ACAR Honi is produced, published and distributed on the stolen land of the Gadigal people. Sovereignty was never ceded. As editors of this paper, activists and people of colour — whether immigrants, refugees or “Australian”-born — we acknowledge that we are each living, working, writing and organising on stolen land, and are beneficiaries of ongoing colonial dispossession. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
For over 235 years, First Nations peoples in socalled ‘Australia’ have suffered the destructive impacts of invasion, genocide, dispossession and colonisation. The University of Sydney is an inherently colonial institution, not only built on stolen land but also upholding colonial ideologies that serve to devalue Indigenous systems of knowledge and systematically exclude First Nations peoples. We strive to actively resist and unlearn these colonial legacies and biases — both our own and those perpetuated by the University and similar institutions. We stand in unwavering solidarity with First Nations movements
and all Indigenous struggles toward decolonisation worldwide, endeavouring to platform Indigenous voices. We respect the struggle First Nations peoples continue to wage in resisting occupation. We also recognise that land acknowledgements are largely performative and used to assuage white liberal guilt. ACAR demands concrete actions, not empty words.
We further recognise the deeply embedded colonising practices of institutions and commissions erected to combat systemic racism and ongoing injustice towards First Nations peoples. As Audre Lorde reminds us “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC), which was once considered “decolonising,” failed to dismantle systemic racism, evidenced by over 516 Indigenous deaths in custody (this figure is from 2023 and has likely increased since then) since its release more than 33 years ago. First Nations peoples remain disproportionately represented in the carceral system, underscoring the need for radical change.
What are you doing reading this? Although we are ohso-grateful for your attention, if we’re being honest, we didn’t think anyone would be reading this bit (and neither did you), so… we didn’t prepare sufficiently for this moment. How about we redirect you to something a little more fruitful, and a little less… here-to-fill-the-page?
Seriously though, ACAR Honi serves as a mouthpiece for ACAR’s radical, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-zionist and decolonial politics. For this year’s edition, we wanted to hone in on resistance in all its glorious forms. Resistance as love, resistance as rage, resistance as forgotten. After all, as Cole Arthur Riley from Black Liturgies asks; “what power do you
Editors-in-chief
Ravkaran Grewal
Sidra Ghanawi
have that you have not accessed? What will you do with the sadness, the rage?”. Also, this year ACAR Honi celebrates 10 years! If you’re feeling like a light read (with pictures), try ‘What comes after “decolonisation”? A screaming” on page 10. We implore you to read ‘Sheikh Hasina and the Bangladeshi Student Protests: In Context’ on page 11. Valerie Chidiac’s Letter ‘to the people of Lebanon’ on page 16 is beautifully crafted. Last but not least, it’d be remiss of us not to mention the incredible matchbox cut-out by none other than Bipasha Chakraborty on page 19!
All in all, we hope you enjoy this year’s edition of ACAR Honi! Here’s to ten years of ACAR Honi, and to many more, inshallah.
In solidarity, Rav and Sidra
Editors
Bipasha Chakraborty
Valerie Chidiac
Ethan Floyd
Emilie Garcia-Dolnik
Deepika Jain
Anthony-James Kanaan
Laudy Kareh
Rand Qashou
Contributors
Purny Ahmed
Juneau Choo
Decolonising “Australia” demands a dismantlement and radical reimagining of structures that perpetuate colonial violence and overpolicing of Indigenous communities. This includes implementing the RCIADIC recommendations in their entirety, especially those that were ignored or superficially adopted. Furthermore, we must prioritise community-led justice and health initiatives that actively empower First Nations peoples through healing, not punishment.
Moreover, true solidarity in activist and antiracist spaces in so-called Australia demands that we recognise the ongoing struggle of First Nations peoples and centre Indigenous voices and sovereignty in our efforts for justice. Only through these actions can we begin to address the injustices faced by Indigenous communities and support genuine selfdetermination for First Nations peoples.
Art: Rand
The Perils of Reporting on Palestine
Belinda’s building
The division of Labor
The CFMEU did nothing wrong
Students Strike for Palestine
Analysis
Class reductionism 101
Division of Labor
South Asians are everywhere Swagapino supremacy
What Comes After Decolonisation?
Sheikh Hasina forgets to lock the door Brown on Brown crime
Interviews
In Conversation with Lamisse Hamouda
Notes of Hope with Hasib Hourani
Interview with Dad
On my Nakshi Kantha Bedspread Knafeh Recipes To the People of Lebanon
Ariana Haghighi
Mehnaaz Hossain
Dana Kafina
Sandra Kallarakkal
Kuyili Karthik
Zeina Khochaiche
Lizzy Kwok
Tyberius Seeto
Ramneek Thind
Victor Zhang
Khanh Tran
Mahima Singh Dana Kafina Artists/ Photographers
Rand Khatib
Tanisha Kurlekar
Marc Paniza
Nafeesa Rahman
Back Cover
Bipasha Chakraborty
The
Student Publications (DSP): Dustin Dao, Jasmine Donnelly, Lia Perkins, Tiger Perkins, Victor Zhang, Lucinda Zheng.
SRC unless specifically stated. The Council accepts no responsibility for the accuracy of any of the opinions or information
My roots
This is an ugly poem
Ravkaran Grewal and Sidra Ghanawi
Statement on the death of Mano Yogalingam in an act of protest
On Wednesday, in an act of protest, Mano Yogalingam, a Tamil asylum seeker and staunch activist died after self-immolating in Naarm (Melbourne). Mano arrived in so-called Australia in 2012 when he was just 11 years old. For the next 12 years - roughly 4400 days - he and his family lived in constant uncertainty on a bridging visa, caught in the cruel grip of Labor’s “fast-track system”. This relentless limbo inflicted profound suffering on Mano and his family, subjects of social death caused directly by the Australian government’s inhumane practice and treatment of asylum seekers.
The Labor government has matched the Liberal government in cruelty, unashamedly capitulating to the notion that treatment and offshore detention of asylum seekers is an election-winning strategy.
Mano’s death is a tragedy, yet his story is far from unique. It is a stark outcome of a ruthless system designed to reject and detain refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their search for safety and stability. This system, born out of the politicisation of borders and the denial of the right to seek asylum, operates on a foundation of systemic racism perpetuated by our own government. Moreover, we must confront the bitter irony of a settler-colonial society determining who can and cannot “settle” and under what circumstances.
The system is not broken, it was designed this way.
As Zygmunt Bauman proclaims: “Refugees and asylum seekers are the ‘collateral casualties’ of global capitalism and modernity—a waste product of the modern world’s obsession with borders, security, and economic interests.”
Thus, we echo Mano and all refugee and asylum seekers’ rightful dema nds for stability, and justice. We must continue to advocate for and support asylum seekers in their struggle against a Labor government that dooms them to live a life in limbo, in some cases, wishing they never came here.
Join the Refugee Action Coalition’s 24-7 protest outside of Immigration and Home Affairs Minister Tony Bourke’s Office in Punchbowl.
The Autonomous Collective Against Racism is a staunchly anti-racist and anti-colonial collective and a part of the Students’ Representative Council (SRC). A significant portion of ACAR’s activism revolves around combatting racism and its manifestations both on- and off- campus through a variety of initiatives and campaigns such as Land Back, Stop Blak Deaths in Custody and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
The Collective is autonomous to USyd students who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, a Person of Colour, someone who comes from a minority ethnocultural background, white-passing, biracial, and being marked or marginalised by white supremacy. We encourage students who don’t fall under these categories to support ACAR in the various ally-friendly events that we organise and partake in.
Our origins as a collective are complex to say the least. ACAR is the descendant of two prior collectives: the Ethnocultural People of Colour (EPOC) collective and the Women of Colour (WOC) collective. EPOC was borne out of a discourse on the election promise of a 2014 Honi Soit ticket — SEX for Honi — that they would add an autonomous BIPOC edition of the student newspaper, which came to be known as ACAR Honi. That’s right, this very publication could have been instrumental in the creation of ACAR, thanks Honi! Soon, in its struggle for SRC recognition, the EPOC collective would rival the now defunct non-autonomous Anti-Racism Collective (ARC). For a time, the two collectives were forced to share the Ethnic Affairs Office Bearer position and budget. The other progenitor of ACAR — the WOC collective — was formed by BIPOC
members of the Women’s Collective who had left due the racism at the time.
In a broader sense, ACAR came about because a group of BIPOC student activists thought activist spaces on campus were too white, treated race in a tokenistic manner and failed to properly engage BIPOC students. Over the years ACAR has looked very different and taken many different forms — the details of which have been lost to time (or forgotten copies of Honi and SRC council minutes). This year we’ve orientated the Collective around the Palestine Solidarity movement and engagement with anti-racist and antiimperialist political education. Beyond this, we host social events such as picnics and fundraisers for mutual aid and engage in political education and discussion through panels, reading groups and film screenings.
Most importantly, we recognise that the work of ACAR takes place on stolen Aboriginal land, primarily that of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded, and that justice and self-determination for people of colour is inseparable from the struggle against settler-colonialism. Institutions like universities continue to uphold colonial structures, and as the collective exists within these structures, it is imperative for us to fight for decolonisation here and everywhere.
If you are keen to get involved, check out our Instagram page @usydacar. We hold fortnightly meetings in the Manning Ethnocultural Space. You can also reach out to us via email at ethno.cultural@src. usyd.edu.au.
ACAR Honi Launch (non-autonomous), 6pm @ Ethnospace, Manning
Saturday 7 September
Gaza Press: Tales of a Homeland, 5:30pm @ Bankstown Sports Club Theatre
Sunday 8 September
Stop the Genocide, Stop Arming Israel Rally! 1pm @ Town Hall
Can you spot these symbols of resistance throughout the paper?
• Keffiyeh
• Key
• Yellow Umbrella
• Fist
• Olive Branch
• Origami
• Hammer and Sickle
• Watermelon
• Aboriginal flag/Spear flag
• Torres Strait Islander flag
• Spinning Wheel
• 1312
• Black Panther
• Rose
• Black Beret
• Broken Handcuffs
• Anakbayan
Front cover inspiration
The perils of reporting on Palestine with Amnesty International Australia
Valerie Chidiac
On Monday 26 August, Mohamed Duar of Amnesty International Australia hosted a panel with Ahmed Shihab el-Din, an American-Kuwaiti journalist of Palestinian descent, cofounder of Media Diversity Australia and award-winning journalist Antoinette Lattouf and Guardian reporter Nour Haydar, discussing the perilous reality of Palestinian journalists on the ground in Gaza.
Speaking from Tunisia, Shihab el-Din began by explaining how gaining primary sources is very difficult as Israel targets and kills journalists and their families. He emphasised how the media is actively involved in “manufacturing consent” whether that be by amplifying and legitimising the Israeli narrative, dehumanising Palestinians or openly doubting mass Palestinian death. elDin continued, “The NY Times and other outlets have style directives… they only use terms like massacre, slaughter [when describing] Israeli lives but not Palestinian lives” and “Gazans” to further divide the Palestinian people.
Lattouf spoke about her observations on the Australian media landscape in relation to Palestine. She noted that journalists are more likely to consider which lobbyists are watching and how current or prospective employers will react. She then spoke to a larger trend of failed basic journalism, let alone investigative journalism where there is no “fair summation of who, what, where, and how” in addition to a desire to conceal war crimes by making headlines confusing.
Labelling this a “seismic moment for our industry”, Haydar delved into how media organisations have isolated migrant communities, Australians from the Middle East and those who identify with the plight of the Palestinian people in general.
el-Din also spoke to the “killing of the messenger” and how it is continually framed as collateral damage. He denounced the lack of solidarity amongst journalists and leaders who issue empty condemnations without consequences. When asked about the role of citizen journalism, elDin noted that it is important Palestinians are doing this work especially as erasing the Palestinian narrative begins with targeting citizen journalists.
Haydar called for people to keep their eyes on Gaza and consume the work put together by journalists in Palestine to “elevate those bearing witness to the destruction of their own people and culture.”
Lattouf argued the deliberate fear-mongering in Australia has helped provide a “level of cover for Israel’s onslaught” and called upon audiences to demand better, and write complaints to editors regarding Australia’s framing of the genocide.
el-Din concluded by reminding attendees that they retain agency via the smallest of acts like sharing news and when that happens on a collective level, it serves a purpose to help broadcast the truth and build people power.
Abercrombie to be renamed to the Belinda Hutchinson Building
Abercrombie Building (ABS) will be renamed to the Belinda Hutchinson Building this semester. Signage reflecting this name change is to be installed at the building later this year. This building on the Darlington campus was likely named in line with its presence in the Abercrombie precinct.
The new name invokes USyd’s 18th Chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson, who stepped down earlier this year. According to a University of Sydney spokesperson, “the University Senate has approved the renaming of the Abercrombie Building to the Belinda Hutchinson Building to honour her considerable service to the University.”
During her tenure as the University of Sydney’s Chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson also acted as Board Chair of weapons manufacturer Thales, a corporation which supplies war material to Israel. The University of Sydney’s
‘The siege of Leningrad’: Labor Left factions vie for control over the Labor Club
Ravkaran Grewal (Grassroots)
On Friday August 30, a factionally contested Labor Club Annual General Meeting (AGM) took place where National Labor Students (NLS) unsuccessfully attempted to remove the incumbent Socialist Labour Society (SLS) from the executive of the USU club.
Occurring within the confines of a dusty Quadrangle lecture theatre, this marked the first contested AGM since 2014, with both factions putting up candidates for each role on the executive and SLS coming away with a clean sweep. The final count for the presidential election was 45 votes for William (Haigang) Yang (SLS) and 17 votes for Gerard Buttigieg (NLS).
The Labor Club has historically been characterised by factionalism, as Kristian Marijanovic (SLS) pointed out in his opening speech: “we’ve always had it shaped by forces outside of the university”. “As the home of SLS”, Yang later stated, “this society is essentially our Leningrad. And like Leningrad, we have been put under siege from our inception.”
The most noticeable difference between the two Young Labor Left factions is SLS’s lack of engagement with the SRC. When questioned as to why, Yang explained it in terms of “economies of scale” as Stupol spaces are “overcrowded”. “Where we need to have more people”, he continued, “is inside the Labor party.”
When questioned about SLS’s overly male composition, Yang claimed this problem affects “every single society, every single party and every single group”. After Yang was asked whether this extended to USyd NLS, which is majority female, he said it would be difficult to come up with a percentage that determines whether an organisation struggles with female representation.
Reports from the outgoing executive were followed by candidate speeches. Victor Zhang (SLS) referenced his sister, who had her visa revoked, before claiming “the Opposition can say all these leftwing things, but when they get into parliament, they are the people that are going to be passing these laws”.
Multiple NLS candidates reiterated the vision that the Labor Club should engage with student unionism. Jasmine Donnelly (NLS) spoke about the need to “engage with student movements on the ground because we’re getting our rights encroached on”, referring to the Campus Access Policy. Jonathan Gilliland (NLS) echoed similar sentiments, “this Campus Access Policy has been crushing our student activism” to which SRC Education Officer Grace Street heckled from the far corner of the lecture theatre “what activism?”
research partnership with Thales is subject to ongoing criticism from student organisations and activists, particularly Students Against War and Students For Palestine.
In 2021, the University of Sydney renamed the F23 Building to the Michael Spence Building after the termination of Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence’s term.
Grace Street, SRC Education Officer, spoke to Honi Soit about this decision. “Commemorating Belinda Hutchinson is a slap in the face to students who have been involved in the “Thales off Campus” campaign through the Education Action Group since 2023. It directly works against our ongoing fight to cut ties with Thales, who create the Watchkeeper 35 drones used to surveil and kill Palestinians in Gaza. To have a popular building named after someone whose legacy lies with their ties to this company is to solidify and legitimise the partnerships between the corporate university to the war machine.”
This AGM marks the 99th in the Labour Club’s history, meaning the Club will celebrate 100 years in 2025. When asked why NLS was interested in securing the executive of the Labor Club, Buttigieg disagreed with the framing of the question, making it clear that his intention of running for President was not “to take it for a particular faction, but it was to get USyd Labor Left back on track on campus and rebuild the mass student movement.”
In his candidate speech, Buttigieg claimed that the current purpose of the Labor Club under SLS was to “stack out the Labor party for factional objectives”. Since 2013, the Club has been dominated by SLS, with NLS having run a separate — but now defunct — Democratic Socialist USU club. When asked why the Club had been deregistered, Buttigieg declined to comment.
In his nearly 15-minute executive report, Yang made numerous thinly veiled political jabs at the opposing faction, claiming multiple times that “a certain group” operates in “bad faith”, despite their “so-called militancy” and effectively acts as “controlled opposition” within the Labor Party. After claiming NLS will “try to moralise everything and talk about identity politics as they always do” within their candidate speeches, Yang pointed out the diversity of SLS’s ticket in the face of NLS’s overwhelmingly white ticket.
When asked about NLS’s light presence in the SRC’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Buttigieg again disagreed with the framing of the question, stating: “we were first out there in the Palestine encampment. I personally slept in the encampment. I helped with its organisation.”
Notably, Callum Cartwright (SLS) limited candidate speeches to 30 seconds each. Cartwright warned Buttigieg that he would be asked to leave as his speech ran over time and also claimed that he had “no control” over Yang’s lengthy speaking time as it was an executive report. In response, Buttigieg hurled from the stands “you’re a stain on democracy”. Most procedures on the night were rapidly conducted, with “all those in favour against abstentions carried” blurted out by the various SLS chairs before a single hand could be counted.
Resident Stupol observer Alastair Panzarino commented after the meeting: “tonight was a piece of lacklustre performance from two factions apart of a party complicit in genocide. For NLS, their aim was to take over the club and deliver their factional boss Albanese a receptive, rent-a-crowd audience for his 100year anniversary visit next year. As is now habit at USyd, NLS lost. Despite this, SLS’s oppositional positioning to Albanese is more a matter of their factional exclusion from federal politics, rather than political principle or vast ideological difference.”
Ariana Haghighi
‘God forgives, the CFMEU doesn’t’:
Thousands of workers protest against administration
Ravkaran Grewal
On Tuesday August 23, the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMEU) held protests at capital cities around the country to resist Commonwealth legislation that has placed the Union into administration. The Sydney protest occurred outside NSW parliament with thousands of union members and supporters packed into Macquarie Street.
Speeches from various CFMEU leaders and members emphasised the Union’s commitment to fight administration, even if the protest action was unlawful and would result in fines. Speakers also reiterated the benefits the CFMEU has won for its members that are now under threat due to administration.
The protest comes after the federal government passed legislation earlier this month to remove hundreds of union officers from their positions and appoint an administrator. The Labor-and Liberal-backed legislation passed last week dictates a minimum 3 year period of administration for the CFMEU, one of Australia’s most militant unions.
Throughout the proceedings, CFMEU NSW Branch Secretary Darren Greenfield labelled Australian Council of Trade Unions President Michele O’Neil and Secretary Sally McManus as “traitors”. Greenfield, who is fighting allegations of corruption, claimed the Labor Party “are sell-outs to the working class” and that “both Labor governments should hang their heads in disgrace.”
Former CFMEU NSW Branch Delegate Denis McNamara reminded the crowd that the protest was a “decision made by the members of this union to walk out on strike”. He explained that because he was removed, he can no longer hold a position in any union for the rest of his life.
“I was asked the other day by a member”, McNamara continued, “‘is this the end, Dennis?’ … no it’s the fucking beginning!”, to which the union crowd erupted in cheer.
For McNamara, “this is the spark the working class needs to set fires
everywhere. We talk about the Labor Party and the Liberal Party and what we forget to talk about is the capitalist system that we live under, that we need to change.”
He urged the crowd to engage in strike action to make this happen, to “go back and organise to close this industry”. McNamara ended his speech by chanting “workers of the world unite, one struggle one fight” and “our union our say, our leadership here to stay”.
Chair of the protest Paul McAleer, Sydney Branch Secretary of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), denounced the Labor government’s acceptance of the anti-protest laws before welcoming to the stage Paul Keating, also Secretary of the Sydney Branch of the MUA. Keating reaffirmed a saying “we’ve had for centuries”: “when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty”. The rally ended with a standing ovation given to, as described by McAleer, the CFMEU’s “leaders in exile”.
When asked why he attended the rally, Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) member Jack Stubley stated “this is part of what it means to be a student revolutionary, is actually being part of the movement. It’s not just relegating yourself to student work”.
As to why the government had placed the CFMEU under administration, Stubley pointed to the notion that the CFMEU is the most militant union on worker’s rights and willing to break antistrike and anti-protest laws: “the real core of why they’re doing this is that it’s a class offensive … it’s the Labor government proving to the ruling class that they’re a reliable set of hands for Australian capitalism”.
RAFFWU member Ishbel Dunsmore also commented on the importance of cross-union solidarity: “any attack on a union, is an attack on all unions. Touch one, touch all”.
Dunsmore pointed out that many students are also workers, arguing that our fight for a decent and free education is bound up in the struggle of the working class. “Student conditions are contingent on the conditions of workers”.
Students strike for Palestine
Tyberius Seeto
On Wednesday August 28, hundreds of students walked out of class to march across Broadway in solidarity with students in Gaza as the death toll continues to climb in the besieged enclave.
A contingent of students from the University of Sydney gathered on Eastern Avenue to hear from speakers before marching down to UTS. Speaking to the crowd on Eastern Avenue, Shovan Bhattari (SAlt and Students for Palestine) condemned the government as well as universities for their complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
“They’ve aided it, they’ve embedded it, they’ve funded it, they’ve provided ideological cover every step of this of this genocide, our government and our institution have at mass in lockstep to the tune of war and genocide and bloodbath, shame.”
Tara Marocchi (Grassroots) a first-year student from Western Sydney University also spoke to the crowd on the complicity to genocide.
“There is nothing but complicity and silence from our politician that extend to this country and globally,”
Marching down from City Road to Broadway, the contingent arrived at UTS chanting, “UTS blood on your hands” as the crowd grew around the entrance of Building 1. In response to the rally, the front entrance of Building 1 was locked down and UTS security stood at the entrance, a response seen at previous rallies at UTS.
NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge condemned the government for not stopping the unfolding genocide, Shoebridge also commending the students for striking in solidarity.
“They gaslight us and say there
is no two-way weapons exchange and they’re not abetting the genocide, we know they’re lying and we know there is so much they can do.”
Rex Urquhart from High Schoolers for Palestine spoke on the state of Gaza for the disproportionate young Palestinians who live in the open-air prison, mentioning the inhumane calorie count imposed by Israel when food gets delivered.
“The occupation and the siege of Gaza didn’t start last year, it’s been under siege since ‘67 but they’ve been also counting calories for what they’re willing to allow in [such as] food, medicine and other essentials into Gaza for 15 years.”
Speaking to Honi Soit, Vice President of the UTS Palestinian Society Omar Abdelrahman said as a Palestinian the solidarity shown by students was “beautiful” to see students come out and rally against the complete destruction of the education system in Gaza.
“For us to take a day off studying, for people to come out from their high schools and their uni classes, it shows that the least we can do, is to take a pause to commemorate and honour the people who don’t have that right and privilege that we do.”
This was echoed by Noura Hussain from High Schoolers for Palestine who spoke to the importance of seeing students strike and showing their solidarity to Gazan high schoolers.
“Students have been robbed of every single opportunity to attain higher education.... We stand in solidarity with the children of Gaza now, we can’t pick and choose when we can be politically active.”
It has almost been 10 months since the genocide in Gaza has began, with the death toll estimated to be in around 40,000.
WHAT
Is race a natural or cultural division of humanity? Is race a capitalist ploy invented to divide the working class? Is race purely ideological? Did race exist prior to capitalism? Or has race always existed and will it continue to exist forever?
Depending on who you ask — even amongst leftists — you’ll get wildly different answers. To provide a non-reductive and systematic social theory of race is outside the bounds of an article in Honi Soit, but at the very least it is possible to outline its broad strokes.
Transhistorical notions of race often rely on cultural essentialism. Cedric Robinson suggests in his influential text Black Marxism that capitalism is the historical expression of a trans-historical European racialism growing from the “cultural soil of the West”. In this system, racism is to be understood not as the product of a particular era — capitalism — but as rooted in European civilisation itself. Here race forms the essence of Western civilisation to the point where racial identity between white and black — alongside frames of resistance — become incomparable. Religious, linguistic, and ethnic prejudices in precapitalist societies are found to be the essential cause of capitalism as a historically situated mode of production. For Robinson to assume that these prejudices necessarily confer a notion of race or racism is to universalise modern-day cultural markers of racism. Through this essentialism, Robinson has extended race beyond its historical relation to capitalism and instead posited this very relation as a product of race without providing a system to universalise race in each of its historical moments. Indeed, why must racialism posit changes in production relations?
Race develops as a discrete set of social relations alongside those of capitalist production. In Capital, Karl Marx identifies the central place of racism in primitive accumulation:
“the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the Indigenous population … the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black-skins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production.”
Here, we can begin to understand how social reality mediates biological reality as it relates to race. After all, for European merchants plundering African nations, biological colour served a readily convenient function. Against this understanding of the social function of race, class reductionists like David Calnitsky and Michael Martinez argue that race itself was never essential to the development of capitalist relations. Instead, they claim in A Class Functionalist Theory of Race that “if we pressed the reset button on history mental categories, construct that would from the world.” down to pure contingency that race and class relations have historically developed alongside one another?
And that
ISRACE?
distinct racial relations are continually reproduced in contemporary Imperialism and its global division of labour? To showcase the opposite, that race has a determinate relation with class, we will trace the historical development of chattel slavery in the Southern United States.
Slavery’s birth, life, and death — and its complementary race relations — were dictated by movements in capital accumulation. As Marx explains “direct slavery, is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have not cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry.”
However, at a certain stage of development, the Southern planter economy restricted the industrial North which sought to expand both west and south. The Civil War was not fought for slavery abolition but to resolve the untenable economic divisions between the slave owners of the South and the industrialists of the North within the capitalist class. In Good times on the cross: A Marxian review, Sarah Elbert observes, “only at the expense of a highly developed form of capitalism could the planter class have maintained their precarious hold on the political process which ensured their continued reproduction.”
Slavery’s abolition and the entrance of the black population into the working class did not herald racial equality within America. This too can be explained through capitalist class relations.
Racism divides the world’s workers along economic lines. This notion has become inseparable from the class reductionist ‘divide-and-conquer’ and ‘false consciousness’ theories of racism that have often served as Marxist strawmen. Here racism is conceived of as an ideology fermented by the ruling class to justify the hyper-exploitation of
black workers and to divide the working class amongst itself. Tricked by the capitalist’s ploy, workers act against their ‘material interests’ due to an instilled ‘false consciousness’. While it’s certainly possible that capitalists have intentionally stoked racial conflict in the past, to suggest racism is constantly transmitted to the working class from above is to imply that racism is a capitalist conspiracy and ignores the possibility of racism arising organically from working-class economic interests. Rarely can the supposed ‘interests’ of a class be arithmetically calculated to be the class interest. While some individual capitalists benefit from a racially divided pool of labour for hyper-exploitation, total social capital requires labourers free from racial restrictions. Although the proletariat has an interest in racial harmony to achieve its world-historic task of establishing socialism, white unions have historically succeeded in maintaining higher wages by excluding black labour.
As Sidney Willhelm establishes in Can Marxism Explain America’s Racism?, “both capitalists and white union labor rely upon racism because of the qualities labor assumes as capital.” When white labour furthers its economic standing by excluding black workers, it does so by operating within the bounds of capitalist labour market conditions. The possibility of divergent material interests between racial groups presupposes objective economic inequalities along racial lines.
William Sales outlines this in Capitalism without racism: Science or fantasy:
“the roots of a phenomenon reproduced today out of the objective different relationships that white and black workers
have to the means of production, the former a working class of the center, the latter a working class of periphery. It is the objective differences between center and periphery which explain the differential development of class consciousness [along racial lines] which causes so many problems in the necessary struggle to unify the U.S. working class.”
Despite emancipation, Afro-Americans were often excluded from waged labour by white capitalists and workers alike. Over time, many Afro-Americans became ‘declassed’: lumpenproletariats that reproduced large swathes of the reserve army of labour. The alleviation of the poverty of unemployed and declassed AfroAmericans lies elsewhere from the white worker’s demand for higher wages. Instead, it consists of the redistribution of goods through social welfare and employment opportunities — which, under capitalism, could burden white labour through higher taxes and labour market competition. The precarious position of Afro-Americans and the racism they face today, from both the working class and the capitalists, can be explained in relation to capital accumulation.
Producing a theory of race and racism that avoids the commonplace pitfalls of either cultural essentialism or class reductionism is no easy task. To do so is imperative to challenge this racist, colonialist, and imperialist world. Indeed, as Fred Hampton reminds us in his speech ‘It’s A Class Struggle Goddammit!’, “if you can’t control and define phenomena and make it act in a desired manner, then you don’t even have any dealings with power, you don’t know and you probably never will know what power is.”
Ravkaran Grewal reckons with race.
Who cares about the rank-and-file?
Victor Zhang is looking for the ‘u’ in Labor.
My family and I immigrated here to Australia in 2001. We immediately faced the racist rhetoric of the Howard era which played a part in my parents becoming committed Labor voters. My family’s story is hardly unique – Labor relies on the votes of ethnically diverse communities. Yet many of us feel we are not served by Labor governments.
Federal seats such as Barton, Watson, Blaxland, and Fowler with diverse populations have been taken for granted by Labor. Each of these seats have electoral margins favouring Labor at well over 10%. This is mirrored in the New South Wales Parliament with the safest Labor seats residing in Western Sydney.
There has always existed a wide gap between the elites of the party and the regular members who join branches and unions, i.e. the rank-and-file. Labor’s decisions to suspend rank-andfile preselections in ethnically diverse electorates at the previous Federal election proved disastrous and have only widened the gap.
At the 2022 Federal election, Kristina Kenneally was parachuted from her residence in the Northern Beaches into the division of Fowler located in southwest Sydney following the retirement of the then incumbent Chris Hayes. The rank-and-file and the retiring Hayes backed Tu Le, a Vietnamese-Australian lawyer and community activist. Around 19% of the division of Fowler has Vietnamese heritage. Fowler was also a safe Labor seat with a margin of 14% in no small part due to its ethnic diversity.
“The institutional structure of the party is deeply undemocratic, where key decision makers are determined by backroom deals.”
The decision to impose Kenneally on a lower house seat was a result of her losing out on a winnable spot on the Senate ticket. In essence, factional machinations trumped the desires of the local community. Labor couldn’t possibly lose a seat they’ve held since the electorate’s inception, right? The rest is history, with the independent Dai Le narrowly winning the seat.
When Julie Owens, MP for Parramatta, announced that she would not contest the 2022 Federal election, she expressed her desire that the next Labor candidate for Parramatta be determined by a rank-and-file ballot. The Labor executive however saw fit to parachute Accenture executive Andrew Charlton from his $16 million mansion in the Eastern Suburbs into Parramatta. Unlike Fowler, the Labor margin for Parramatta was an uncomfortable 3.5%.
Understandably, the local branches were enraged and wrote to Labor’s national executive calling for a rankand-file preselection. Parramatta
locals considered for preselection included Durga Owen, a law lecturer at Western Sydney University who arrived in Australia a Tamil refugee; Alan Mascarenhas, the son of Indian migrants and the vice president of the Parramatta branch; and Abha Devasia, a lawyer for the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.
Research is clear that electorates prefer local candidates, while parachutes come with the risk of alienating the voter base. In Fowler’s case, the electorate punished Labor for ushering in a white woman residing in the Northern Beaches to replace the daughter of Vietnamese refugees.
Parliamentary representation of people with non-European ancestry in Australia lags behind other Anglophone nations. This reality isn’t even as jarring and unjust as the dismal state of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation in Parliament. Where New Zealand reserves positions for Maori representatives, in Australia we cannot even pass a referendum to give a paltry advisory body to our First Nations.
The NSW Labor party officially puts its membership count at around ten to fifteen thousand, however, the actual size is much smaller. The institutional structure of the party is deeply undemocratic, where key decision makers are determined by backroom deals. The gulf between divisions and Canberra, the discrepancy between the electorates and Macquarie
We came here because you came there
Tanisha Kurlekar analyses.
From late July to early August this year, violent riots — the largest since the 2011 race riots — guised as peaceful ‘protests’ shook the UK. Triggered largely by the stabbing and subsequent murder of three girls aged between six and nine at a dance event, eight other children and adults were also injured during the attack. Shortly after, in an anonymous tweet, a suspect was labelled across various social media platforms with no supporting evidence. The name being circulated was “Ali al-Shakati”. This misinformation led to widespread outrage throughout the UK, despite police later confirming the assailant as a British-born teenager with Rwandan parents who had no affiliation with Islam and Muslims.
Even so, the riots persisted, and rioters continued to act on their anti-immigration and Islamophobic sentiment. The English Defence League (EDL), a far-right, anti-immigration, Islamophobic organisation acted as the ringleader of these riots, which reached a violent climax in the city of Southport. Engendered by decades-long antiimmigration and anti-Muslim sentiment across the geopolitical sphere, these riots perpetuate and further legitimise this denigration, justified by the rise of
international students and migrants post-COVID, reaching a breaking point.
Due to the initial misinformation, this isolated attack was immediately weaponised as a justification for the violent, racist attack on immigrants. A candlelight vigil held for the three young victims was swiftly overrun by rioters travelling far and wide, setting a mosque on fire. An undeniable truth is unveiled among the rubble and dust: it was never about the girls, it was simply a false opportunity to ignite the right.
Immigrants and Muslims have actively avoided walking their own streets. The simplest of tasks, such as buying groceries became a matter of lifeor-death, with shop owners having their businesses destroyed. Veiled Muslim women in particular were targeted, raising questions as to why people are not allowed to display their faith.
Interestingly, growing antiimmigration sentiment has much to do with the very immigration laws which brought these Asian immigrants to the UK. Immigrants were historically called into the country after British colonies gained independence and the Commonwealth was formed as a result of the UK’s labour shortages. The immigrants who arrived
Street, have never been wider. If Labor is not even willing to bridge the gulf between parliament and the branches, how could they hope to bridge the gulf between themselves and their electorate? Trust between the rank and file and the leadership has eroded. Rank and file members of branches and unions are considered entries on a spreadsheet and are most often excluded from decisionmaking.
“Parliamentary representation of people with non-European ancestry in Australia lags behind other Anglophone nations.”
Is it any surprise that Labor’s electoral base is deserting them, given their complicity in Gaza’s ongoing genocide, increased neoliberal policies during a cost-of-living crisis, and austerity measures on the NDIS? .
Labor’s federal 2022 and NSW 2023 victories were the result of the Liberal Party being voted out and not Labor being voted in.
If Labor hopes to retain government in the coming decades, there is only one course of action: listen to the rank and file. I am not certain they will do that, but I am certain that if they do not, they will be punished routinely by the electorate.
took on many jobs ranging from scholars to bus drivers and restaurant owners, and often uprooted their whole families. This immigrant culture is very different to the immigrant culture of countries such as Australia or the USA, where the majority immigrants arrived as part of skilled migration programs, while UK immigration programs did not have the same restrictions.
Anti-immigrant sentiments are not new in England. Recently an interview went viral on the internet depicting a man spewing blatant vitriol — “they’re taking our jobs” — with many sharing and echoing his convictions. In reality, what prevented this man from getting a job was his criminal record, which he undoubtedly acquired of his own accord. So why is this narrative always being forced by the white majority? Maybe there is a barrier not allowing them to accept the multicultural society that benefits them or perhaps there is an ease in holding immigrants up as scapegoats for the inability of certain lower-middle class white groups to progress within society.
When a crime is committed by a minority, as seen through this attack, the focus turns onto the minority group and
immigrants in that country, calling for mass deportation, rather than turning to the government or the victim’s families. However, when a crime is committe
d by a white person, as seen with the Westfield Bondi Junction stabbings in Sydney earlier this year, the assailant is labelled as a deranged individual and the crime is mourned, with following pleas to change laws that support this violence and stabbings. This is a message that the Western media has turned to for decades, to try and perpetuate hate onto a particular minority within society. Such hatefuelled racism and misinformation within Western societies is not new, with roots relaying back to hate crimes committed against Muslims in America following the terrorism of Al Qaeda on 9/11.
The irony of this all lies in the fact that the British essentially “immigrated” and colonised these countries, leaving them in a state of chaos and/or economic disadvantage to this day, which has caused immigration out of those countries.
A shorter explanation would be: we came here because you came there.
The Legacy of American Colonialism in the Philippines
Marc Paniza moves from Colonisation to Modern-Day Neocolonialism.
Like all experiences of colonialism, the United States’ colonisation of the Philippines has left an enduring mark on its political, economic, and cultural landscape.
The American colonial era in the Philippines began, in 1898, with a brutal war of conquest. As Herbert P. Bix, a Pulitzer winning historian and a history doctor at Harvard, notes, this conflict resulted in the death of “one-sixth of the inhabitants of the most populous Philippine island.” This staggering loss of life underscores the violence that underpinned American colonialism, despite later attempts to portray it as “benevolent.” The brutality of this initial conquest set the stage for a complex relationship between America and the Philippines, creating a power dynamic that would influence Filipino society for generations to come.
A key strategy in establishing American colonial rule was the cooption of the Filipino elite. Bix explains that the “Filipino landowning and money-lending classes” readily aligned themselves with the American colonial structure. This strategy, while not unique to American colonialism, proved particularly effective in the Philippines. By aligning with existing power structures, the American colonists were able to establish control with minimal resistance from the most influential sectors of Philippine society. This alliance between the American colonists
and the Filipino elite would have farreaching consequences, essentially preserving and reinforcing existing socio-economic inequalities.
The introduction of Western-style democratic institutions paradoxically allowed the landowning classes to consolidate their hold on the country. Suffrage restrictions ensured that only a small percentage of the population could vote, reinforcing the power of the elite. This “democracy” was more form than substance, serving to legitimise the power of the few rather than empower the many. The 1909 Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act imposed free trade with the United States, with devastating consequences for the Philippine economy. By 1932, 74% of all Philippine foreign trade was with the U.S., and the country had shifted from being a food exporter to a food importer. This economic reorientation created a dependency that would outlast formal colonialism, tying the Philippines’ economic fate closely to that of the United States.
American colonialism also had a profound impact on Philippine culture and education. The imposition of English as the language of instruction had long-lasting effects. Salvador P. Lopez, a prominent Filipino diplomat, writer, and former President of the University of the Philippines, argues that this policy has left many Filipinos “hardly literate” in their national and local languages, and “virtually illiterate
in English.” This linguistic imperialism has created enduring barriers to education and social mobility. Furthermore, the colonial education system systematically downgraded Filipino nationalism, prioritising American history and culture over local knowledge and traditions. This cultural imposition contributed to a crisis of national identity that persists to this day, with many Filipinos struggling to reconcile their indigenous heritage with the imposed American cultural norms.
Even after gaining independence in 1946, the U.S. maintained significant control over the Philippines through various agreements. The 1947 Military Bases Agreement granted the U.S. longterm access to strategic locations in the Philippines. The Bell Trade Act of 1946 further entrenched Philippine economic dependence on the U.S., while the 1950 Quirino-Foster Agreement allowed for extensive American involvement in Philippine governance. These agreements demonstrate how formal independence did not equate to true sovereignty, as the U.S. continued to exert significant influence over Philippine affairs in the post-colonial era.
The legacy of American imperialism continues to shape the Philippines today. The country still struggles with high levels of poverty and inequality, with stark disparities between urban and rural areas. Despite attempts at land reform, tenancy remains a significant issue, perpetuating rural
poverty and inequality. Tenant farmers often pay as much as 50 to 70 percent of their crops in rent to landlords; a system that echoes the economic disparities of the colonial era. Moreover, the ongoing establishment of American military facilities on Philippine territory, justified as a deterrent in regional maritime disputes, serves to maintain a significant US presence in the Asia-Pacific region. This military footprint is a stark reminder of the enduring influence of American power in the Philippines, long after the formal end of colonial rule.
Perhaps most insidiously, the colonial experience has left many Filipinos with a complex relationship to their national identity. There is often an over-identification with American culture, despite vastly different living conditions between the two nations. This cultural dissonance, coupled with the economic and political challenges, creates a unique set of obstacles for the Philippines in the 21st century.
Understanding this history is crucial for comprehending the challenges the Philippines faces today and the ongoing nature of its relationship with the United States. It also provides important insights into the longterm effects of imperialism and the complexities of post-colonial nationbuilding. Moving forward, addressing these historical legacies will be crucial for the Philippines to achieve true independence and sustainable development. The country’s journey towards sovereignty is inextricably linked to decolonisation. Only by confronting and understanding this past can the Philippines chart a course towards a more equitable and independent future.
“I’m not a writer, I’m a record player“:
Notes of hope with Hasib Hourani
Valerie Chidiac and Ariana Haghighi press play.
We sat down with Lebanese-Palestinian poet Hasib Hourani to discuss his debut poetry collection, rock flight (2024), which explores Palestinian resistance
and Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement in a literary light.
What led Hourani to poetry seems like a case of trial and error.
In high school, Hourani initially wanted to pursue a pathway into visual arts. But after exploring art history and the creative writing scenes, he discovered “language was doing something that art wasn’t”. Then devoting his time to experimental non-fiction, they once again reached an impasse trying to pen down his ideas. They began rock flight as a series of essays before realising this form meant “the language wasn’t doing what it needed to”.
Time away from the manuscript revealed to Hourani its intended form: poetry. Hourani cites poetry’s covert language, lack of regulations and tendency to embrace space as reasons why his ideas sing in hungry harmony with this style. Though we typically dismiss poetry as too obscure to communicate testimony, Hourani’s collection testifies to poetry’s sharp
quality, suitable for truth-telling.
The poetry of rock flight is richly visual and tactile, delighting and confronting the senses. Hourani points to Lebanese-American poet Etel Adnan as an inspiration, particularly how she tinkers with poetic visuality and invents hieroglyphs. Writing as a displaced member of the Lebanese and Palestinian diaspora “there are ways to adapt the English language that feels like building a language of your own”, Hourani explains.
One way they do this is to render the reading experience as interactive, such that the book comes alive in our hands. Instructive manuals enable the reader to participate in the book’s teachings, which is particularly clever as the collection delves into forms of praxis such as BDS. This is critical given that for decades, Palestinian voices have been silenced and drained of power — Hourani upends this dynamic with this inventive form of storytelling.
Prominent in the collection is the allegory of birds: Hourani tells us that « migration is an inherent part of the
body », and is curious as to how birds move through the world compared to humans. Migration of one’s own volition is Hourani’s ideal: he shares how many of his family members’ « first travel » was forced by occupation or destruction of their homeland.
Another shade of his avian metaphor reveals a deconstruction of Zionism: he cites how Zionists use appeals to environmental safety and bird life protection to justify occupation. « Zionists care about the lives of birds more than they do Palestinians », Hourani asserts, a sobering reminder of the occupiers’ cruelty.
Hourani deftly stitches together descriptions of the natural world with family and spirituality when positioning “jannah” (heaven), “jnayneh” (garden), and “Jenin” (city in Palestine) side-byside. He not only wanted to draw out the relationship between root words but inform how his poems looked on the page whether that be through the formatting of numbered questions, multiple choice answers, and spacing of words.
In Conversation with Lamisse Hamouda
In 2018, Australian-Egyptian Hazem Hamouda was arbitrarily detained in Cairo following his journey to join his family on their holiday. His detention would last 433 days in total, sending his daughter, Lamisse Hamouda, on a long pursuit of justice. The Shape of Dust (2023) is Lamisse and Hazem’s first book, co-written to recount the experience from both perspectives. The memoir —an incredible commentary on Egyptian and Australian politics — won the National Biography Award this year. I had the immense honour of interviewing Lamisse Hamouda and here’s what she had to say.
E: What was the process like writing and reliving these experiences with your father?
L: Writing it with Dad was a lot. When I first got approached to write the book, I felt very strongly that I could not write it without Dad anyway. It’s not my direct lived experience; it’s Dad who went to prison. I just felt like a collateral
The stylistic choice of switching to Arabic, another register in his arsenal, arose as a result of him feeling he “exhausted all options in English”. The reader is still able to understand the context of which it is being said in and experience the lyricism, only without the added layer. Hourani explains that he would often omit translations to avoid sacrificing the linguistic intricacies and privileging one meaning over the other.
The chapter titled “TORTURE METHODS EMPLOYED BY THE STATE OF ISRAEL” could not be read in isolation from the context of ongoing and documented abuse of Palestinians in torture camps such as Sde Teiman. Hourani began writing in 2020, was working on his first draft during the 2021 Intifada, and wrapped up the book in early October 2023.
The timing of publication was not lost on him, and neither was writing in present tense. In an earlier draft, Hourani included the disclaimer, “I am not a writer, I am a record player. These stories are not invented, these words are
part of that story; that I was in Egypt, that I had some skills to offer to try and get him out; that I was his daughter; but Dad is at the centre of it. With my own ethics and politics around abolition and prisoner rights, I felt like I couldn’t conscionably write the book without Dad’s involvement. Luckily, Dad saw it as an opportunity to be able to tell his story. He initially wrote by himself, and I wrote by myself. Then he would finish drafts, send them to me, and I would compare his recollections with my own. That’s when I started piecing together this dual narrative approach rather than turning his writing into prose or changing his words. There’s something special about Dad, who has English as his second language – writing in English and sharing his experience and all its little quirks — I didn’t want to smooth that out or take that away. It was also challenging, sitting with a deeply traumatic experience and triggering each other throughout it. At the same
not mine to make up” only to remove it and rework the text to ensure that any language and content is not dated. rock flight functions both as poetry collection and political manifesto, a welcome addition to escalating calls for BDS in political discourses. It touches on the historical BDS movement, which may surprise people new to the campaign for Palestinian liberation — and acts as a reminder that Palestinian resistance has not wavered over time. If people take one thing away from the collection, Hourani hopes it is their interpretation of BDS: not as an act of anti-semitism, but as an act of “choking back” after suffering from suffocation. rock flight is not a guidebook you should consult for stepby-step instructions on how to boycott, but it is a lyrical motivator for readers to find ways to organise.
rock flight (2024) can be found in bookstores now.
time, it was an opportunity to get closer. Once Dad stopped writing, because [in the book] it goes from the dual narrative to the interviews, I included a chapter where I talk about how Dad couldn’t write any further. It was through those interviews that we really found a lot of healing together by writing the book. It was an opportunity to have conversations in a safe container of the book and if things got too hectic, we’d be like “well we just have to say this because of the book” or “we need to explore this really difficult part.” It gave us this comfort of distancing that allowed us to sit with really painful emotions and process them. To understand what we wanted to tell publicly, and what we needed, just for us, to heal our relationship and ourselves.
E: Throughout the book you’ve demonstrated that, while awful, your father’s case was not exceptional but part of an entrenched global power system. Do you think this experience changed your perspective of global politics?
L: One of the things I found the most shattering about my Dad’s experience is the fact that it’s common. I find that more disturbing than when something is an exception; when something is a pattern. The challenge is that when violence is normalised, you necessarily need more violence at some point because otherwise people numb out. One of the things that has really impacted me is seeing the pattern replicated across different countries and different circumstances for many many years: with Palestinian prisoners, and the narratives coming out of the American prison system. I wanted to include some of that research in the book but it didn’t really fit. But, you know, [there is] direct influence between the American prison system and the Egyptian prison system. There are new prisons being built in Egypt being modelled off the ‘justice’ and the ‘human rights’ of the American prison system. These are not models we want to copy and yet we know that they share with each other. There’s also the fact that Egypt and the state of Israel do share intelligence, methodologies of torture, and state repressive tactics. It’s really devastating and that’s something I have not been able to reckon with, but it has deepened my commitment to ideas and practices around abolition.
E: I think your Dad also mentioned in one of his passages that Tora Prison was first established by the British in the 1800s, and it’s interesting to think about colonial tools that are reappropriated.
L: Totally — and that it was established for political dissidents. That’s been its purpose since it was built.
E: You touch on the title The Shape of Dust in a passage. Could further speak to the meaning of the title? .
L: I used to be able to bring some books in for Dad. One of his requests was that I bring in some Islamic and Sufi philosophy for him to read. One of the books I found at a book fair was called The Shape of Light by a famous Sufi philosopher, called Suhrawardi, and that was Dad’s favourite book. When he was released from prison, that was the only book he brought out with him and he left all the other books I gave him in this makeshift prison library that he set up with one of his cellmates. The book was dog-eared, underlined, [and] is a meditation on the question of ‘Who is God?’ Then, when we [discuss] what we think the book is about, Dad and I discuss that it is about how to hold onto your humanity in the face of dehumanisation. In the Islamic worldview, human beings are made from dust, so I was like: What if we have an homage to his favourite book and a reference to that idea from Islamic cosmology? That became our title — the shape of being human.
E: I did some research in the Honi Soit archives and I know you’ve written a few articles for Honi. What was your Honi and broader USyd experience like? Do you have any advice for reporters, and students with dreams of writing professionally?
L: I had a eally good time at Sydney University. I had a really rough time through university [in general], I had dropped out twice and went to two different universities before I got to Sydney. Even though I was 25, at the time I was a ‘mature aged student’ but I had such a good time. It was a great learning curve, and the foundation of my antiracist politics. I was involved in ACAR and the Autonomous Muslim Women’s Collective, had a brief foray into student politics, and with the Honi Soit team. The one thing I loved was just having these opportunities to throw myself out and to learn in an environment where it’s pretty low-stakes to fail. It’s okay if you don’t win some election, you keep going. Extra-curricular experiences were so great, and being able to write for Honi and be friends with people who are editing, and getting to understand how editing works — just do it! Use your time at university to experiment. That’s what is most valuable; experimenting with different writing styles, articles, ideas. Use it to explore your voice. That’s what’s so valuable about a student newspaper. It’s your place to practise.
Emilie Garcia-Dolnik interviews.
WHAT COMES AFTER “DECOLONISATION”?
A SCREAMINg
A screaming comes across the sky — it is a jet fighter.
The decolonisation of Africa and Asia was a predominantly 20th-century undoing of European colonialism. In 1957, Ghana gained independence from the British Empire. Malayan independence was announced the same year — Merdeka! Freedom! In 1975, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam declared independence. It was 2023, and Palestine —
“MALAYSIA,
USA
/ HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?”: THE SEMI-COLONY
In Malaysia, decolonisation was unfinished business. In the 1960s and 1970s, Malaysia became a British puppet regime, an imperialist experiment. We were ruled by compradors — an indigenous trading class oriented towards building a subordinate, but mutually beneficial partnership in crime with British capital. These compradors were protected by Malaysia’s “founding father,” Tunku Abdul Rahman, a selfproclaimed playboy who received an upper-class British education. Tunku was granted token independence to defend British influence, conservingt heir domination of our economy. Disappointingly, this semicolonial Malaysia was also complicit in the Vietnam War. Despite being recognised by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Malaysia converges with counter-revolution in the “Third World.” A transportation hub for Penang, Butterworth is where the UK mobilised Commonwealth forces for the slaughter of Vietnam, and where the RAAF Transport Flight Vietnam (RTFV) established operations. Here, RTFV members honed their piloting skills, preparing cargo aircrafts assembled in Canada and flown into Malaysia to violently confront Hanoi. A process that encompasses the globe, imperialism arranges semi-colonies to aid and abet the military-industrialcongressional-parliamentary complex.
“OUR DAY WILL COME”: THE SCREAMING
I was raised in the state of Penang, Malaysia, and studied at a public secondary school in the township of Butterworth. On the mailing list of my high school alumni association, an ex-student once emailed images of “old Penang.” Attached were photographs of the Australian Air Force Base in 1960s–70s Butterworth, when Malaysia became federated and the U.S. waged a crusade against Vietnam, both of which were backed by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). A great purveyor of brutality, the RAAF is pictured starting the engine of a jet fighter manufactured in France and flown in from Australia to massacre the Vietnamese people.
Juneau Choo echoes the past.
Imperialism is a joint-dictatorship of neo-colonies such as Malaysia, and settler-states such as Australia and the temporary Zionist entity. A highly dynamic system that engineers spit hoods in Darwin, Aboriginal deaths on the Tiwi Islands, offshore detention in Nauru, and torture camps in the Negev, imperialism is a global consensus. A bloodthirsty network of states and multinational corporations, imperialism subjugates Indigenous sovereignty, Palestine, and another possibility: a stateless, classless, and humane society created after total liberation.
“RISE UP, DON’T BACK DOWN / NO ZIONISM IN MY TOWN”: THE NEO-COLONY
In the 1980s, Malaysia became a non-British polity. Still, we were governed by bourgeois nationalists — an indigenous entrepreneurial class geared towards promoting a politically independent, but limited development of the country. These bourgeois nationalists were served by Malaysia’s fourth Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, a strongman who never had any inclinations towards Britain. Mahathir made former British interests his own, boycotting the UK through the nationwide campaign Buy British Last (BBL) and opening up Malaysia’s “post-colonial” markets to the double penetration of the American Empire and our former fascist rulers, Japan.
Appallingly, this neo-colonial Malaysia is guilty of perpetuating the Palestinian genocide, too. Despite calling Hamas “freedom fighters” and shaking hands with martyr Ismail Haniyeh, Malaysia commits itself to de-globalising the Intifada, limiting its reach “from all rivers to all seas.”
A city of golden rain trees (Samanea saman), Taiping is where Malaysia confines political prisoners in the Kamunting Detention Centre, and where the Mahathir administration
brought into existence Operasi Lalang, “Weeding Operation.” Here, the secret police tortures prisoners of conscience, interning Yunus Ali and other progressive voices detained incommunicado under the Internal Security Act (ISA).
A University of Malaya Students’ Union (UMSU) activist, Yunus Ali once fled Malaysia, joining the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) while abroad in Pakistan. Yunus became a guerrilla in a PLO commando unit under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, and fought against Zionist invaders and their Phalangist allies during the Lebanese Civil War. In 1987, the Malaysian regime incarcerated the pro-Palestine militant, among many others; and in 2024, they arrested the organiser of a pro-Palestine grassroots collective, Gegar Amerika, despite banning Zionist athletes from a Paralympic qualifying event and Zionist-flagged ships from our ports. A structure of domestic and international affairs, imperialism coordinates neo-colonies to unlink globalised solidarities to assist settler-states.
“WE DON’T WANT TWO STATES / WE WANT ‘48”: THE SETTLER-STATE
Since 26 January 1788, so-called Australia has remained a mass atrocity organised around the ongoing Nakba of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, a kleptocratic mafia founded on stolen lands, waters, airways, generations. Like the plundering Zionist entity, it is controlled by settlers, a reactionary and chauvinistic “species” of colonists invading unceded territories, seas, rivers, flora and fauna — openly terrorising Indigenous peoples under siege. On this continent, settlers are presently protected by Foreign Minister Penny Wong, a Malaysian Australian who accords steadfast support to genocidaires perpetuating the two-state solution of the puppet State of Palestine and the illegitimate Zionist regime — a de facto one-state dissolution of Palestine.
In Butterworth, in “new Penang,” I grew up playing sports and learning mathematics near the air base where semi-colonial Malaysia and settlercolonial Australia had butchered Vietnam. In spite of, or because of, the victory of the Viet Cong, I routinely heard the RAAF fly over football goalposts and integral calculus in my secondary school, even years after
Because it is committed to finalising the two-state solution to the Palestinian question, Australia normalises the partition plan for Palestine into a genocidal reality in the West Bank and Gaza, and an apartheid state in the rest of occupied Palestine. In the 20th century, what “decolonisation” meant was two-, three-, many-state solutions: a separation from colonial empires, though not a complete annulment of imperial power. In spite of, or because of, their nominal independence, newly independent polities of the “Third World” emerged from national liberation struggles as troubled neo-colonies. In the aftermath of “decolonisation,” they became bystanders or collaborators of the holocausts of the First Nations, not helpers of the survivors.
Vietnamese reunification. Unlike the aeroplane in Mrs Dalloway, the RAAF did not skywrite over my classrooms and canteen, but their aircrafts did frequently subject me and other students to loud noise … for extended periods of time. Our education may be Made in Malaysia, but like exposure to radioactive waste from the Australian mining company Lynas
What liberation means now is the unfinished business of “decolonisation”: abolishing pipelines, police, prisons, borders, markets, gender, censuses, ombudsmen, the Labor Party, drug prohibitions, the Abolitionist Model, two-state solutions, voices to Parliament, and other instruments in the hands of an armed settler-state, which are weaponized against justified resistance, and ought to be disbanded to repair sovereignty. For human emancipation, for Land Back, settlerstates must be disarmed, defunded, delegitimized, denied, destroyed, and replaced, not just “decolonised” like old Penang, Malaysia.
in the Malaysian city of Kuantan, our hearing loss will be as Australian Grown as the screaming of colonised peoples in two, three, many Vietnams, Palestines, Western Saharas, Tamil Eelams, West Papuas, Kanakys, Aboriginal lands. A screaming comes across the skies. It is imperialism, and a call to arms against it.
Sheikh Hasina’s Regime: Bangladeshi Student Protests in Context
Sheikh Hasina’s regime first began in opposition to Bangladeshi dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad. She, alongside political leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Khaleda Zia, campaigned against his imposed martial law and suspension of the Constitution in the 1980s. This eventually led to the 1991 parliamentary elections — the first elections in nearly a decade, and the new beginnings of a “democracy” in Bangladesh. However, over her decades in power (19962001, 2009-2025), Hasina’s leadership quickly revealed itself to be only an
Mehnaaz Hossain contextualises Sheikh Hasina’s regime and student’s rage.
introduced in 1972, the quota system was designed to reserve more than half of prestigious public service roles for specific members of the community, including minorities. However, Hasina’s government ensured 30% of these jobs were reserved for descendants of 1971 Liberation War veterans known as “freedom fighters”. This is a significant percentage and has empirically been observed as a corrupt mechanism to specifically benefit members of the Awami League. Essentially, Hasina was building up a base of supporters to always remain within the ranks of the
angered a growing youth population facing unemployment in a country with heavy income inequality and worsening political frweedoms. The issue of quota reform was the culmination of several contextual crises which rendered it severe enough to spark nationwide protests.
It does not help that, even after the eruption of anger towards Hasina’s corruption in Bangladesh through the student protests, her response was drastically escalating her authoritarian behaviour. She met student protestors with bullets,
Art by Ramneek Thind.
job quotas. Protests continued long after the quota was overturned and meritocracy restored by the Supreme Court. The “Non-Cooperation Movement”, spearheaded by a quota reform protest activist, was functionally the final protest. It was a long march to Dhaka with a single, unifying demand on August 5, 2024: the resignation of Sheikh Hasina and her cabinet. Sheikh Hasina resigned that afternoon, fleeing the country without so much as a speech. Protestors stormed Ganabhaban (the official residence of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh), occupying and stealing
Bandhu
Purny Ahmed stitches a history.
Muslims and Hindus are not friends in the Indian Subcontinent. It is not something I understood the depth of until very recently; this animosity between neighbours. When you are brown — even growing up in the diaspora — the distance and distrust between religions, cultures, and nations is normalised and left unquestioned. A tension fills the air when a Desi Hindu and Desi Muslim cross paths – simultaneous with the comfort of finding someone from the homeland who looks like you, talks like you, is the discomfort of generations of baggage and hurt between the two peoples.
The relationship between the two groups can be described through the quiet gasps over the controversy of an interfaith relationship in the community and the ‘good luck’ wishes from the well-meaning few. It can be described through the polite handshake between uncles who then turn their backs on one another in the name of politics. It can be described through the micro-aggressions between friends trying to understand the other’s religion, but often missing the mark with preconceived biases already ingrained. In the diaspora, we exist as neighbours – and, perhaps, distant friends – but never too closely together. In fact, we are warned, over and over, to be careful, to not get too close, to save ourselves from what is expected to be an inevitable hurt. We continue to maintain the distance we were taught, that our parents were taught and their parents before them, and we forget that we all belong to the same land.
The Partition of India in 1947 divided the land into two, the borders running through villages and towns and communities. India was awkwardly placed in the middle of the two states of West and East Pakistan (now Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively) —a division of borders majorly decided based on the major religious population in the respective areas. With tensions already sifting in the air between the two religions, the Partition only resulted in more violence and tragedy between the two faiths. People were forced to flee their ‘homelands’ to the side of the new border that would be ‘safer’ for them, or they were killed in the crossfire. It must be noted that this decision was implemented by the British two days before leaving their Indian settlement after 89 years of direct occupation, rendering the Indian subcontinent completely disoriented. As many as 2,000,000 people were killed in communal massacres. 15,000,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were forced to flee their homes.
Following this was the Liberation War, otherwise known as the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971. West
Pakistan abused its power as the governing state to exploit East Pakistan’s resources and labour. Amongst all the politics and history of this genocide, the detail of language loss, and the subsequent loss of culture, has always taken centre-stage in our teachings. In an attempt to enforce Islamic unification between the two states of Pakistan, West Pakistan became intolerant of the language and culture of the East Pakistan (Bengali) peoples, believing them to be too closely related to Hinduism and Sanskrit. Whilst Pakistan was a predominantly Islamic state, the Bengal region has always been a melting pot of Islamic and Hindu culture and peoples. Our Bangla bhasha and our Bengali culture tied us together as one community, one people, in the face of our differences. Thus, our language was ruthlessly targeted, our culture stripped, our scholars massacred, and our Bengali community, Hindus especially, faced with the brutality of the West Pakistani forces.
The war had always felt so far away — so long before my time — until it found its way to my doorstep. The Student Quota protests this year made way for conversations about the war in my home, stories of my familial history and our ties with not only our land, but also with a past community that protected each other in the face of ethnic cleansing. My ammu told us a story of my abbu, an unregistered freedom fighter in his late teens, who snuck out to the village to join the movement. He remembers the story in hazed details; a life so far apart from the one he lives now. He remembers the Pakistani troops raiding the village. He remembers his warning to the Hindu community, his fellow Bengalis before all else, to leave before the troops arrived with the hope that they would make it out unharmed. There are no details of
by Deepika Jain
if they did leave, or if they survived the war, or if the slightest act of solidarity was enough to save their lives; but there is always a delicate, almost insignificant, bit of hope in stories like these. I think about the recent circulating images of the Muslim men, in their robes and their toopis, praying in front of the Hindu temple, guarding it through the night against arson and destruction –and while it’s not nearly enough to take the hurt of our history (and our present) and throw it aside, it is hopeful at the very least.
I cling onto this hope like a starved animal, holding onto my language with its Sanskrit roots and my culture with its Hindu/Islamic fusional influence, knowing that I am not Bengali without my other half, no matter how much the two faiths try to abandon each other.
The irony is in that the Hindu/Muslim pairing seems to be a common one, whether it be in friendship, or romance, or kinship. Bengalis, of any faith, of any country, of any region, find each other and they stick like blood against skin. We seem to choose each other in a room full of people of the appropriate religion and convince ourselves that we would be the exception to a generational rule. We share the same face, the same bhasha and, no matter which way you look at it, the same history – we are knotted together with invisible strings and divided by invisible borders.
Art
On noticingfinally my KanthaNakshi bedspread
There comes a moment after a dinner party when all is quiet. The footsteps deaden, the music stops, and the conversations fade from the living space to the front door, to the cars which drive off silently. You can hear the slow drip of water in the sink where the dirty plates are piled. The fabric on the sofas still carry the imprints of reclined bodies. The leftovers on the dining table look like an abandoned art project.
It was in one of those very moments hunched over and reluctantly picking up food scraps off my bed, that I noticed my age-worn, bright red, embroidered bedspread. Of course I’d noticed it before. But for the very first time, I really began to notice. It was made by our family housemaid in Bangladesh in between her work, and handed to us as a gift. I remember seeing her crafting it by hand for weeks on end, making up the designs in her head as she wove hundreds of running stitches into the soft fabric. The final product — a beautiful bed sheet intricately stitched from corner to corner with motifs of paisleys, flowers, and geometric patterns.
My bedspread is a vivacious Nakshi Kantha artefact.
Nakshi Kantha is an ancient art form practised mostly by rural women across Bangladesh and East India. The word ‘Nakshi’ comes from the Bengali word ‘Naksha’, meaning artistic patterns. ‘Kantha’ comes from its Sanskrit equivalent ‘Kontha’, meaning rags. As a practice, Nakshi Kantha stitching dates back a thousand years. It was used to upcycle old, worn-out pieces of fabric and stitch them together layer upon layer to resurrect them as quilts, shawls, cushion covers, and bedspreads. The pieces are iconically double-sided since the running stitch can be applied to both faces of the fabric. Traditionally, Nakshi Kantha pieces were made from frayed sarees, and the threads were sourced from the borders of the sarees themselves. Today, international designer brands and chain retailers across South Asia commercialise traditional Nakshi Kantha designs for contemporary fashion and streetwear.
What amazes me the most about Nakshi Kantha is how simple stitches can narrate such intricate stories. In Hindu cultures, Nakshi Kantha often tell folk tales, and depicts animals, Gods, and characters from religious mythology. In the absence of animals in Islamic art, Nakshi Kantha adapts into a brilliant patchwork of florals, vegetal designs, mandalas, and linework. These stories serve as a mode of expression for the women creating them, and sometimes as the only way to have their voices seen and heard.
When I notice my bedspread now, I try to reflect on the thoughts of the maker when she carefully stitched each thread into the fabric hour after hour. What were her passions and dreams,
and did her hands consciously or subconsciously translate them into art? I think too about how casually I use the bedspread, and how uncomfortable it makes me feel thinking about how roughly it’s been handled. Surely a work of art like this should be framed and hung up on a bare wall in some lofty museum?
But Nakshi Kantha is meant to be felt and touched. As a functional art form, it injects beauty and colour into mundane parts of life, like throwing on a shawl or hosting a dinner party. Perhaps then the way to treat Nakshi Kantha with the most integrity is to use it according to the humility it was purposed for — to not notice it until those moments of quietude and stillness, when its embroidered stories finally come to life for those who are willing to pay attention.
A Revolutionary Wardrobe
I. Traditional ribbon braids: a cherished adornment still worn by Indigenous-Oaxacan women
II. Black beret and sunglasses: quintessential elements of the Black Panther Party Uniform
III. Cornrows and other braided hairstyles: powerfully assert Black identity and pride, while rejecting Eurocentric beauty standards
IV. Moko Kauae: traditional Maori tattooing on the chin and/or lips, now representing cultural pride and unity
V. Keffiyeh:
A chequered, traditional headdress emblematic of Palestinian cultural and national identity, serving as a symbol of resistance against Israeli occupation.
VI. Punjabi Suit:
A traditional South-Asian dress, stubbornly and proudly worn by our immigrant mothers and grandmothers in the West, though, embraced with a contemporary twist
Nafeesa Rahman pays close attention.
Art and words by Ramneek Thind
Art by Deepika Jain
One struggle;
one fight; more than one knafeh
Rand Khatib cook something up. Knafeh holds a in the hearts of as the national symbolising a culinary but also a deep to the land. The dish is more than just a sweet treat; it represents a piece of Palestinian identity that has been passed down through generations, becoming a staple at gatherings and celebrations. It’s a dish that binds the past to the present, a thread of memory and resistance woven through time.
Among a dinner table of Palestinian friends, banter surrounds the conversation about who makes the best knafeh and what it looks like, with na3meh and khishneh (‘fine’ and ‘rough’) being among the most trivial disagreements. Na3meh and khishneh refer to whether the kataifi dough is ground up or not. If left as long doughy strings, the cooking process outputs a rougher texture; a crispier knafeh Meanwhile, its na3meh counterpart outputs a smoother, finer texture that melts in your mouth.
The preparation of knafeh is often a communal activity marking a special occasion, with families and neighbours coming together in anticipation to prepare the dish. The making of a ritual in itself. The dough is meticulously prepared, the cheese carefully chosen, and the syrup flavoured with orange blossom or rose water – a staple in Middle Eastern desserts. This dessert is not just eaten but often celebrated as the highlight of gatherings and a source of pride among those who make it. Drawing people in with its sweet and savoury scent, the aroma of knafeh wafts through Palestinian streets; whispers of home, of belonging, and of a land that refuses to be forgotten.
from Gaza City, also occupied in 1967 but notably also under blockade since 2007. Til this day, the blockade has had a compounded strangle on Gaza’s economy, limiting access to staple food items like cheese.
Today, knafeh ghazawiyya can rarely be found in Gaza due to the total blockade and ongoing terror of the Israeli-USWestern Genocidal axis. The Palestinian people, like all human beings, find joy, life, and love in inventing familiar foods using unfamiliar ingredients, resulting in knafehs in Gaza today being made using graham crackers, stale bread, powdered milk, and whatever else can be found in the Imperialists’ aid packages. Cheese is as rare and scarce as a minute of silence free from buzzing drones, wails of martyrdom or the endless ringing in ears with tinnitus.
Cheese in Palestine and across the Arab world is typically white, semi-hard, and preserved in brine solution. Typically made from sheep, goat, and cow’s milk, it melts well, making it perfect for the texture of knafeh’s gooey interior. Before 1948, access to cheese and dairy products was linked to the seasons, class status (city) people, or whether a (peasant/farmer) had cattle and could make their own dairy products. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 significantly disrupted this access. The restrictions on movement, particularly with the increase in Israeli settlementbuilding in the West Bank from 1977 and the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, left Palestinian communities fractured along and within colonial borders. This was further cemented by the construction of the 708-kilometre long apartheid wall, and the blockade on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
However, a more contentious division that Palestinians do not often like to talk about is the notable distinction between knafehs along colonial borders. These borders, drawn by the machinery of occupation, have sliced through the heart of Palestine, resulting in different recipes emerging across previously nonexistent borders. Three key examples of this are the knafeh jaleeliyya, knafeh nabulseyyeh and knafeh ghazawiyya. Knafeh jaleeliyya is the knafeh made in the Galilee region of Palestine’s territories occupied in 1948, found in places like Akka, Haifa, and Nazareth. Knafeh nabulseyyeh originates from the city of Nablus, occupied in 1967, where its Palestinian inhabitants continue to live under military occupation. Last, but not least, is the knafeh ghazawiyya, which originates
Beyond physical barriers, the permit system – informed by an apartheid system of governance – prevents Palestinians from travelling freely across illegitimate borders, while Jewish and other nonArab citizens of the state move freely,
sometimes to the same destinations. Israelis carry different number plates and drive on different roads to Palestinians, making barriers and checkpoints (and apartheid) invisible to settlers. This is why it is not uncommon for settlers and visitors to “experience” Palestine/ Israel and not bear witness to the settlercolonial enterprise (not unlike how Australians tread on colonial massacre sites every day); a reason why Palestinians have called on tourists to either boycott this destination or enter with their eyes wide open to masked structures of racial domination.
As a result of the intentional fracturing of Palestinian communities, Palestinians in the 1948 occupied territories, in the West Bank, and in Gaza, eat recognisably different geographical closeness of these places. The variations in reflection of the fragmented nature of Palestinian society under occupation, with each region adapting the recipe to the ingredients available to them; each variation a story depicting the region’s experience with colonial borders.
In Gaza, the blockade has banned hundreds of harmless food staples, like
chocolate, from being imported. In the West Bank, hundreds of checkpoints make life difficult for the madany people and settlers often attack the crops and cattle of fellahin. Palestinians in the 1948 Occupied Territories have the least restriction, but encounter a psychological terror of a state hell-bent on erasing Palestinian identity – encountering prepackaged supermarket knafeh labelled “Israeli” or, at best, “Mediterranean”. Despite these differences, knafeh remains a unifying symbol of Palestinian identity, a reminder of shared heritage and resilience in the face of genocide and erasure, and an enduring hope for the day when these colonial borders will crumble and knafeh, in all its forms, can be shared freely through all of Palestine. When that time comes, Ethan and Rand will be found in Al Quds, tasting each of the many variations.
Art by Mahima Singh
To the people of Lebanon
I don’t explicitly refer to myself as an immigrant. My go-to descriptor is, “I was born in Lebanon and migrated with my parents when I was a baby”. Maybe that was to absolve me of any involvement because I was too young to make such a life-changing decision and my parents were responsible for my life.
in, sponsor and inject money into the Lebanese economy).
When I wake up in the morning, it is unusual to not receive a news notification in exchange for a silent Whatsapp chat. I often send links in the chat, asking “do you know anything about this” only to be met with “shou badna nethamal ta nethamal” (what do we have left to endure).
As for me…I am safe, my body is safe, and I am able to continue my life despite the worry.
4 to call for justice, when that should be the case day in and day out.
This letter is addressed to the Lebanese people. Not the government, not the socalled Opposition, not the remainder of the political class, and not even the international community. As one of millions of Lebanese living in the diaspora because their parents deemed it better for them to grow up elsewhere, I am stuck in limbo. Heartbroken for a home that I have not lived in, yearning for a country where I can reunite with my family.
It is not with ease that I publish this letter, knowing that despite the several drafts, I could keep writing because I don’t think I will ever find the right words. But
The lack of choice challenged my perception of home when I began to recognise the difference in my lifestyle compared to my peers. As if my house functioned as an embassy, I lived in Lebanon and when I stepped outside I lived in Australia.
I am a dual citizen but only have an Australian passport. I pronounce my last name according to its English spelling more than its Arabic spelling (technically Syriac). I know that many who get to know me might say I’m more Lebanese than Australian. I have been told by my family that I seem more Australian than Lebanese? Why is it when I go to Lebanon, a radar detects that foreign je ne sais quoi?
You say welcome to Lebanon, I say welcome home. You say how do you it’s my . You say wow, you’ve been if raised outside of is a sin. You say wait to leave, I say wait to come
The question on everybody’s lips: Is that Israel or an earthquake?
We say “may the earth split and swallow us whole” when we are frustrated forgetting that it could very much happen. Nature has a sick sense of humour but Lebanese people have a sickly sense of humour. You exchange sonic boom banter each time Israel breaks the sound barrier over Lebanon.
We can’t catch a break, but we can catch a party (or two) in between.
We love to divide ourselves; East, West, North, South. Maronite, Catholic, Orthodox, Sunni, Shia, Druze, Alawite. We pride ourselves on having approximately 18 recognised sects and assume that we invented diversity. Tourists, citizens, non-citizens, and refugees are living in the same suburb under very diverse conditions.
Did you hear about the other chemicals that were stored in addition to the ammonium nitrate? Did you hear that eventually the Germans — who are no stakeholders — took these chemicals and exploded them elsewhere because the government did not act? Did you know that a Belgian-owned company offered to clean up the ground of the Port from chemicals free of charge and the government’s response was “what money do we get?”
We tried to stage a revolution in 2019 but we let political parties wedge division and then we profited off of each other’s pain within our (mostly) self-serving NGO ventures. It’s time for another revolution. It may be naive of me but I don’t presume to know what it should look like.
It won’t get smaller unless it gets bigger, so let’s put that into practice. We have all heard Majida El-Roumi’s song ‘Oum Thadda’ because we love listening to our songs calling for revolution. Next time, listen closely because “your land is calling you, revolution, where are you?”
To anyone who wishes to migrate, know that from then on, you will be sporadically returning to Lebanon. Your identity transforms from citizen to seasonal tourist. Visitor. You might get upgraded to a
You might be thinking, why am I painting a negative picture of Lebanon? If someone who isn’t Lebanese reads this, what would they think? We should keep our problems in-house. I think I am long past the point of what others think of Lebanon because they will never truly know it to the extent you and I do.
Call it what you want: “positivity”, “living life to the fullest”, “surviving”, but from afar, it looks like “hibernation”, “resignation” and “numbing of the pain.” We romanticise Lebanon pre-1975, calling upon the waning memory of the golden age of the 1960s. I’m sure you have seen these photographs at every Duty Free, every home in the diaspora. It is embedded in our consciousness. Maybe that is all there is to it, an image to sell, never a reality to bring to life.
On August 4, 2020, an explosion at the Port of Beirut was caused by the foolish storage of 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. Situated mere metres from residential areas, thousands were murdered. The families of victims have had their lives irrevocably altered, and the rest of their lives will be spent trying to advocate for the truth, and justice.
We were all enraged. And when people are full of rage, it’s hard to stop them. But we stopped and the anger was brought to a simmer.
sponsor role (as
I did not see the dilapidated buildings, the glass blanketing the streets, the drops of blood lining the stairs. But I did see this from afar, and I felt helpless.
Justice was promised in 5 days…it has been 4 years. We wait until every August
Commissioned by Ramiz Barquet, a Mexican of Lebanese descent, the largest replica of the Emigrant statue was erected in 2002 at the Port of Beirut to honour Lebanese migrants living in the diaspora. Did Barquet ever think that his creation would withstand the explosion of 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate? I think he knew that statue would bear witness to the Lebanese experience, represent those of us abroad and sentenced to a lifetime of silence.
If the statue could speak, what would it say? Ana ekhid maw2af menkon? Felij la t3alij?
What will you say? Kel hadis elo hadees? Lesh hemle el seloum bel 3ared?
I know what you’re going to say: Lebanon is tiny and so many other actors have a say in what goes on in and around it? What power do we have in the grand scheme of things? No one is asking you to change geopolitics, but you change the makeup of domestic politics.
We continue to ask the question: what has Lebanon ever done for us when it should be what have we ever done for Lebanon? We are eager to represent Lebanon beyond its borders but cower when it comes to addressing the contradictions within. Lebanon is not just a place, or a surface area of land, it is you and me.
By the end of this letter, you may still disagree with me. What we can all agree upon, is that we can never agree upon what Lebanon is, nor what it was, and what we want it to be. So while you go through all the alternative options, I know for sure that I want my home back. Please consider my proposition. Start to think about your future in Lebanon, not outside of it. If not for yourself, for the next generation... for Lebanon. Because we all love Lebanon, right?
Yours sincerely,
a Lebanese person who happens to live in the diaspora
Valerie Chidiac corresponds.
Art by Laudy Kareh
The Women of Palestine
My mother would sing to me
But curiosity bested me
So instead I dug And rich was the soil that nourished my roots
Oh the lies they told Betrayal is the coldest enemy Of my land Is it my land?
For I am afraid she has forgotten me before our meeting Patience will not un-occupy my soul of its yearning My identity occludes me, waging a forever war
A bullet in my heart.
Violently still; but I would not dare wish it away Call me crazy
For this pain is but a necessary visitor Whispering reminders of our post-colonial circumstances I climbed the tree, mother; And I can’t get down
Interview with my Dad
Zeina Khochaiche writes.
Last week I sat down with my Dad over coffee to ask him a few questions about his experience protesting for Palestine. As far as interviews go, this one felt particularly vulnerable. Growing up, my Dad always deferred from politics. Talking about politics in our house was almost forbidden. How could you blame him when he experienced firsthand the devastations of the civil, and geopolitical, war in Lebanon that left him and his 13 siblings displaced for several years, and then migrants to a completely new country at the age of 15?
But to my shock, in the middle of July, my Dad called me with youthful energy to say he was now attending the Palestine protests with my cousin every Sunday. Today, my Dad is still attending and I wanted to ask him why
ZK: Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a stranger. Who are you?
HK: My name is Hassan and I am Zeina and Josh’s Dad. I was born in El Khiam in Lebanon in 1965 and migrated to Australia in 1980. I have been in Australia for 44 years on August 1. I was a stayat-home-Dad until my twins went to school. I am a business owner and of course, still a Dad.
ZK: Dad, what do you know of Palestine?
HK: Culturally, Palestine is similar to Lebanon. We share foods, poets and history. My hometown actually shares a border with Palestine. I grew up with a mixed landscape of Syria and Palestine. There are quite a few refugee camps for Palestinian and Syrian refugees that have been in Lebanon for as long as I can remember. I’ve continued hearing and reading about Palestine since. Also, my cousin is married to a Palestinian man. They lived in the Ain al-Helwi refugee camp in Sidon, Lebanon for a while.
ZK: Had you ever attended a protest before?
HK: No. I feared protests and I was nervous there would be legal infringements or violence. I think that is also to do with how I was raised.
ZK: When did you decide to start attending the weekly protests and who do you go with?
HK: You already know this but I go with your cousin, my nephew. He is a young, intelligent man and great company. He has been going every week since October 7 and makes his way from Wollongong to attend. His dedication along with my heartbreak for my hometown and the devastation occurring is what prompted me to start attending last month.
ZK: At home we rarely speak about politics so why did you start engaging more now?
HK: I distracted myself from politics because of what I was confronted with for the first 15 years of my life. It still impacts me today. There are thousands of children and families who will be the same but far worse.
Like I said before, my hometown is on the border of this war and has been for decades. For years it has been subject to civil unrest and geopolitical mess. My brother and his family still live there and I have my own house there. Everyday I pray there is something more I can do than watch it happen on TV.
ZK: What is your experience like attending a protest?
HK: Initially I felt nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. But I almost immediately felt inspired and informed. That’s the difference. Different people of different backgrounds attend the protest and I feel proud to be attending.
ZK: In your opinion, what is the power of weekly protest pressure?
HK: I think, done peacefully, they definitely have a place in society. It is one of the most important ways for the common people to have their voices heard and to find other people with the same commitment. Also, the youth of today are driving the change. I wear the Students For Palestine shirt you got me and I feel proud of that. Fresh ideas come from the students and the youth, not those entrenched in power.
Interviewing my Dad felt surreal. I read and write of the devastation that has been occurring in the Middle East regularly but I subconsciously remove my Dad and our family from its orbit. In my mind, I refuse to allow my family to be victims of such desolation and injustice. However, my Dad doesn’t have the privilege of forgetting his hometown or the first house he grew up in when he sees it being bombed on the news. He can’t smile happily about his past when his traumatic childhood was a product of wartime and subsequently, his adulthood living in the diaspora.
So when I ponder what prompted him to start protesting, I should think back to who I am interviewing, and the experiences that shaped him. Am I sitting across from a 15-year-old boy escaping war, a nervous new Father with twins in his arms or a proud man with a hope for peace? Maybe it’s all of the above.
Sidra Ghanawi climbs.
Rand Qashou draws.
“O moon, o moon, don’t climb up the tree” my roots
this is an ugly poem
Dandoush Kafina writes after Marwan Makhoul
because I cannot find something beautiful to say after sing-songs of death and glory by a blood-thirsty state drown out all things of beauty splatter over our earth and grow poisonous things — to ‘make the desert bloom’ this is an ugly poem
they are the only beautiful thing there is) and as the world wants to force ugliness down our mouths; our esophagus is forced to widen until the concrete blocks it over, and the only taste left being acid and ash.
Students’ Representative Council, University of Sydney Elections 2024
Voting will be open on September 24, 25 & 26
President’s Report
Harrison Brennan
The President did not submit a report this week.
General Secretaries’ Report
Daniel O’Shea & Rose Donnelly
End of August Wrap up:
— Over the 12th and 13th we held Unions Week and a barbecue to promote students joining their respective unions.
— We petitioned for the end to junior rates: demanding that the government must:
• Strike out junior wages from all awards;
• Remove junior apprenticeship wages;
• Give young workers super for every dollar under the age of 18.
• You can sign the petition at https://www.megaphone.org. au/petitions/end-junior-wages
We saw the introduction of the right to disconnect legislation which affords employees the right to ignore calls from their bosses whilst not at work.
The next executive meeting will occur next week on Wednesday, so we will have more to report then SRC elections are coming up with voting on the 24, 25, 26 of September.
Love Dan & Rose
Vice Presidents’ Report
Deaglan Godwin & Jasmine Donnelly
Last Wednesday, I joined another successful student strike for Palestine. USyd students marched from our campus to UTS, where we joined students from other universities as well as high school students. It’s our obligation to continue to show up for Palestine, demanding an immediate end to the genocide, and forcing our own governments and institutions to end their complicity. It has been inspiring to see students across the country hold huge student general meetings over the past two weeks. Like our own, these student general meetings saw hundreds of students vote to demand their university cut ties with Israel.
In this context, I condemn Sydney Uni’s decision to rename the Abercrombie Business School after outgoing Chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson. Hutchinson sits on the
SRC Reports
board of Thales Australia, who partner with Israeli arms manufacturers to provide weapons to Israel. Hutchinson is a war criminal. It is an insult to the people of Gaza to name a building over someone whose hands are red with blood. We demand the university rescind this decision. Watch this space for any protests.
I am saddened and enraged to hear of the death of Mano Yogalingam, a 23-year old Tamil refugee. Mano was on a bridging visa, and self-immolated on last Wednesday after hearing of the Labor government’s plans to increase asylum seeker deportations. Mano’s death is not a tragedy- it is a crime. The Labor government, and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, are guilty of his murder. The inhumane treatment of refugees must end now, and I encourage people to attend the refugee encampment at Burke’s electoral office in Punchbowl.
- Deaglan.
Hoping everyone is enjoying the transition into springtime weather and fashion. Many events have happened between now and our last VP report:
Unions Week — stalled up on Eastern Avenue to talk to students about why they should join their union, supporting UnionsNSW petition against junior rates
Behind the Scenes Tour of Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Centre as part of the Welfare Office’s Drug Reform campaign — these clinics save lives, focusing on harm reduction and the reduction of negative consequences of drug use on a person’s health and well-being.
Student Strike for Palestine — action at USYD because USYD is financially complicit in the genocide in Palestine re its ties to weapons manufacturers and Israeli institutions.
The Honi Soit’s Student Media Party at Manning Bar.
The biggest event in the SRC calendar coming up is the annual undergraduate student elections. Voting will be on campus, in person, on the 24th, 25th, 26th of September. Come vote! Why not. Polling booths are as follows:
Jane Foss Russell: Tuesday –Thursday, 8:45am – 5:15pm
Conservatorium of Music: Wednesday, 10:30am – 3:30pm
Susan Wakil Health Building: Thursday, 10:45am – 3:15pm
Peter Nicol Russell Building: Thursday, 10:45am – 3:15pm
The 8th regular meeting of the 96th SRC will be held today— Wednesday September 4th at 6:00pm, in the New Law Lecture Room 104. All students welcome.
This week I recommend everyone
read Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy by J.R Hale, for its insights into Machiavelli’s unique contribution to political theory and relevance to the culture right now. Stay on campus, stay tapped in, stay flourishing Jasmine
Ethnocultural Officers’ Report
Ravkaran Grewal & Sidra
Hello!
Long time no see. We’ve been busy, to say the least! Namely, working on delivering this week’s autonomous edition of Honi you are holding right now! We also co-hosted an incredible teach-in with Deshis For Liberation about the student protests in Bangladesh!
More recently, we’ve been working on our fortnightly program in collaboration with the Women’s Collective: FALL (Feminist Anti-Racist Liberation Library) a multi-modal, colearning space! Last week was our 3rd edition of FALL, in which Sara Saleh hosted a writing workshop inspired by Toni Morrison’s seminal works! Our next edition of FALL is next Thursday at 3pm! Join us for a reading group/ discussion of Angela Davis’s ‘Are Prisons Obsolete?’
Come to our ACAR Honi & ‘Armed’ Zine launch party this Thursday 5th September at 6 pm in Ethnospace, Manning House bottom floor.
Last but not least, an all-important reminder that we are settlers living, working and studying on stolen, dispossessed Indigenous land. Support First Nations peoples and mob by contributing to mutual aid! Check out: @blakcaucus for ongoing mutual aid and callouts.
From Gadigal to Gaza, Long Live the Intifada.
Student Accommodation Officers’ Report
Sofija Filipovic, Ishbel Dunsmore, Will Jubb & Patrick Jacombs
The Student Accommodation Officers did not submit a report this week.
Interfaith Officers’ Report
Yuchen Li & Khanh Tran
The Interfaith Officers did not submit a report this week.
Make sure you have the correct supporting documents when applying for Special Consideration, Discontinue Not Fail or Show Good Cause appeals
What documents will I need for Special Consideration, a Discontinue Not Fail (DC) application, or Showing Good Cause?
When you apply for Special Consideration, a Discontinue Not Fail (DC) grade, or Show Good Cause, you need to provide documentation that supports your claim. There are many different types of documents you can provide, depending on your situation.
Professional Practitioner’s Certificate (PPC)
A PPC is the Uni’s version of a medical certificate and is a very useful form of supporting documentation. It shows the date you met with the medical practitioner, the dates that you were affected, and how severely you were affected. It asks what your illness was, however, it can also say that your illness is confidential. The Uni is more interested in the impact of your illness on your study, rather than the illness itself. For example, you were not able to attend classes, complete written assignments, or sleep, which made you unable to concentrate.
Statutory Declaration
This is a document of truth that you, a family member, a friend, or another relevant person can write on a downloadable government form. It is a statement where you or another person provides the details of the misadventure you experienced, written based on what was observed or experienced. Statutory Declarations are not as meaningful as other documents, so only use them in conjunction with other documents, e.g., a death certificate, or as a last resort. A Statutory Declaration will need to be witnessed and signed by an authority or witness, such as a Justice of the Peace.
Student Declaration
In April 2020 the University introduced the Student Declaration, as isolation and lockdown made it difficult to meet with doctors and counsellors to get a PPC or find a Justice of the Peace to get a statutory declaration witnessed. These are not particularly strong pieces of evidence, so avoid using them if possible.
Police Report
If you experienced a misadventure that involved the Police, you may be able to provide a Police Report as your supporting document. However, Police Reports are relatively difficult to get, especially within a few days of the incident. Instead, you could mention the Police Event Number in a statutory declaration (see above), together with the name of the officer you dealt with and the station they were from.
False Documents
While it may be tempting to buy or create false documents, the University will likely discover this fraud, which could lead to you being suspended from the university. If you are in such a difficult position that you are considering doing this, you should talk to an SRC Caseworker about other options available to you. Failing a subject is significantly better than being suspended from your studies. Some students who previously bought false documents online found that the people they bought them from started blackmailing them, threatening to tell the University, their families, and their future employers about their deceit. If you are experiencing this, talk to an SRC Caseworker. The SRC is independent of the Uni and caseworkers can offer you free, confidential advice. You can contact an SRC caseworker via our contact form: bit.ly/contact-a-caseworker or by calling 9660 5222.
SRC
Caseworker Help Q&A
Applying for Centrelink - Your Savings
Dear Abe,
Someone told me I couldn’t get Centrelink because I had some savings. That doesn’t seem fair to me. Is that correct?
Save me
Dear Save me,
If you successfully apply for a Centrelink payment, they will begin paying you based on your “liquid assets”, which includes money you have saved, as well as stocks and
shares, etc. You need to wait one week for every $500 (rounded down) over $5,500 (single person with no dependent children), to a maximum wait time of 13 weeks. It is possible that your liquid assets can be reduced if you have saved that $5,500+ to pay for educational expenses, e.g., a laptop, HECs fees, text books, etc.
Abe
If you need help and advice from an SRC Caseworker, start an enquiry here: bit.ly/contact-a-caseworker
1. Which Australian Prime Minister was once the SRC’s Ethnocultural Officer?
2. Who was the first Indigenous person to graduate from tertiary education?
3. Which protest was established in 1972 on the lawn of Parliament House in Canberra and remains a symbol of First Nations sovereignty and resistance today?
4. What is the name of Archie Roach’s 1990 protest song about the Stolen Generations?
5. At the time of publication, how many consecutive weeks have protests for a Free Palestine been held in Hyde Park?
6. What is the act that Labor and Student Labor calls for whenever the party fails marginalised communities?
7. What is the full name of the movement aimed at dismantling Israeli apartheid?
8. Who was the first Indigenous USyd SRC President?
9. In what year was the first ever edition of ACAR Honi published?
10. What is the act of hiring or having a person from a marginalised community to deter criticism and give the illusion of minorities being treated equally?
Crossword
30. You know the drill
31. Capital of Kenya
40. Zine published by yours truly, ACAR
Dusting off the cobwebs
The Diversification of Connections
ACROSS
1. To hide, to cover up
6. Chinese revolutionary
7. Most common ethnicity in China
Noun describing one of life’s essentials
Largest artery in the body
Nepali warriors
The conspiratorial dark chefs in Food Wars
First Black Panther leader, __ P. Newton
Not off
The Tamil _____
A type of average, not the mean
Author of Wretched of the Earth 17. Think fishing nets, leaves and the Silk Road - all intertwined into one
Critically endangered horned mammal 20. Highly coveted by researchers
Add another letter to ‘anon’
“The white man’s word”
Involuntary food processing act
26. A movement driven by the politics of a community
28. Palestinian philosopher and writer, author of Orientalism
41. American terrorist organisation 43. Often repeated in this crossword 45. Act of thrusting forward often with a weapon
46. Caribbean state constantly under imperialist sanctions
48. Green ___
51. Old-timey-ish medium for sound
9. ___ mal y pense, or the paper you are reading
12. Sailor’s drink
14. The workers _____ will never be defeated
15. Capital of Senegal, centre for decolonial movements in Africa
16. Not real
18. Opposite of left
19. Exhausted due to too much repetition
20. West African country, shares a border with Togo and Burkina Faso
22. Palestinian dessert made with spun pastry
23. Protests and uprisings that swept across the Arab World in 2011
27. Not on
28. The name of the talking fox in Four Knights of the Apocalypse
29. Recent scheme gutted by the government
30. Rhymes with cannon
32. Before the present, so to say 33. Word that follows stability or blood
34. How border officials refer to non-residents
35. Often heard cried at an SRC meeting
36. Pen name of the author of One Punch Man
37. Class of animals that closely resemble dinosaurs
38. Invisible substance that surround us
39. Angela Davis’ 1981 book ‘Women, __ & Class’
42. Goes without saying abbreviated
44. Opposite of occident
45. Strikebreaker
47. Country at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula
49. Flower representing perfection and deep, deep love
50. 1312
52. Retail ‘union’
53. Movement advocating for the return of Indigenous lands and sovereignty
Crossword: some hack.
Answers: 1. TNT 2. Notch 3. Zombie 4. The End 5. Squid 6. Coal, Iron 7. Diamond 8. Java 9.
Hoe 10. Minecraft
THE AUSTRALIAN
RAYGUN WILL NOW BE ‘HAVING A GO’ AT THE ‘BREAKDANCING’
UPDATED CENSUS ‘SIMPLIFIES’ QUESTION ON ANCESTRY, PM CLAIMS IT’S ‘TOO CONTROVERSIAL’
BROWN MAN ‘OVER THE MOON’ TO LEARN THAT HE CAN SAY THE WORD “WOG”
EXCLUSIVE: ABS BUILDING RENAMED TO BDS BY WOKE LEFTIST SGMATTENDING TERRORIST-SYMPATHISER STUDENTS
ISRAELIS START BDS MOVEMENT OF THEIR OWN: CAN NEVER EAT GOOD FOOD AGAIN
ALTERNATE EDITION CREATED TO CORRECT RACIAL DISADVANTAGE GIVES WHITE HONI EDITORS THE DAY OFF
FATHER’S DAY SPECIAL: ETHNIC DAD SHOWS UP, SAYS “I LOVE YOU AND I AM PROUD OF YOU”
BRACE YOURSELVES: AMERICAN WOMAN ‘RETURNS’ TO ISRAEL, THINKS COLONIALISM GETS A BAD RAP
