Press Release : Refugee Action Collective
World Refugee Day on Sunday, 17 June 2007
The Refugee Action Collective would like to convey our shared concern for the 83 Tamil asylum seekers currently held in Nauru, along with all asylum seekers currently held in detention.  We want the Tamil community to know that we have not forgotten them and we are determined not to let Australia forget them.

In light of this I would like to invite all members of the Tamil community to join with us in celebrating World Refugee Day on Sunday, 17 June 2007.  The rally begins at 12 noon outside the Melbourne Museum (Cnr Nicholson and Gertrude Sts, Carlton) and we will march through the city on its way to join Multicultural Arts Victoria's Emerge Festival at the Fitzroy Town Hall. 

In the lead up to World Refugee Day, RAC is gathering signatures for a petition which calls for:
 - An immediate end to the construction of a new detention facility on Christmas Island;
 - An end to the mandatory, indefinite and judicially non-renewable detention of refugees and asylum seekers;
 - No detention of children in Australia's immigration system.

So far we have collected in the realm of 7,000 signatures and we hope to increase this to 10,000 by the end of May.  We intend to present the signatures to the Australian Parliament in the week before World Refugee Day.  The petition is downloadable at http://www.rac-vic.org/downloads/xmas-isl-dc-petition.pdf and further information about the Christmas Island facility is included on the RAC website: http://www.rac-vic.org/.

Close to $500 million has already been spent on construction of this facility, please help us get the message to the Federal Government that we do not want another dollar spent on locking up refugees and asylum seekers.

RAC meets every Tuesday at 6pm at Trades Hall, Cnr Lygon and Victoria Streets, Carlton.  All are welcome.  Email: