Forum defends people smuggling

Chris Peterson
Naarm/Melbourne
March 29, 2012
Issue 
917
News


Photos by Ali Bakhtiavandi

About 60 people attended a March 27 forum in Melbourne titled β€œSmuggled to freedom: behind the anti-people smuggling rhetoric”. The forum was organised by the Refugee Action Collective Victoria and heard from a number of former refugees and supporters, as well as Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young.

Award-winning writer Arnold Zable told the meeting: β€œI’m alive today because my mother was a queue jumper.”

Peter Farago, a one-time β€œpeople smuggler” from Hungary, said: β€œPeople smugglers are the travel agencies of the poor and oppressed. I’ve been a people smuggler and I’m proud of it.”

Refugees & migrants
Australia

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