Interview: Australian Hazara Youth speak out

Originally published in Green Left Weekly, Sunday, January 27, 2013

 

I spoke to Sahema Saweri, president, and Shoaib Doostizadah, public officer, of the Australian Hazara Students Group, at the January 15 vigil in Melbourne for the victims of the Quetta bomb blasts. ***

Can you tell me what these vigils have been about?
Sahema: The Hazara community has lost about 110 lives in the twin bomb blasts in Quetta, Pakistan, which took place on January 10; these vigils were arranged to stand in solidarity with the people in Quetta. Violence [against Hazaras in Pakistan] started off in 1999 or 2000, with targeted attacks on our leaders, and then it continued to leaders, doctors, teachers, students, and now any Hazara is being targeted. It has worsened in the last two years and this most recent attack on January 10 is the worst that has ever taken place.

What is your feeling in terms of response of the community?
Sahema: We need more people on the street. We've had protests in Sydney, Adelaide and Perth, there will be one in Brisbane, as well as the vigil in Melbourne. But we've had quite a big number of our non-Hazara friends stand in solidarity with the victims of the attack in Quetta with us. They have been writing about it, spreading the word amongst their friends.
Shoaib: We've been very pleased to have a lot of people see us, look at our posters, ask us what the vigil is about, [ask] what is the incident, why are we protesting. Overall the reaction of the public has been not only sympathetic, but supportive.
For the Hazara community in Australia, a lot of us have close family or friends who still live in that part of the world. So directly and indirectly, we have been affected by this incident. We have felt the very pain that all the families and relatives of the victims have felt, and indirectly as well. That sense of community and solidarity among us is what has driven us to come here today, to show our sympathy for the Hazaras [in Pakistan], that we are with them, we haven't forgotten them.

How does this issue impact on Australian politics, particularly the issue of asylum seekers?
Sahema: I think it should have a great impact because it basically is a demonstration [of] why people take asylum and come to Australia. Especially the Hazara people. Many of the asylum seekers coming by boat are Hazara people from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Attacks like this are the reason people come to Australia. The government wants to stop people from coming to Australia; the best way to do that is provide them safety back home, so they don't need to take asylum, so people don't put themselves on "leaky boats" and risk their lives to come here.
I think we can do this by putting pressure on the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to provide protection to their citizens, and give them the most basic right, the right to live. They don't want anything else, they just want to live peacefully. The Australian and European governments have a big role to play in this. They must put pressure on those governments so the Hazara people and all other communities can live in peace.
Shoaib: The Australian government has been quite harsh with the asylum seekers and refugees recently. The government likes to say people are coming "illegally", [but] incidents like the one on January 10 shows why people chose to come by whatever means necessary.
The Hazara community requests the Australian government to reconsider the approach they have taken to asylum seekers. I truly believe the government does know, does understand the misery the Hazara people suffer in Pakistan but the political debate stops them from doing what they should actually be doing, which is considering the rights of all human beings.

Do you think the Australian government is doing enough for the Hazara people?
Sahema: To be honest, no. I think Australia is actually making it worse for the Hazara people. When they come here we put them in detention centres, sometimes for indefinite periods of years. Why do we do this? They have not done anything wrong. According to Australian laws it is legal to take asylum and come to Australia.
The Australian government has done a lot for us, but right now, they need to be putting pressure on the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to defend our rights, that is the message we want to get across. We don't want all the Hazara people to come to Australia and take asylum, that's not possible and obviously not what we want, to start our lives over from scratch. The best solution is to provide us safety back home.
Shoaib: There are a couple of initiatives the Australian government could take, given these incidents frequently occur in Pakistan. Firstly, our ministers, particularly our foreign minister [Bob Carr] should have a conversation with his Pakistani counterpart and raise this issue.
We also request the government to take this issue to the UN; now we have secured a seat on the Security Council, we need to take the voice of the besieged Hazara community in Pakistan to the UN in order for a lasting solution to this crisis.

Does the Australian government have a particular responsibility on this issue because they have committed troops to the occupation of Afghanistan?
Sahema: Definitely, as an Australian citizen, I don't want any Australian soldiers to die in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan. Why should they die for a cause, the "war on terror" that's not even ours?
We want our Australian brothers to be safe. We have to do something but the Australian government, instead of sending soldiers to Afghanistan, could be applying pressure to Pakistan and Afghanistan to defend our basic rights. How long can the US and Australia be in Afghanistan and fight for them? We should put that responsibility on those countries to take action for themselves, to take care of their citizens and provide them with the protection they deserve.

These vigils have been well attended but how have the Australian media responded to these killings?
Sahema: We've never received serious attention from the media. They tend to focus on violence, or big interesting events that they think will be interesting to the Australian people. If the Australian people want the asylum seekers to stop coming here, they need to look deeper than this and stand with us.

Visiting Villawood

Today I visited Villawood Detention Centre here in Sydney, where Serco keeps refugees under guard at the behest of our government. I've visited the single men in stage 2/3 before, as well as the high security section stage 1 (where both asylum seekers with criminal records and those who have made trouble or staged protests inside detention centres are kept). But today was my first time visiting the Housing stage, where families and children are kept locked up.

I met Ranjini, a Tamil woman who fled Sri Lanka in 2008, as the Sinhala chauvinist government was tightening the net on the breakaway northern territory of Tamil Eelam. Her first husband, the father of her two boys, was killed in the fighting. Her two boys, 6 and 8, have lived through the voyage from Sri Lanka to India, from India to Christmas Island, then the stagnation of our detention system until about a year ago, when she was released into the community to have her asylum application processed. However, a few months ago she was called up by Immigration, plucking her two sons out of school, to be locked back up in Villawood.

Her younger son is full of energy - he pulled me outside to play hide-and-seek, to build a tent out of the soccer goals, to try and fix his bike's broken wheels. He is allowed out of the centre to go to a public school, where he is accompanied by a minimum of 3 Serco guards; they can visit parks, and once Clovelly Beach, but only after it's been investigated and cleared by Serco. For now, though, he is still full of beans; he reminded me of the young boy at my neighbour's house in Wollongong. But I know that growing up behind barbed wire has to be wearing on his mind. He made me promise to bring him a real tent the next time I visit.

These are the human beings that our establishment politicians and media voices demonise to misdirect our alienation and anger.

Interview with Palestinian People's Party

In November 2011 I spoke with Hannah Ameera, member of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and leader of the Palestinian People's Party, in Ramallah.

Patrick Harrison: Why did you decide to change the name from the Communist Party to the Palestinian People's Party?

Hanna Ameera: Historically speaking the communist movement in Palestine originated in the Palestinian Communist Party. It was established in 1924 as a a Palestinian-Jewish party. This was until 1943 when the Palestinian communists formed the National Liberation League in 1943 as a kind of split from the PCP. In 1947 there was the UN Partition Plan; the PCP & the League both accepted the partition plan but the Arab states and the conventional Palestinian movement at that time rejected it. Then came the war of 1948; the Palestinian communists at that time became refugees as did other Palestinians. In 1948 they formed the Israeli Communist Party, Palestinians & Jews in Israel. And in 1951 the Palestinians in the West Bank formed the Jordanian Communist Party along with Jordanian communists. This was the situation until the war of June 1967 when Israel occupied the West Bank & Gaza Strip, and then began the rise up of the national movement at that time. So the Palestinians in the West Bank & Gaza Strip in 1978 formed the so-called Palestinian Communist Organisation which was an independant entity but it was a part of the JCP until 1982 when we formed the Palestinian Communist Party.

In 1991, after the fall of the communist states, we realised that we are still in a liberation movement and for now all the classes should unite in one struggle against the occupation; we realised that we should make certain changes, in the program and in the name, in order to stress the democratic identity of the party on the internal level. Underneath that was the rationale that this party should be more popular and more close to the mentality of the people. In all the Arab world communism has been associated with atheism because of the imperialist propaganda about communism; in a conservative society this is not an ideal basis for a mass party. So we decided to make these changes for internal & external reasons – not only because of the fall of the soviet union but because of our internal needs as well. This was 1991 and since then we have kept this name, the PPP, but according to the political program we are the same, and we consider ourselves the inheritents of the communist movement in Palestine - we still a marxist party and part of the communist movement globally, etc.

Patrick: Do you have relationships with leftist parties in Israel?

Hanna: We are in very close relationship with the Israeli Communist Party – we consider ourselves as sister parties. We are in close co-ordination and relationship with them. We organise a lot of joint work – common demonstrations, meetings, on all levels – on the workers level, on the political level, exchange visits all the time, participating in festival & conferences – we are co-operating in a very friendly and close way.

Patrick: Do you think the UN Statehood bid will have any real impact on the situation in Palestine?

Hanna: Of course, it has a very big impact. First of all, it is the only way now to enhance the Palestinian demand for an independant Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, after the failure of the negotiations which were running for two decades. Second, we don't think that the current Palestinian bid should be measured through the criteria of 'is it going to make a state or not' – we just say that, first of all, it is a political way on the international level to implement the international resolutions, second, it will put the Palestinian people closer to their aim of an independant state, third it would push the rest of the international community to intervene, not only the United States – now the US monopolises the mediating role; it has been a big failure and it's time to look for another political way to reach our goals. For that, we think the bid is a new political path and we should go on this path until the end and go into the UN not only as a one-month stand but a process which should lead the Palestinians to their goals. But it's not alone, not separated from the national popular resistance in the occupied territories, and it's not also separated from the support of the Arab world & international community. It's a whole process of multiple actions.

Patrick: How important do you see the national popular resistance as, such as the demonstrations against the wall or the Freedom Riders actions?

Hanna: We should all the time express our opposition to the occupation. All the time. There should be new initiatives, there should be mobilising of the people all the time, in this direction. Not only demonstrations and actions like that but also the boycotts of the Israeli products – we have a very wide range of goals in popular resistance & the people here feel that they have the power to do it – not to wait as it was before. Before, we were waiting for the Arab states to liberate Palestine; after that, we were waiting for the Palestinian armed resistance to liberate Palestine, and now the people feel that they should liberate Palestine themselves. This is the main theme of the popular resistance. It means that all the people should take part in this struggle.

Patrick: Do you think the boycott movement is having success in isolating the Israeli ruling class?

Hanna: I think so – but not as we had expected. It's moving, slowly, but forward. This boycott campaign should be both Palestinian and international. At the end of the day it is related to the political positions of the government and the Palestinians themselves. The main thing is the European-Israeli relations. The Europeans, although they have certain agreements with Israel that prohibited exporting settlement products to Europe, do not actually implementing their agreements. They just close their eyes for all the Israeli products which are exported to Europe. At least we should demand the European governments keep their agreements with Israel which they have signed. Second, concerning the Palestinian boycott on Israeli products, it is a complicated subject. Here there is a formal position by the PNA to boycott the products of the settlements (not all Israeli products). But even this position is not implemented 100%, because of our hard conditions in the Occupied Territories. If we have to look in the whole picture, the products and goods from Israel we are importing are worth about 4 billion dollars a year. We are exporting 300 million a year. There is a big deficit and in order to be able to boycott completely the Israeli products we should have production, have industry in Palestine – and this cannot be fully developed under occupation. It's an interaction between the political process and the boycott & popular struggle. But as I said, the main idea behind this boycott is that the Israeli occupation should not be a deluxe occupation; right now, the Palestinians are financing the occupation. It should not be this way, this equation needs to be converted so the Israelis understand they have to pay a price for the occupation.

Patrick: On the movement towards a state – do you feel given the failure of the Oslo process that a two-state solution is viable?

Hanna: Yes, I think so. I think that until now the Palestinian people are choosing the segregation choice – in a choice between having self-determination through unity with others or to segregate yourself from them. Until now we have had this dependant state on the West Bank and Gaza strip, this has been the choice until now. I think that the one-state solution is not a practical one. It's more difficult that the other option because of the refugee problem. Now Israel considers the biggest threat to its identity the five million Palestinians who want to come back to their homeland, if it would be a democratic state then it could no longer remain a Jewish state. The balance of power does not permit for us to make such a solution so we think that it's easier for the Palestinian people to struggle for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza strip and afterwards we will see - maybe afterwards there will be this unity, but between two states. For now I think we should stress on the right of self-determination, that this should be expressed through an independant state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Patrick: And what about the refugee question then?

Hanna: It will be the next stage, after establishing the Palestinian state there should be another kind of balance of power for implementing the other part of self-determination, being the right of return for the refugees. By being in a Palestinian state we will be stronger in our struggle to go forward on this issue.

Patrick: Do you feel that an independant Palestinian state in the West Bank & Gaza Strip will be able to truly democratic state if it can't represent Palestinians inside the 1948 borders of Israel, for example?

Hanna: I think that it should be a democratic state. If there is one thing which is positive in the Israeli occupation in one way or another, it is that Israel is a democratic state – but not for all of its citizens, a democratic state for the Jews only. But being democratic makes you stronger, and a democratic Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza strip would be stronger than an autocratic state or dictatorship. I don't think that when the Palestinians are struggling to exercise their democracy under occupation, they will stop trying it when they are independant – mainly after what we've seen going on in the Arab world, this state could only be democratic, it should defend social justice for the workers, journalistic freedom, respecting minorities, etc.

Patrick: In comparasin with the other states – what about political Islam? Islamist movements have won electoral victories through the Arab Spring – is that what brought Hamas to power, and are we likely to see a repeat of it?

Hanna: Political Islam should be experienced by the people for a certain stage. The people should discover through their experience that the so-called "Islam as a solution" is not workable and this will pave the way for a more democratic society, a more progressive society. Some people here think that the heritage of the past will solve the problem of the day – there are certain people who think like that – they should discover by their experience that this is not the solution. Besides that the communist & left parties should strengthen their position & be more popular here because what happened in the Arab World indicates that tyranny will not sustain itself for a long time. Even if it was supported or concealed by certain ideologies like Islam, tyranny still isn't sustainable. We should look into the future more openly, maybe on the direct developments around us in the Arab world will be not so great for the progressive and left movements but in the long run it will be much better.

There has been a growth in democratic consciousness here in Palestine. Nothing that Hamas has done has led us in the right direction. I don't think we're likely to see Hamas elected to another parliamentary majority here. In Tunisia, after the elections, people have already began to think – what have we done? Ok, we were oppressed, we suffered for a long time by the previous regime – but what have we done? I think that people should go through this experience. It's not enough to try to teach them or to preach at them, this is not enough – they must experience it themselves. After that they will discover that this way will not to the goals that they want. Thomas Edison failed more than 1,000 times when trying to create the light bulb. When asked about it, Edison said, "I have not failed 1,000 times. I have successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb." So people will in this way progress towards real change.