+ __Australasian Number 207 Summer 2009/10 50 cents Asylum for Tamil Refugees Now! Full Citizenship Rights lor All Immigrants! .ALP·Rldelil,lrRlIlst--, :1 .. ,l CJllIIIlllSm For months the bourgeoisie, politicians and media have waged an hysterical cam­ paign against desperate refugees seeking asylum by boat. Demonised as "illegal," many are Tamils fleeing the imperialist­ backed Sri Lankan regime's merciless repression. Since the regime's military offensive ended in May, some 300,000 Tamils have been interned in horrific prison camps and interrogation centres. V nderscoringthe~'i,ti~,k,~, .• these. n:fygee.S face, in early November twelve Tamils drowned when their boat sank almost 650 kilometres from the Cocos Islands. Months earlier, five refugees died and Desperate Tamil asylum seekers on armed scores were injured when their boat Australian Customs vessel Oceanic Viking in exploded after it was seized by the Aus­ November this year. We need a class-struggle tralian navy. fight to mobilise the multiracial working class in Refugees intercepted on the high seas defence of immigrants and refugees. by heavily-armed Australian navy ships Roy Rubianto are turned back or redirected to Indonesia must be fought by the organised workers tralia's racist "border protection" meas­ of the Tamil mini-state and the execution Those captured in "Australian waters" movement. Giving a taste of the power ures, including incarcerating refugees in of the leader of the Liberation Tigers of are incarcerated behind razor wire in the the working class can wield, in 1998 Australian-funded detention centres there. Tamil Eelam (LITE). We stand for the remote Christmas Island detention centre, union action in Perth saved a Somali man For the Australian imperialists, strength­ right of self-determination for the Tamil an overcrowded hellhole likened to Guan­ from being deported to certain death ening ties with Indonesia is of key eco­ people and stood for the military defence tanamo Bay. Rudd's federal ALP govern­ when the pilots refused to fly the plane nomic and geo-strategic importance. The of the LITE against the army assault. At ment enforces mandatory detention of and ground crew refused to refuel it. Rudd government has been working to the same time we give no political sup­ "illegal" refugees, first iI~posed by the Mobilising the workers movement in strengthen military co-operation with port to the bourgeois nationalist LITE Keating ALP government in 1992. Once defence of immigrant rights is crucial to Indonesia, and continues training the who, carrying out the logic of national­ "processed," for those refugees deported, the defence of the multiracial working blood-soaked Kopassus special forces, ism, have staged attacks on Sinhalese it can be a death sentence. We demand: class as a whole, to forging the necessary whose role is to suppress any opposition to villagers, expelled Muslims from the his­ Close the detention camps! No depor­ unity and strength to fight the bosses' war the repressive Indonesian regime. toric Tamil city of Jaffna and employed tations! For the right of asylum for on working people. Far from helpless vic­ As a jackal imperialist power allied to murderous violence against other Tamil Tamil refugees and all victims of right­ tims, immigrants are a vital component of ,the V.S., Australia seeks to impose nationalist groups. wing terror! Full citizenship rights for the working class, the force capable of regional "stability," i.e., ensure its flow of The banning of the LITE as a "terror­ all who have made it here! destroying this decaying capitalist sys­ profits from imperialist exploitation, by ist" organisation by governments' in Capitalist governments from Europe to tem. Only by sweeping away capitalist shoring up semicolonial regimes that will numerous countries effectively gav~' the North America to Australia have been rule through workers revolution and do their bidding. Australian imperialism's Lankan regime a green light to carry out waging a vicious war on the millions of building a classless socialist soCiety can recent spate of military and other agree­ its murderous offensive. We in the Intet'­ refugees forced to flee the immiseration there be an end to racism. ments with regimes from the Philippines national Communist League denounced caused by imperialism. This brutality to Indonesia also occurs in the context of these bans and called for the defence of occurs in the context of the biggest capi­ ALP's Anti-Refugee, "Anti­ increased imperialist concern over the Tamil organisations against state repres-, talist economic crisis since the Great Terror" Regional "Security" growing political and economic influence sion, just as we have defended individual Depression. Millions of workers have lost In mid-October, at Rudd's behest, the of the Chinese deformed workers state in Tamils arrested and charged under the their jobs across the globe. As the ongo­ Indonesian navy intercepted a boat carry­ the Asia-Pacific region. We stand for the "anti-terror" legislation (see "Drop the ing crisis continues to threaten the liveli­ ing 260 Tamil asylum seekers. Taken to a unconditional military defence of China Charges Against Tamil Activists!", ASp hoods of working people, the Rudd Labor port in Java, the refugees refused to leave against imperialist attack and internal No. 199, Spring 2007). government targets immigrants and mi­ their boat fearing they would be detained capitalist counterrevolution and for prole­ Using the criminal attack on the World norities with increased state repression there in limbo for years. The Rudd tarian political revolution to oust the Stal­ Trade Center in 2001 and subsequent and violence. This in turn has generated government then brokered a deal with inist bureaucracy (see article, page 12). attacks such as the Bali' and London racist attacks on the streets such as the Indonesia for the latter to take 78 Tamil The Rudd government is also provid­ bombings as a pretext, capitalist rulers wave of murderous terror against Indian asylum seekers picked up by the Aus­ ing resources and training for the Sin­ around the world have used the "war on and Chinese students (see "Racist Terror tralian Customs ship, the Oceanic Viking. hala-chauvinist Sri Lankan government terror" to whip up racism, jack up state Sparks Indian Student Protests," ASp No. This turned into a month-long stand-off including to beef up the regime's crack­ repression at home and regiment the popu­ 206, Spring 2009). after the refugees refused to disembark down on Tamils attempting to flee the lation, criminalising political dissent and Anti-immigrant racism is a time-worn until given a written guarantee of quick island. The Sri Lankan government's restricting the civil liberties of all. The method of the capitalist rulers to divide resettlement in Australia. bloody 26-year war against the Tamils in "anti-terror" frenzy is also used to justify the working class and paralyse it in the The Rudd government has increased the North and East of the island ended in imperialist marauding abroad, including face of the capitalists' attacks. It can and 'funding to Indonesia to help police Aus- May with the destruction of the remnants continued on page 11 J T Stop Vendetta Against Roman Polanski! Free. Him Now! No Extradition! The following article is reprinted from lose in gunning for Polanski. Wells now also include gambling, prostitution, drug Workers Vanguard (No. 944, 9 October), ludicrously claims that he lied on camera use and pornography). Government out of newspaper of the Spartacist League/U.S. and assumed the film would not be shown the bedroom! Free Roman Polanski! Suddenly reviving its 32-year-old ven­ in the U.S. In response, Marina Zenovich, At the time of Polanski's original per­ Roman Polanski at closing ceremony detta against world-renowned film director who made the documentary, noted that secution, we were virtually alone on the of 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Roman Polanski, the Los Angeles County Wells had in fact "corroborated the left in defending him. We reprint below district attorney's office, backed by the account of events that he gave in my film" our article, "Stop the Puritan Witchhunt the case as part of his general "law-and­ Feds, orchestrated his arrest in Zurich on to the New York Times in an article printed Against Roman Polanski!" which first order" campaign. September 26. The 76-year-old Polanski, on 17 July 2008. appeared in WV No. 192, 10 February The national press has covered the case now in Swiss custody, awaits possible The motives of the lying and vindictive 1978. The political points in that piece with a mixture of pious outrage and extradition to the U.S. to be sentenced for American prosecutors and judges are are as relevant today as they were then, amused contempt as another typical "Hol­ having had consensual sex with a preco­ clear enough, but the Swiss government's over three decades ago. lywood scandal." Time (28 March 1977) cious 13-year-old one day back in 1977. sudden willingness to kowtow to U.S. sneeringly referred to the director's Roman Polanski committed no crime. authorities has raised some eyebrows. * * * "tawdry troubles," while the New York Facing a Hollywood show trial with multi­ Polanski, after all, has for many years Internationally acclaimed film director Post (2 February) devoted a full-page ple felony charges hanging over him, he owned a home in Switzerland that he fre­ Roman Polanski has been driven out of the spread to the "new Hollywood" and pled guilty to "unlawful sexual inter­ quently visited. Rumors abound that U.S. by a vicious and vindictive official Polanski's "rat pack" of sexually swinging course" with a minor. Threatened with throwing Polanski to the wolves is a bid witchhunt. His legal tribulations began last friends, making him out to be some kind more prison time after having already for leniency in the IRS investigation of March 11 when he was arrested in the of exotic, neurotic freak.