Boycott and Disinvestment

It has been fascinating to read the responses to the growing boycott and disinvestment campaign aimed at Israel's illegal and brutal occupation of Palestinian land.

Its fascinating because its almost like listening to the arguments about boycott and disinvestment in apartheid South Africa; its the same tired and self-serving defence of oppression masked with cries of anti-semitism.

Those of us involved in the campaign against the South African Government have heard it all before - it will hurt the oppressed more than the government because the economy will be harmed, the ANC/ Palestinians are terrorists, the South African/ Israeli government is the only democracy in the region, you cannot attack academic freedom, boycotts will not work, this has to be sorted out by negotiation and not boycotts.

We know that boycotts and disinvestments had a profound impact on the struggle in South Africa, and was a major lever for change. The Shell boycott, for example, cut Shell's sales by 10 per cent and made them change their position. Governments around the world - and particularly the US - will shift when economic pressures force them to.

People don't oppose boycotts because they are a waste of time. They oppose them because they work. Hopefully the arguments of those opposed to boycotts and disinvestment in Israel will seem as silly in a few years as has happened with the opponents of change in South Africa.

Russia, Pussy Riot and the Church

 It is clear that Russia is becoming more oppressive, undemocratic, corrupt and unwilling to allow open debate. It is driven by powerful elites which have Putin at their centre. The arrest and gaoling of Pussy Riot is just the latest example of a ruling elite that will suffer no alternative voices.

Of course it’s easy for us in the West to get into Russian bashing. Memories of the cold war, and simplistic readings of the Russian opposition to American interference in Syria make it easy to make Russia the bad guys yet again. It’s not like Russia is the only country where elites rule for their own benefit, and democracy is a well-orchestrated game.

What fascinates me about the Pussy Riot case is less the big picture of political oppression than the meaning that the members of the band gave to their actions. Five members of the band staged an action on the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. For less than a minute, the women danced, singing “Our Lady, Chase Putin Out!” and crossing themselves. They were removed and arrested 10 days later and charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.”

What is clear from their statements in court is that these people were not attacking religion as such, nor trying to stir up religious hatred. They used this action to confront the way in which the Russian Orthodox Church had allowed itself to be part of the political strategy of Vladimir Putin and his re-election as President. They used punk rock, and a performance in an most unexpected space to challenge the way that space had been co-opted by Empire.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church is Kirill Gundyayev, a former KGB colleague of Putin’s. The band members claim that Putin has used the Church, and this Cathedral to support his power. He has offered to return to the church some of the spiritual values and power it lost in Soviet times, to help it reclaim its history. During the Soviet era the Church was an oppositional culture, but under the new head of the Church now confronts the evils of contemporary culture and its desire for diversity and tolerance.

At least that is what band member Yekaterina Samutsevich claimed, and in terms of the point I want to make, that is what is important. To quote Ms Samutsevich, “In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture with that of protest culture, thus suggesting that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch, and Putin, but that it could also ally itself with civic religion and the spirit of protest in Russia” (speech to the Court at her trial).

I think what they did was a wonderful use of theatre to challenge the way the church allows itself to be co-opted by empire; to take the church’s own symbols and turn them back upon us for the sake of the world. And it did this in ways that speeches and reams of writing never could.

What face do we show the world?

I cannot help but be fairly outraged by the groping consensus to process asylum seekers off-shore, which essentially means bullying another country to deal with people who are our responsibility.

There are thousands of people around the world who live in the most extraordinarily dangerous places – because of war and civil strife, because other people don’t like their religion, because they are caught in drought and floor, because they are poor or because they are enslaved.

For many of these people – men, women and small children – the only way they can survive is to flee the place where they are and find refuge in another country. To live with a minimum of safety and well-being – things we take for granted – they have to leave the place of their birth and culture and move to a strange place.

Politicians talk about people ‘jumping the queue’, insisting that people who seek asylum and take risking trips by boat are pushing other people out of an orderly line. How do you take a place in a line when there is no Australian embassy in your country, and because of war and poverty you don’t have papers, and because of the threats to your life you don’t have much time to wait for the slow processing of your application – you may be dead before you get a reply.

Australia has signed a treaty with other nations. We have agreed that people may come to this country seeking asylum. We have agreed that it is our right to determine if they are genuine refugees. We have agreed to take a certain number each year.

Matthew’s gospel tells us that because king Herod was worried about threats to his throne, he set out to find and kill Jesus (2:13). The family fled to Egypt. Fortunately they didn’t have to visit the Egyptian embassy in Jerusalem, fill in papers and wait for months, because in his anger Herod slaughtered all the children two years and under who lived around Bethlehem (2:16). Joseph, Mary and Jesus became asylum seekers.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has called the recommendations of the Houston report into the processing of asylum seekers as racist, and says it will lead to the needless punishment of some of the most vulnerable people – including children – in the world. Because the children would be held in detention overseas, the Minister for Immigration would no longer be their guardian, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child would mean nothing.

Luke Bretherton has recently suggested that the debate between open and closed borders is an unhelpful one. One open under-values a sense of place, and the other over-values the nation as a closed political community. He argues, rather, that we should see borders neither as filters nor fences but as the face we turn to the world which tells them what sort of country we are. (Luke Bretherton, Filters, fences or faces? Asylum seekers and the moral status of borders. http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/06/3535073.htm)

I think the present debate and decision shows a very poor face to the world, and does not speak well of who we are as a nation. It creates false crises for political purposes and because politicians actually will not show moral leadership. When Fraser was PM  246,000 refugees came into Australia. Our current humanitarian intake is 13,750 a year.

Constitutions and Interventions

Last night I attended a forum at the ABC in Sydney: “A Constitution for all Australians – where to next for Indigenous recognition?” It was sponsored by the National Archives of Australia, because 9 July is the anniversary of Queen Victoria’s signing of the Australian Constitution.

The speakers were Professor Mick Dodson AM (ANU), Professor Megan Davis (UNSW), Ms. Alison Page, and Professor Father Frank Brennan AO (ACU). It was an interesting discussion as these four people talked about the work of the Expert Panel on the inclusion of Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution, and what Aboriginal people hope for at this time.

It is clear that Constitutional change will have an important impact on the way First Peoples see themselves and their place in Australian society, which will impact on health and well-being. It is change that is supported by a majority of people, particularly when it comes to recognition of Aboriginal people and the ending of discrimination.

The Federal Government has been slow to respond to the recommendations of the Panel, which is disappointing. There is significant support for Constitutional change, and as Ms. Page said, this is a wave that people need to catch and ride.

Please encourage people to find out about the panel’s recommendations, and encourage your local Federal member to seek a response from the Government.

You can hear the Forum on ABC Radio National, Bright Ideas, Monday 9 July.

On the way to Sydney I read the latest edition of National Indigenous Times. There on the front page was Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra promising that the next step in the protest of Aboriginal people against the Northern Territory Intervention would be an appeal to the High Court. In a disgraceful moment in our history the Government passed its legislation this week to continue this racist intervention, against the wishes of the First Peoples. The High Court may be the next place to act.

This morning I attended a NAIDOC celebration, and was reminded of the courage of those who started and supported the tent Embassy in Canberra, and the impact this had on the struggle for land rights and other issues.

We still have a long way to go to achieve justice for First Peoples, and to build an inclusive and reconciled community. There is a lot to be learned and a lot to do.

Security and secrecy

In a world where truth is not respected, and violence is a common weapon in social, political, economic and ideological conflict, security and secrecy is a tricky business.

Those who are responsible for security need to be able to keep information secret. It is not always possible to explain why decisions are made, often because to explain and justify the decision would be to put sources at risk.

But there is a real risk in this need for secrecy, a danger that secrecy become the cloak to hide that which should be shared. Secrecy can be a form of self-protection and a way to avoid accountability and appropriate scrutiny.

Security agencies are as likely to be ideologically driven as any other body, and to be shaped by personal interests (including the desire for promotion or to protect personal agendas) as any other organization. For example, there is significant evidence that ASIO offers quite biased assessments of the Palestinian community and the place of Israel in the world.

And what happens when ASIO decides that people are a security risk. Just a couple of weeks ago Ranjini was living a fairly normal life in Australia. She had fled from Sri Lanka, was found to be a refugee, married, had children, was newly pregnant, and settled into a new life in Melbourne.

And then without warning, she and her two sons are whisked away to the Villawood detention centre in Sydney because ASIO decided she was a security threat. She cannot defend herself because no-one will tell her what she is accused of. Along with her boys she faces indefinite detention and separation from her husband.

No-one wants to jeopardize national security, but there has to be a way by which one trustworthy person can review such cases in ways that protect intelligence sources and the rights of individuals. The last Labor Conference asked for such a mechanism, but the government will do nothing. “Legal complexity” is the excuse, although the real reason is more like people whose lives depend on secrets hate allowing others to check what they claim to know. This is about power and control.

We need to protect human rights in a culture where the use of the words ‘security risk’ seem to wipe out the rights we claim to be trying to protect. ‘Legal complexity’ is a lousy excuse for inaction, and an abdication of responsibility by governments of their need to hold our security organization accountable.

Union membership as Christian Practice

Like a whole lot of other people I recently received a request to support a couple of house staff working for the Hyatt Hotel chain in the US. They were fired a few days after protesting against what they saw as humiliating treatment by other staff.

I occasionally talk to people who feel that they have been poorly treated in their workplace – abused, treated with disrespect, not paid proper allowances, or denied other rights. They feel powerless to defend themselves, worries that if they stand up for themselves they will be fired.

Our workplaces are marked by individual contracts, part time and casual work, and by outsourcing of jobs and labour hire companies. Workplaces are also marked by decreasing union membership, partly as a result of changes in the workplace and partly because people don’t see any immediate benefit for themselves and don’t give much weight to ideas of worker solidarity.

Christian faith isn’t simply about what we believe but the habits and patterns of our life that give expression to what we believe. It is about embodied social practices.

I think that belonging to an appropriate union or professional association is or ought to be a Christian practice. Despite all the bad publicity about corruption in unions, belonging to a trade union is a practice of solidarity, community and care for those under enormous pressure in the present workplace. Unions create another locus of power in a society which would be otherwise totally overwhelmed by big business

Listening to Indigenous voices

One of the truly destructive marks of colonialism is the undermining of leadership and authority structures as a way of destroying organised opposition. Colonial powers, including churches, privilege other voices and choose who they will listen to. Usually those voices are the more co-operative ones or the less angry ones or the voices of people trying to find a place in the new order.

The more recent equivalent is the pretence of ‘consultation.’ Government representatives fly into communities, hold brief meetings around pre-set agendas and programs, and fly out again before the last word is said. The cultural divide is so wide, and the power imbalance so massive that consultation is a sham, particularly when there is no intention to make any of the changes suggested. Decisions have already been made, driven by political assessments, and minor tweakings are the only possibility.

One of the things which the Northern Territory Emergency Response shows, though, is that people will not be silenced that easily. Those with leadership responsibilities in their community will find ways to speak. Recently there was a meeting of representatives from the people of the 8 nations in the Western, Central and East Arnhem Land areas of the Northern Territory. They gathered under Yolngu Makarr Dhuni (Yolngu Nations Assembly) to express their rejection of the Strong Futures Bill, affirm their place in the land, and call for genuine partnership and self-determination rather than this sort of top-down intervention in their lives.

For Christians this is about justice, hearing the voices of those who are marginalized, and deciding who we will sit with in our community. It is about creating spaces so that people can speak and be heard.

Another voice which is offering alternative voices to government propaganda on this issue and bilingual schooling is the website of the Northern Synod of the Uniting Church: http://www.ns.uca.org.au/  Check it out. Share information with your local Federal member.