As eX-detainees, Asylum seekers and Refugees in Australia, we acknowledge that the land we seek protection on is the land of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples whose sovereignty was never ceded. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
For the 14th year running, RISE eX-detainees, the FIRST self-determined advocacy and welfare organisation in “Australia” governed and led by eX-detainees, is making a public statement, supporting the boycott of “Australia Day” aka Invasion day. Even before we made our first public statement our organisation has never “celebrated” this day from the time we were founded in 2010.
The dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, their deaths in custody, and constant heavy police surveillance make the traditional owners refugees in their own land. We see this from the current dispossession in so-called Australia, where we witness the owners of the land being treated as subhuman and unwanted.
RISE eX-detainees call on members of the eX-detainee and refugee community to refrain from taking part in “Australia Day” celebrations. We urge everyone to show solidarity by at the very least, taking action and denouncing any representatives of our community who participate in “celebrations” on “Australia Day” or any other occasion that denigrates and erases Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples by exalting stolenwealth and genocide.
RISE eX-detainees urge members of our community, allies and supporters to amplify and donate where possible to self-determined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples-led movements and organisations. It is a fact that, after First Nations people, Refugee eX-detainees are one of the most singled out, routinely persecuted and racially profiled communities in “Australia”. Our people, adults and children, who are all people of colour, have been held in concentration camps and brutalised by the government using so called Australia’s white supremacist border control policies. On behalf of the eX-detainee community, we continue to acknowledge Sovereignty was never ceded, and we stand in solidarity with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples of “Australia”.
In Solidarity
RISE eX-detainees
‘Nothing About Us Without Us’