Anti-Fascist Action Brisbane

Comrades and friends! We’ve seen an alarming rise in fascist and Nazi propaganda on our streets.

Please share this invite link to a local Antifascist Alerts Telegram channel with your networks. https://t.me/antifaalertsmeanjin

Locally, mosques have been targeted with death threats and a pig’s head. This year's pride march route was heavily stickered and postered by a local Nazi cell. In Melbourne recently, National Socialist Network turn up to a children’s event in a park to intimidate a drag performer with Antisemitic and transphobic banners and chants, and similar things have happened here in years past. Elsewhere, fascists and Nazis are escalating in the USA and across Europe, targeting minorities, including drag performers and queer venues.

We’ve set up this Telegram channel for comrades to get an alert if similar incidents occur here in Meanjin, so-called Brisbane. Please make sure you have Telegram notifications (persistent, not temporary) turned on for your app and that this channel isn’t muted so you receive a push notification on your phone.

The purpose of this channel will be call outs to mobilise quickly if and when antifascist solidarity is needed on the ground, such as the targeting of community events or places of worship. If you mobilise, consider covering your face and other identity markers, try to arrive with comrades, and be vigilant about your safety and the safety of others before, during and after the event.

We are stronger together—we keep each other safe. Antifascism is community self defence. Antifascism is us standing together as a community against bigotry and hatred.

“Former detainee Kazem Kazemi was released from detention on March 2 this year.

He fled Iran as a refugee and spent five and a half years on Manus Island before being medevaced to Australia where he spent nearly two years at the Kangaroo Point Central Apartments and the BITA centre.

Kaz Kazemi is an Iranian refugee and musician who spent more than five years in detention on Manus Island.

Mr Kazemi said he found it difficult to talk to men who were still being detained because he felt guilty for having freedom while they do not.

"We are here protesting for our friends in detention across Australia and in offshore centre," Mr Kazemi said.

"I am really sad, I am really not happy about that because I see my friends still locked up in detention for no reason. They have not committed any crime.

"I hope the government will release them very soon and let them recover after a long time."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-18/qld-protesters-refugee-immigration-detention-bita-anniversary/100302690

QLD Police... https://archive.ph/HaQUB

Please sign and share the petition https://www.change.org/p/govt-stop-they-are-us-movie-from-being-made

We are sickened that this film will be made — disrespectful and horrifyingly inappropriate. White Saviour lens from a country that ignored white supremacy (like Australia did) and instead surveillance and targeted activists and minorities. https://i.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/300330619/muslim-community-was-blindsided-by-news-of-upcoming-film-about-christchurch-mosque-attacks-members-say

“This is the mundane evil of the weapons industry – existing always in the background, obscured by a web of jargon and euphemisms. Every day, new more efficient ways of killing are developed. Weapons sales and research funding suck taxpayers’ money out of underfunded social services – $44 billion a year of military spending, encouraged by a never-ending stream of defence industry lobbyists and thinktanks assuring the vitality of each new product. Weapons made in Australian factories are sold to warzones – to Saudi Arabia for bombing Yemeni civilians, to Indonesia for crushing the West Papuan independence movement and enforcing the ongoing theft of their land for resource extraction.”

https://disruptlandforces.org/disruption_begins/

Please donate and share widely!

Returning back to danger and political violence is not an easy decision, and yet it has seemed to be a better option than to stay within a system that slowly kills you.

Our friend has made the unimaginably difficult decision to move back to Pakistan. For trying to seek safety, the Australian government illegally detained him for 8 years. He was recently released into community detention, which has been extremely punitive and inhumane. People in community detention cannot choose where they live, are not allowed to work, and are subject to curfews and intense surveillance. They can be moved back into detention centres at any time, and without a clear pathway to resettlement, their lives are in constant limbo. 

This cruelty has meant that our friend cannot support his sick mother, and has to return to Pakistan. We are urgently trying to raise funds to support his move back, assist with his mother’s medical fees, and tie up loose ends here. Please get in touch with Dane if you can help with social support or with selling his belongings. 

https://chuffed.org/project/support-for-refugee-in-community-detention

“In a spectacular start to the Disrupt Land Forces, a week-long festival of resistance, anti-militarism activists blocked two military vehicles from entering the Brisbane Convention Centre on May 27.

Four people climbed on top of a Rheinmetall’s armed drone and Ripleys armed truck as they entered the Brisbane Convention Centre for the arms industry sales conference. More than 300 arms manufacturers will be showcasing their products from June 1-3.

Disrupt Land Forces spokesperson Margaret Pestorius said that the Land Forces represents “a convergence of so many issues of militarism in our society”.

“The 300 companies gathered at the convention centre profit from the terrorising of innocent people in warzones like Yemen, the colonisation of West Papua and Latin America, the militarised destruction of our planet. the corruption and water of the military-industrial complex and the cycles of violence that flow from the boardrooms of power to the margins of our society.”
Pestorius said Rheinmetall has sold weapons to the Indonesian military which are being used to kill West Papuan civilians.

“That is just a fraction of the destruction the companies at Land Forces cause. Their business model is to sell violence, terror, and the maintenance of power. This is why we need to disrupt the Land Forces convention.””

https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/activists-stop-armed-vehicles-entering-land-forces-weapons-expo