. 
Could you please speak about the Sydney encampment’s reaction to the death of Tamil refugee Mano Yogalingam a few weeks ago? 
I think all of us were shocked, because he was somebody we knew, somebody who was organising the encampment in Melbourne. What I found really upsetting was that the media attention we got was only after Mano died. Why is it that somebody must die to bring something to attention? Why can’t you do something as a prevention? It’s no secret how refugees have been feeling. We’ve been saying all along that refugees are feeling suicidal and are having mental health problems, so why can’t something have happened before Mano’s death? We were really angry and really sad. 
Could you touch on what you see as the future of the Sydney encampment and the national refugee protests? And now that there are so many encampments, how are they all influencing each other?
We are determined to stay here until there is an answer and a pathway to permanency. There has got to be an announcement from the government for us to leave, and when a decision is made, it won’t just be made by Sydney people. A decision will be made by all the interstate encampments together, because we are doing this together. I have been communicating with Melbourne, but also with the encampments in Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane. 
We speak almost daily. Last week a group of refugees from the Sydney encampment went up to visit the people in Brisbane for a few days. I think that is all important because what we are doing is a coordinated action, we all have the same vision, and we all want the same outcome. So we will all have to make a decision together as to when we stop. It must be a joint decision because all of the refugees are facing the same problem, and the refugees will make that decision themselves.

Fighting for permanent visas: an interview with refugee rights activist Kalyani Inpakumar

Every hour on the hour, members of the refugee encampment in western Sydney’s Punchbowl chant together. Sometimes the chant is “Permanent visas now!”, sometimes it’s “Tony, Tony, stop this limbo!”.
This is a direct call to Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke, whose office they have been camping outside since 6 August, or 26 days at the time of writing. Twenty-six days, or 624 rounds of chanting, may seem like a lot, but for these refugees, waiting is nothing new. Most of them have been waiting more than thirteen years for a permanent visa and its basic accompanying rights.
Almost everyone at the encampment has a story of a child growing up back home without them, or the missed funeral of a parent. One of these people is Tamil refugee Benedict, who at 24 years of age was forced to flee genocide in Sri Lanka, leaving behind his wife and three-month-old baby. Benedict, now 36 and stuck waiting on a bridging visa, said to Red Flag, “The whole country is like a prison, and every hour is like one year”. 
Sowriya, who is also Tamil, arrived in Australia when she was 7 and tried to study at university this year. Without citizenship, Sowriya was unable to pay the exorbitant international student fee, she told Red Flag. 
Abdulhossein is another encampment member who was kicked out of university back in Iran after criticising the government. His brother was murdered for speaking out against the regime, after which Abdulhossein sought asylum in Australia, only to be locked up on Christmas Island. With the limited working rights that a bridging visa affords, he has been employed as an abseil painter—an extremely dangerous job that landed him in hospital last year without worker’s compensation or Medicare. For him, life on a bridging visa is a “slow death”. 
As for Tony Burke, his singular response to the protest encampment was an invitation for a small group of refugees to meet with him, only to tell them that all he would do is “listen to their concerns”.
Tony Burke has immense power over these people’s lives—for some, he may even be responsible for denying them asylum when they first arrived. Burke was the immigration minister in 2013, during the brief Labor government led by Kevin Rudd, who proclaimed that “asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia”.
But the encampment protesters aren’t sleeping on the streets of Punchbowl every night, risking their precarious jobs and chanting every hour just so they can have twenty minutes of Tony Burke’s pretended concern.
Like the refugees in Melbourne, whose encampment has been running since July, they are determined to keep fighting for permanent protection. They do so with renewed conviction following the recent deaths of two young Tamil refugees. We should all share the encampment protesters’ desire to fight the ALP, and fight for Mano Yogalingam and Sasikaran Selvanayagam to be the last of the refugees killed by Labor’s barbaric treatment of refugees.

Sydney refugee encampment rallies for permanent protection

Fighting for permanent visas: an interview with refugee rights activist Kalyani Inpakumar

Refugees fighting for permanent protection in Sydney

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