Boycott Pinkwashing

eX-detainees’ Statement on Midsumma Festival in Melbourne 2025
The Midsumma Festival MUST stop bootlicking and bedding with politicians, the military, police (federal and state), navy and detention/weapon profiteers.

For the third year in a row, we eX-detainees of all genders and sexualities, urge the Midsumma Festival to immediately cut ties with detention profiteers, police, navy, military or any current relationships with politicians both federal and state. There is nothing to be proud of about the detention and military industrial complex and any individual, political party, corporation and agency who benefit from this industry. There is nothing to be proud of about racial profiling, military and detention complex, queer and transphobia within these sectors.

All artists, presenters, and other participants should boycott the Midsumma Festival. Our survival and abuse is not your career platform. Your strategy of “participating and making a point” is unacceptable to us. The Uncle Tom approach is an insult to our trauma, survival, resistance and self-determination.

While us queer eX-detainees are being excluded from services, targeted by the government bodies & authorities back & forth and facing ongoing destitution and despair; queer spaces like Midsumma Festival are providing a platform for our oppressors and bedding with them. This is a slap on our survival and resistance to the going torture and abuse we face in Australia as queer eX-detainees. It’s like saying we shouldn’t exist and gaslighting our experience as torture and abuse survivors. Providing a platform and space to Australian politicians, military, police, and corporations may not impact your lives, but it impacts our lives tremendously. You will know this if you have listened to and acknowledged what we eX-detainees have been saying all these years and decades.

Furthermore, Midsumma Pride March is a photo and promotion opportunity for white supremacist politicians, police, the military, navy, detention architects, and profiteers to pinkwash and artwash themselves in the name of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusivity’. This provides a platform for these entities to pinkwash and promote their public image, as well as to wash blood off their hands while they continue to abuse and torture refugee detainees and eX-detainees.

ALL three major parties (The Greens, Labor, Liberal, National) support mandatory detention in Australia of refugees coming by boats. Allowing any of these parties to be part of Midsumma Festival is normalising and accepting mandatory arbitrary detention torture and abuse that us refugees who arrived by boat face. Us queer refugees who arrived by boat are still in limbo despite being in Australia for over 10, 20 years. Many of us lack adequate safety precautions, and we face discrimination on all levels—emotionally, physically, and mentally everywhere we go in Australia, rooting in the anti-boat refugee and mandatory detention policies. Do you Pride yourself in providing these politicians platforms at your festival while they support torturous policies against us queer eX-detainees?

We also want to remind the Midsumma Festival that Australia has been and continues to be a direct provider of military aid, supporter of wars, and border controls for countries that have committed genocide including in Palestine, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places. 39 civilians were unlawfully killed by Australian forces during the war in Afghanistan, according to the recent Brereton Report. Australian Defence Force personnel may only be included in “reports” and not be charged with or accused of war crimes in Afghanistan. Is this what you are supporting?

For these reasons above, we Queer Refugee eX-detainees who sought asylum and are Survivors of Australian detention torture camps demand that the Midsumma Festival to immediately:

• Outline Clearly, their position on mandatory indefinite detention policies against all people seeking asylum in Australia by boat including queer asylum seekers.
• Cut ties with the police, military, politicians, detention architects, and profiteers who support mandatory detention and pushing refugee boats back into the arms of oppressors.
• Cut ties with the military industrial complex, including the defence force, as weapons and war terrorise communities and forcibly displaced people.
• Not allowing anyone listed above to wear uniform or display their organisation’s logo at any Midsumma events, and these people should not be allowed to attend in their professional capacity and only as ordinary community members
• Create a practical care plan on how queer people should be supported and protected in the community, particularly trans people.
• Management restructuring and revamping: Where are even people of colour let alone queer eX-detainees in the decision-making positions?

Having experienced so many life traumas, including detention torture in Australia, and being one of the most targeted and impoverished communities in Australia, we queer eX-detainees should be prioritised for direct access to community support and events without any PTSD triggers and without being forced to bump into our abusers at festivals like Midsumma.

Lastly, we eX-detainees would like to make it clear that humanitarian refugees are not our mouthpiece. We eX-detainees arrived by boat are distinct from those who arrived in an “orderly” manner to Australia on humanitarian visas or any other refugee group that was never administratively detained by the Australian government.

It’s time to show your solidarity. Pinkwashing and art-washing our ongoing abuse, torture, and structural discrimination is violent and unacceptable.

RISE eX-detainee Team

#BoycottMidsumma2025
#BoycottPrideMarch2025