Text of xborder flyer, distributed august 26, 2000

Gather on August 26th, 2pm, at the Maribyrnong Detention Centre [Melbourne]...

Because we can let those who are interned know that they have our support;

Because those who are held behind barbed wire are incarcerated without charge, without trial, indefinitely, without the ability to access the courts to review the merit or length of their imprisonment;

Because racism and xenophobia have underwritten successive governments' neo-liberal agendas in Australia, through mandatory sentencing in WA and NT, and the mandatory and non-reviewable internment of those who arrive seeking asylum without papers -- none of these laws were in place prior to 1992;

Because governments have tried hard to scapegoat immigrants and indigenous peoples for the misery created by neo-liberal policies -- they wager that we will either enjoy the spectacle of their suffering or avert our eyes from their treatment because 'we' do not identify with 'them';

Because the border control industries such as ACM (Wackenhut Corp) -- which runs the Maribyrnong Detention Centre -- have been the global beneficiaries of the rush to incarcerate, both here and in the US;

Because our struggles are as global as capital;

Because as the movements of money and goods were deregulated over the last decade, the movements of people were restricted, confined to the global poorhouses that are the 'third world', denied the right to flee the impoverishment, environmental devastation and repression wrought by IMF/World Bank-sponsored 'development';

Because the constant threat of capital flight, the relocation of industries offshore, and the demand that we accept lower wages and an erosion of working conditions, requires a system of border controls that makes it possible for capital to flee to the global poorhouses where wages are kept low by overt repression and impoverishment;

Because the disparities between the 'third world' and the 'first' are enforced at the border;

Because no one is illegal;

Because there comes a time when symbolic statements deploring racism and xenophobia might make us feel better but accomplish nothing;

Courage against the internment camps!

A.M.

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Our struggles are as global as capital

Our movements cross borders

The misery created by so-called 'globalisation' could not take effect if it were not for the system of enclosures that actively brings about the existence of undocumented and illegalised workers who are susceptible to hyper-exploitation. In other words, without this system of global enclosures which makes the flight from poverty and devastation illegal, there would be no meaning to the phrase 'foreigners who take our jobs'. In this way, corporations make use of richer states and the latters' dominance of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees to create cheap labour reserves, the bottom rung of a world labour market which provides the precise measure to the conduct of the race to the bottom.

A state of exception

Today in Australia, there are thousands of people who are imprisoned, often for months, always for indefinite periods, without charge and without trial, who are not able to access the courts to review either the merit of their imprisonment or its duration, and whom the Federal Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, has said do not have a right to be informed of any of their remaining rights, including the right to seek legal advice upon their imprisonment. The Government and Opposition refer to these people as 'illegal immigrants'.

We are confined so that capital can move against us

As capital moves ever more freely around the world; we are locked up, confined, enclosed. In the last decade of the 20th century, as trade and financial movements were deregulated, as the rules governing the actions of bosses, merchants and bankers were eased or abolished altogether; it became almost impossible—more often than not illegal—to flee the impoverishment brought about by austerity programmes, to escape the wars, the economic and environmental devastation brought about by IMF and World Bank-sponsored 'development' and debt-induced conflicts. (See below.)

Borders

So that capital can incite the kind of competition that would compel us to work for as next to nothing as possible—the underbidding wars that go by the name of 'the race to the bottom'—workers have to be territorially divided by region, city, and country, divided again by firm through 'enterprise bargaining', and divided in turn through individual contracts and the like. Borders between workers—including the border between documented and undocumented workers, the borders assembled by ethnicism, racism and nationalism—are the key ingredients in the power of global capital.

Pass Laws, Prisons And Reserves

Much like centuries ago, as australia was colonised by the british crown for use as a penal colony, so today incarceration and pass laws have become the favoured means for controlling and criminalising the attempts of those in the most wretched of circumstances to escape their impoverishment. The regimes of 'mandatory sentencing' that have targeted indigenous peoples, the system of 'mandatory and non-reviewable detention' of asylum seekers who arrive without papers, the criminalisation of strikes and industrial action, the privatisation of public spaces, the return of forced labour in the form of work-for-the-dole, and not least the new round of 'development' which has forced millions of lands in many third world countries…

These are the latest version of the procedures that accompanied the so-called 'free trade' capitalism of previous times: the tossing off of indigenous peoples from their lands so that they have no option other than to work for the profit of others or live by the charity of the missionaries, the pass laws that restricted their movements to reserves, these local systems of enclosure were the vicious corollary of the poorhouses, workhouses, and the enclosures of the commons that provoked the creation of this continent as the prisonhouse of those declared to be 'surplus populations' and 'the dangerous classes' ousted from the heart of the Empire…

[AM, V/d, AC, text of Xborder flyer, July 2000]

Global Enclosures

It was not until the last decade that people began to move in some numbers from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to Europe, North America and Australia. Even so, at least three-quarters of such movements occur between the poor countries, and are held in check by a vast system of co-operation between states-and between states and the UN High Commission for Refugees-to exclude asylum seekers from the wealthier countries which are the principal donors to UNHCR activities.

Over the last decade, all Western countries have drastically changed their laws relating to refugees and migration, most notably the European Union's Schengen Agreement and 1996 legislation in the US. Severe visa restrictions, as well as outright bans, have been placed on "refugee generating countries". Western governments have effectively transformed the character of the UNHCR into the body responsible for ensuring the so-called "right to remain"-i.e., into an administrator and overseer of refugee camps inside or close to the borders of countries people have taken flight from in order to stop them becoming refugees in Western countries. In addition, the proliferation of "safe third county" laws have worked to confine asylum seekers to border camps and poorer countries.

According to the 1997 Amnesty International Report:

... 1996 saw a marked deterioration in the level of international protection for refugees, as the political will of states dwindled in the face of very complex refugee movements. In December, the UNHCR supported the involuntary repatriation, after the first quarter of 1997, of certain categories of people to areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina where their nationality was in a majority. There is a risk that some of these people could be returned to areas where they have nowhere to live and where they may be at risk of further human rights violations or abuses. December also saw the UNHCR sign a joint statement with the Government of Tanzania endorsing the repatriation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tanzania to Rwanda without any opportunity for individuals to present reasons as to why they needed continuing protection. By the end of the year, some 5,000 of those who returned had been detained in Rwanda, where they had little prospect of justice. The fundamental guarantees of voluntary repatriation were no longer being upheld, and the silence of the international community in response to the mass return of refugees was remarkable. Only a few non-governmental organizations protested against this deterioration in refugee protection.

In the World Refugee Survey, "A Decade in Review", Newland writes:

The industrialized countries are cooperating in a spreading network of arrangements to thwart illegal immigration through restrictive visa regimes, carrier sanctions (fines for air and shipping lines that permit passengers without proper documentation to travel), pre-inspection at points of departure, detention of asylum seekers in harsh conditions, and agreements to return undocumented people to their most recent point of departure. This last measure often results in the countries with the weakest immigration controls getting stuck with migrants who do not want to be there, because these countries lack the sophisticated means to detect, intercept, and return the undocumented migrants. Of course, genuine refugees are also likely to get caught in this net, and therefore fail to get the international protection they need. Interdiction at sea is the most extreme measure to which reluctant countries of asylum resort. Would-be asylum seekers from Cuba, Haiti, China, Turkey, Iraq, and Albania have been the targets of systematic attempts to prevent their entering a country where they could seek protection. The fear that, once people are allowed to access the asylum systems of the West, they will find ways to stay is compounded in many countries by public resistance to returning even those who do not meet the strict definition of a refugee but who are fleeing from dangerous or desperate circumstances. …

With humanitarian crises growing in scale, states have developed a number of innovative measures to compensate for their unwillingness to offer asylum on a large scale. These include the offer of temporary protection rather than full refugee status, the establishment of "safe havens," cross-border deliveries of assistance, and the deployment of peacekeeping troops and other military resources for the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Other innovations, such as the growing use of interdiction and heightened barriers to entry, were not designed to assist or protect people in need but to protect states unwilling to receive large flows of refugees and sometimes the two motivations coexisted in a single form of response. The humanitarian intervention that established a safe haven in northern Iraq in 1991, for example, was both a means to rescue the Kurds and a means to relieve the pressure on Turkey to admit them.

The Australian Government recently concluded a series of agreements with SE Asian and Middle Eastern states to apprehend and arrest anyone who might be seeking to come to Australia to seek asylum. For instance, 158 people were deported to China from Australia between December 1999 and February 2000. Speaking of one group of those deported, the Minister declared, "The return of the 73 illegals demonstrates the strong relationship that exists between the Australian and Chinese governments."

In 1998/99, "airport liaison officers" at overseas airports stopped 438 people suspected of trying to enter Australia without the necessary papers. The Minister for Immigration announced on February 2 2000 that the Indonesian Government had arrested 68 people from China alleged to be making their way to Australia with a view to seeking asylum.