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REDFLAG | 14 JUNE 2021 PUBLICATION OF SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE REDFLAG.ORG.AU

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Red Flag
Issue # 187 FASCISM,
14 June 2021

ISSN: 2202-2228
Red Flag Press Inc.
Trades Hall
54 Victoria St
Carlton South Vic 3053 AUSTRALIAN
subs@redflag.org.au
Editorial committee
Ben Hillier
Louise O’Shea
Daniel Taylor
Corey Oakley
James Plested STYLE
Eleanor Morley
Visual editor
James Plested

Production
Tess Lee Ack Ben Hillier
Allen Myers Not for the Tamils
Viktoria Ivanova
Subscriptions have the words
and publicity NO WAY
Jess Lenehan YOU WILL NEVER SET FOOT IN AUSTRALIA ‘Never again’

What is Red Flag he poster was glued to a wall or a col- solemnly passed the
about? umn—I can’t remember—at Vavuniya

Telling the truth train station in northern Sri Lanka. At lips of Australian
The capitalist press is the top, an outline of Australia crossed
full of lies, distortions T over like a no smoking sign. A small
and right wing bias. fishing vessel pictured on perilous seas below it. politicians. ‘No way’
We need an alternative Bold font for the type in the middle. It was 2017,
press, free from
corporate interests and though the elements had drained the paper of is the language of
and government spin, its original hues and mellowed the once dramatic
to provide news and contrasts, the message was still clear, even if most state here.
analysis of major people in the area couldn’t read English.
developments in our
world. The Australian government produced the post-
ers for Operation Sovereign Borders, its milita- says, “No way”.
Supporting resistance rised effort to prevent refugees claiming asylum. Nades, a former member of the Tamil Tigers,
Those who own and German neo-Nazis soon copied the design for a national liberation organisation that formed a
control the corporate their own anti-refugee propaganda, the German de facto administration over much of the Tamil
media are hostile to
people fighting for History Museum in Berlin displaying one of the homelands, fled for his life in 2012, well after the
their rights. They specimens in a 2016 exhibition, “Anti-Semitic and war had ended. Former Tigers have been targets
make money out of racist stickers from 1880 to today”. The curators of harassment and torture at the hands of the
the exploitation and probably had no idea that they were, in effect, security forces. The government knows this. And
oppression of workers
and the poor. Red Flag including contemporary Australian government still it says, “No way”.
is a paper on the side of material in a presentation of their own country’s Kopika and Tharunicaa have never set foot
the oppressed, telling odious political history. in Sri Lanka. They were born here and have now
the story from our side Vavuniya seemed apt, in its own grotesque way, spent most of their lives locked in detention. A
and giving solidarity to for the poster’s placement: the district was the medical report from September 2018—more than
those in struggle.
site of Manik Farm concentration camp, holding 1,000 days ago—noted emerging “behavioural
Fighting for socialism more than 200,000 internally displaced Tamils disturbance” resulting from their incarceration
Red Flag is about more in a squalor of overflowing latrines, disease, and isolation. The government knows this. And
than just highlighting malnutrition, harassment and worse. The camp still it said, “No way”. Now Tharunicaa has been
problems with the
system, or supporting had been decommissioned five years earlier, but evacuated to Perth for a blood infection after being
individual struggles. the northern homelands of the Tamil people were denied proper care in Christmas Island detention.
It campaigns to win still, as they remain, littered with barracks—one This month, as reports emerged that 22-year-
people to socialism, to of the most intense occupations in the world, fol- old Tamil man Chandran Vithusan was beaten to
convince them that the lowing on from the military’s slaughter of tens of death by Sri Lankan security forces in Batticaloa,
revolutionary overthrow
of capitalism is the thousands of civilians in 2009. judges from the United Kingdom’s Upper Tribu-
solution to the problems Not for the Tamils have the words “Never nal rejected as unreliable the Sri Lanka country
of society. again” solemnly passed the lips of Australian poli- reports produced by the UK Home Office and the
ticians, however. “No way” is the language of state Australian Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT).
Intervening in
struggles here. So it has been for Priya, Nades, Kopika and The 2019 DFAT report, which erroneously claims
Red Flag is an Tharunicaa, a family who made home in Biloela, that there is no longer state-sponsored torture in
interventionist paper, Queensland, but who have spent more than three the country, has been used by the Department of
bringing socialist years in detention fighting deportation. Home Affairs, the Immigration Assessment Au-
arguments to the Twenty years ago, the Sri Lankan security forc- thority and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal
debates of today about
how we can best mount es killed Priya’s fiancé and six others. Hands tied to deny Tamil asylum claims. The Australian gov-
a fightback. And while and truck tyres assembled around them, the men ernment, referencing DFAT, claims that is it safe
Red Flag will argue for were burned alive while local villagers were made to return Tamils to Sri Lanka. It has now been told
the views of Socialist to watch. Priya’s mother was sexually assaulted in that the evidence used to support this conclusion
Alternative, the paper
is also a forum in which a military camp and her family was threatened. is unreliable. And still it says, “No way”.
questions on the left That’s why she fled, first to India, then to Australia “Why are you being so mean to this family?”,
can be debated. in 2013. The government knows this. And still it Sunrise host David Koch asked Home Affairs Min-