On Sunday 2nd April, hundreds of people gathered on the steps of the State Library of Victoria for the 2023 Walk for Justice for Refugees. Held on Palm Sunday, people walked in solidarity with people seeking asylum in Australia, coming together from a wide range of communities, organisations and faith backgrounds to show their support.
This solidarity comes at a time when there are still asylum seekers who continue to be trapped in perpetual limbo, denied access to mainstream social support, and left without secure income and basic welfare necessities. The opportunity for likeminded individuals to come together is an encouraging one, inspiring the continued push for progress and change. CSSV have supported the Walk for Justice for many years, with more humane and compassionate policies concerning asylum seekers being a central focus of CSSV.
Sr Brigid Arthur CSB, a life member of CSSV, noted the importance of the event and spoke of “rais[ing] the consciousness of the Australian people”, maintaining that “we haven’t won the battle to get justice for asylum seekers”:
“In spite of the fact that the Australian government has given permanent visas to those who are on SHEV [Safe Haven Enterprise Visas] or TPVs [Temporary Protection Visas]—that’s one group of 19,000—there’s at least another 12,000 people who haven’t had any justice, and who still have no certainty or security around their future and, on the whole, no income to survive. So we want money and help for people who haven’t got visas, and we want a real chance to get a permanent visa for everybody.”
Sr Brigid Arthur’s words reiterated the devastating reality of people seeking asylum around the world. Arthur’s sentiment was reiterated by Bishop Mykola Bychok on the day, Eparch for Ukrainian Catholics in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, who spoke of the relentless suffering and helplessness many refugees and asylum seekers experience:
“Saving their lives, they are looking for a better fate for themselves, but they find humiliation, helplessness and sometimes the end of their lives outside their native land. A similar fate is common to many peoples, not only Ukrainian. It is frightening to think, but the Mediterranean Sea becomes a cemetery for about 10,000 refugees from poor African countries every year”.
Reflecting on the situation in his homecountry of Ukraine, Bishop Bychok highlighted the dire situation of so many asylum seekers around the world. He said. Today, ‘in just one year of the terrible war, 16 million people left their homes: 8 million internally displaced persons and 8 million displaced around the world.’
At CSSV, we stand with refugees and asylum seekers, advocating for the end to offshore processing, temporary visas and family separation. We want to provide asylum seekers with hope for a better future, and as Margaret Sinclair from Refugee Action Collective so poignantly pointed out in her speech, ‘People can’t live without hope.”
Photography and article collaboration with Fiona Basile.
Click here to read Fiona’s full article on the Walk for Justice
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