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“This is Not the End”: Advocates, Detainees Urge Students to Join Fight as More Refugees Released

Written by Jennifer Chance and Angus Thomson

After multiple years in offshore and local detention, an additional 20 refugees detained in Park Hotel on Swanston Street were released on bridging visas on 21 January, according to the ABC.

They join the 45 refugees and asylum seekers who were released the day prior from both Park Hotel and the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA). However, according to former Park Hotel detainee Mostafa Azimitabar, 14 men still remain detained inside.

The refugees’ release comes after prolonged pressure from protestors, who have maintained a daily presence outside the Park Hotel since December. Organised by Stand Together For Justice, multiple sleep-outs, blockades and rallies have been held in support of the detainees.

Activist Jess Tran says the campaign is open to everyone, and is primarily about maintaining a consistent presence outside the hotel.

“Just being outside the Park Hotel prison and waving to the men is just so powerful, because they’ve been told their whole time being detained that no one in Australia loves them and wants them here,” they said.

Community organiser and University of Melbourne student Srishti Chatterjee had a meal with the men released on Wednesday night.

“I think of these people as my friends—we’d wave at each other, check up on each other, make hearts with our hands through the windows.

“It felt so overwhelming, and honestly a little unbelievable, to be able to hug them.”

However, the news is bittersweet. The men have been released on ‘final departure’ bridging visas, meaning they are ineligible for government support and unable to apply for more permanent visas or residency.

A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs told Farrago that the temporary visas allow individuals to live in the community while they “finalise their arrangements to leave Australia”.

“They are encouraged to finalise their medical treatment so they can continue on their resettlement pathway to the United States, return to Nauru or PNG or return to their home country,” they stated.

According to academic and community organiser Apsara Sabaratnam, while the release is an important milestone in the movement and a reminder of the effectiveness of community action, the men nevertheless remain “confined to a life of uncertainty” in Australia. Sabaratnam is a member of the Refugee Action Collective (RAC), who have also held rallies calling for the release of the detained refugees. RAC is calling on the Morrison Government to give those released permanent protection visas and full access to Medicare, social security and higher education.

The men were initially brought to the Australian mainland from detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea to receive medical attention under the now-repealed ‘Medevac’ law in 2019. They were detained in the Mantra Hotel in Preston before being transferred to Carlton in December 2020.

Abu Bakar is a stateless Rohingya refugee who has been in Australia’s detention system for seven years. He has been waiting seven months to see a brain specialist for his head injuries.

He stated that all the Park Hotel windows are kept locked and that there is no drinking water in the rooms, meaning they must go to the rooftop to drink. The windows are also tinted so Abu can see people outside but they cannot see him.

“I spend most time [watching] people walk with their (sic) family or friends, but I am still in detention. Sometimes when [I] can see people outside spending their daily lives… I cry [to] myself.”

At the time of publication, Abu Bakar has not received news of his release.

According to Azimitabar, who suffers from asthma, detainees are also kept in their rooms 23 hours a day and common spaces consist of a small indoor gym and soccer nets without access to fresh air.

“I don’t understand why they put me inside a room for more than a year without any proper medication for my PTSD,” he said.

Other detained refugees also reported that rooms at Park Hotel are smaller and have poorer ventilation than those at Mantra.

Azimitabar told Farrago it was encouraging to see young people gathering outside the Park Hotel and encouraged more University of Melbourne students to get involved.

“Keep using your voice and showing up for us.”

According to Sabaratnam, there is still a “long way to go” to improve the lives of refugees whether in Australia or being held in offshore detention by the Australian Government.

“If we don’t have that wholescale change, this kind of treatment will be meted to new waves of refugees that come to this country.”

This series zooms in on the lovely humans that make up our university community. In this edition, photography team member Candy Chu chats to Nicholas, a Masters of Public Policy student, about a fond childhood memory. *

Q: Is there a fond memory from childhood you would like to share?

Nicholas (N): The one that I always remember is, um...I must have been 11 or 12? I was flying to Europe for my uncle’s wedding, in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. So I always remember when we got off the plane at the Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, I probably butchered that haha, because I don’t speak Dutch. I remember walking out and seeing my grandfather, for the first time that I can remember.

N: I just saw this really tall man, he was German so he was quite tall. He was wearing an Akubra and a trench jacket. I walked up and realised that that’s my grandfather, and just the fondness of seeing him for the first time. I also remember he had big hands, big hands! He was a plumber and so I remember his strength, but also how gentle they were.

On the car ride back, my family went in the car we had hired but I went with my grandfather, and it was just me and him. We didn’t have a common language, but it was just nice to be with him.

In Defence of Taylor Swift’s reputation

Written by Mayank Gurnani

I wish I could say that my first time listening to a Taylor Swift song was ~an experience so divine, it was like no other~ but that wouldn’t be true. The first time I heard her music, I was at my cousin’s house, who, like most other rich, pre-teen girls in India, really, realllly wanted to show off her new iPod. I was already so annoyed by the time she had finished trying to mimic Miley Cyrus that when she played “Tim McGraw”, I didn’t pay much attention. But as the song progressed, my interest grew. I remember asking her with hesitance who the artist was. She replied with the slight condescension I had come to expect from her and others like her: “It’s Taylor Swift, and she’s amazing!” I can’t really explain what it was about Taylor’s music that drew me in. Maybe it was her vocals, maybe it was her guitar skills, or maybe it was my desire to assimilate into a social class that loved Taylor (or any other American artist).

But as she rose to fame, every critic, every music publication, and everyone desperately trying to prove themselves as having ~refined~ taste in music hopped on the bandwagon that Swift’s music was “basic”, and decided unanimously in their Headquarters of Music Criticism that being basic was a crime against humanity that should end musicians’ careers and be used as a reason to send them to vocal purgatory.

My concern with, and dismissal of, this specific criticism of Taylor and her music doesn’t stem from me being an ardent fan, and running a burner account on Swiftie stan Twitter (yes, this is very much a thing). Rather, it emerges from observing that conflating Taylor’s innate “basic-ness” with frivolity speaks to the much larger issue of how arbitration of art by gatekeeping forces is an inherently classist process that associates the lack of accessibility of a piece of art with it being worthy of appreciation. The Orwell-reading, Foucault-quoting, Colombian-roast-sipping budding socialists I went to uni with loathed TayTay with every last anti-capitalist bone in their bodies. Yet, they still haven’t been able to produce a single criticism of Swift or her discography that doesn’t boil down to simply her being a popular female musician. And don’t get me wrong, I am not stating that Taylor is beyond criticism. No one is, much less a white woman who is a mega-millionaire, but her ability to connect with millions of people around the world with her lyricism and music isn’t something that I will ever accept as reason enough to put her down.

Taylor’s musical prowess isn’t one that needs to be elaborated upon (yet, here I am!). Years of bad faith criticism and an almost endless barrage of negative comments about her style of music has meant that Taylor has had to reinvent herself and her art more times than any other artist in recent memory. She’s had to switch from her country roots (self-titled, Fearless, and Red) to soft pop (1989). And because that was too basic as well, she experimented with more normcore pop in reputation, which was seen as too much, and you guessed it, too basic, so she produced the more heartfelt Lover. And don’t get me wrong, the results have been nothing short of spectacular. But it seems like nothing she does will ever appease the self-proclaimed cultural connoisseurs who only listen to extremely hard-to-find, impossible-to-stream musicians like… Tame Impala.

We as a society have for long romanticised inaccessibility, whether through “members only” clubs, Ivy League universities with acceptance rates of minus two per cent, or first-class flight tickets that cost a kidney and a half. This has unfortunately given birth to a movement in the arts that believes the more difficult to comprehend a piece of art is, the more worthy it becomes. So artists like Taylor, who are widely known, and make music that is seemingly easier to comprehend, will always be viewed as “basic”, and that will always be a negative. In a world where everyone wants to be different, where everyone is rushing to forge a ‘unique’ taste, the idea that popular musicians can also be extremely brilliant will always be incomprehensible to these gatekeeping forces.

Taylor’s discography has evolved significantly over the years, and she continues to be insanely popular. If anything, it should be a testament to her brilliance as a songwriter and a musician that even after over a decade in the industry, she continues to rule the hearts of millions. Instead, it is used as a factoid to double down on her basic-ness. So I guess the cool kids on the block can get on about it with some indie record that’s much cooler than hers, but I for one will not be Shaking her Off.