Forty Christian Leaders Just Disrupted Parliament House To Protest Australia’s Treatment Of Asylum Seekers
Today marks ten years since John Howard released all asylum seeker kids from detention.
The Love Makes A Way movement has been making headlines for over a year now — the Christian advocacy group has staged a number of high-profile protests in an effort to end Australia’s mandatory detention of children, with religious leaders of various denominations holding prayer vigils in the offices of prominent government politicians. The group has attracted attention for their actions at least in part because they aren’t your typical protesters, and don’t act in the ways you normally expect protesters to act — watching exceedingly polite middle-aged priests, deacons and nuns be forcibly removed from offices by police or strip down to their undies isn’t something many people have encountered before.
This afternoon Love Makes A Way pulled off their biggest action yet with around forty religious figures, including a Catholic bishop, assembling in the public foyer of Parliament House for a sit-down protest to mark the tenth anniversary of John Howard’s decision to release all children from immigration detention. They called on the government to immediately release all children and their families from the Nauru detention centre, where women and children have been exposed to serious physical and sexual abuse.
Former Canberra Bishop Pat Power, who was one of the protesters, said that despite concerted community efforts, “both parties simply refuse to acknowledge the devastating impacts of their cruel policies on innocent people.”
“Every single church denomination, and every single health and medical body in Australia has condemned offshore detention. Still the government and opposition refuse to listen,” Bishop Power said.
There’s couple with a baby. They are seated still, singing #asylum pic.twitter.com/LyyKEX0R9u
— Karen Barlow (@KJBar) June 17, 2015
After several minutes, Power and the other protesters were escorted from the building by security.
There are currently 231 children being held in Australian immigration detention.
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Feature image via Love Makes A Way/Flickr.