“I Will Protect You With My Body” The Case For A Radical Sanctuary Movement To Protect Asylum Seekers In Australia

We are in the process of transforming our nation to make it into a sanctuary.

– Reverend Peter Catt speaking to a multi-faith vigil at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, on 17th February.

As I write this reflection, nothing has changed in our country, but we are changing.

Baby Asha and her family, and all other asylum seekers living in community, offshore and onshore detention, are still not free or safe. There has been no victory, only a small concession for one family that is really just a suspended sentence.

Why then, do I feel we are at a turning point? Many of us, some for the first time, have spent time in deep reflection on the burdens and responsibilities of our citizenship and of our faith (whether faith in each other, or faith in God). Together at the vigil over the fortnight at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, we built a new community and carried out our duties as citizens in it, at times with joy, at times with solemnity.

We gathered for nearly two weeks on Jagara land, in a concrete amphitheatre outside a children’s hospital. Here we imagined and started to build a country of compassion, justice, peace, reparations and solidarity. A Sanctuary.

Of course, the early days of activist and social movements are our most hopeful and idealistic and we practice a nostalgia about them, even before often inevitable conflict, disappointments or disbanding. There are many of us, especially in Brisbane, who will do whatever we can together to sustain and build on recent momentum. The Let Them Stay campaign and the vigil at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital have received a great deal of media coverage in Australia and overseas, but I want to emphasise the context for building a Sanctuary Movement in Australia.

This strategy has been developed by the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce and other groups, and came to a head early in February when the High Court ruling came down, finding the deportation of nearly 300 asylum seekers back to Nauru was lawful. The Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews offered to resettle them in Victoria, with other Premiers following suite. Close to home, Reverend Peter Catt, Dean of St. John’s Cathedral in Brisbane, invoked the centuries-old tradition of Sanctuary, telling the media,

We’re prepared to lock the building and see if the authorities would go as far as breaking down the doors and I’m certainly prepared to put myself in the way and face the consequences, which are quite extreme.

When news of the High Court’s ruling that offshore detention of refugees is legal reached me, I couldn’t feel anything. Not despair, outrage or shock. I only felt numb. Two years before I’d attended a vigil after the murder of Reza Berati on Manus Island (the anniversary of which coincided with the Lady Cilento vigil), a gathering of heartbroken people overwhelmed by grief and the darkness in our country. There I saw for the first time, veteran activists and community workers break down in tears during their speeches. People I’d long admired for their courage, passion and tirelessness, seemed defeated on that night. I had not felt any light since.

We lit candles and then dispersed back to our homes and our feelings of hopelessness, government policy continued to degenerate, and we gained no ground for the human rights of asylum seekers. Despair isolated many of us from each other. The new ways our successive governments reinvented cruelty and played politics with the lives of asylum seekers became unsurprising. I long stopped proclaiming it couldn’t get any worse.

A new movement

I attended the first Sanctuary vigil in early February at St John’s Cathedral with some apprehension. I believed in Reverend Peter Catt’s commitment, but I needed to see that others were prepared to stand with him. I hoped for a campaign that was inclusive, long-term and strategic, one that created risk for ordinary Australian citizens through non-violent direct action, and created new community. In Australia changing a government does not mean changing policy, and action through the courts has not been successful.

I viewed Lock The Gate as the most interesting and significant activist and social movement in Australia since the collapse of the anti-war movement in 2003, when tens of thousands of us marched. There are many lessons for us in how the Lock The Gate campaign has activated and connected people of diverse backgrounds, including conservatives. I’d also watched as Love Makes A Way built a campaign of faith-based non-violent direct action and witness. The first vigil included strong representation from Brisbane’s Muslim community and religious leaders, alongside many of us who are not religious.

That night in the Cathedral I wondered at the apparent newcomers to this cause, many of whom appeared to be conservative, older Christians. Did they really know what some of us were here to commit to? Or did they just come to pray? There were no illusions about the intent of the gathering when the powerful liturgy (written by Dave Andrews and David Busch) read this quote by WW2 Veteran, peace activist, former Catholic priest and Plowshares movement co-founder Phil Berrigan:

If they come for the innocent without stepping over your body, cursed be your religion and your life.

Peter Catt made sure that we weren’t solely focused that evening on babies and children, a criticism of the Let Them Stay campaign by some activists. I have closely read critique of the campaign and reflection on events, nearly all of it by activists who were not actually in Brisbane at the hospital vigil. I’ve never sought to divide or favour asylum seekers and refugees by age, gender or status. The campaign from Brisbane focused on Baby Asha and her family because of the urgency of their situation, in our city and not “out of sight, out of mind”. Peter reminded us that practically, those most likely to take up an offer of Sanctuary when facing deportation are already living in community detention. He repeated his commitment and implored, I will need you here with me, I can’t do this alone.

I left the Cathedral that evening confident and reassured that this was a long-term, strategic movement, not empty symbolism. I felt a small hope, and re-energised by the people who came to pack out the Cathedral. Later that week doctors at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital refused to discharge Baby Asha to Border Force who intended to deport her with her family. The doctors risked prosecution and jail by taking this stand. An ongoing vigil at the hospital was initiated by local activists, community and faith groups.

Some people came to the vigil with theoretical frameworks to explain their understanding of oppression. Some came because they’d been watching the news and were upset that politicians could treat a family with a small baby with such cruelty. Some came with decades dedicated to activist and community work. Some who came had never met a refugee. Some came with long arrest records and even jail terms served for non-violent direct action and witness in environmental and anti-war actions, at home and abroad. Others came from conservative backgrounds, never having attended any kind of political action in their life. There were blue and white collar workers, school students, Christian anarchists, unionists, nuns, socialists, hippies, academics and artists. Some drove long distances every single day to be at the vigil.

An Uber driver stopped by in the middle of the night because he’d never seen Australians express any public support for refugees before. He’d been alone in preparing a claim for Protection Visas for himself, his wife and baby. He stayed to talk with activists on the graveyard shift, who made him aware of how to access legal support in the community. He was shocked that support existed, and that people cared. Members of the Rohingya community came to cook food for vigil participants. The kind and patient hospital security staff worked in cooperation and mutual respect with vigil participants, who supervised rostered shifts to minimise disruption to the hospital. Some came from their sick bed in a wheelchair and on oxygen with a carer, still wearing hospital booties, and quietly prayed. Mothers came with their babies and children. Dogs came with their people, and I made sure to meet and pat as many Dogs Against Detentionas possible. An off-duty doctor came down in his scrubs with his partner and baby by his side and said, “I couldn’t bear a child like mine being subjected to abuse and torture”.

Young Indigenous climate justice campaigners came to unfurl the Aboriginal flag in solidarity. Two women came back after getting arrested hanging a Let Them Stay banner off the Goodwill Bridge. Clergy and Imans came. People came in moon boots and on crutches, ready to sit down in the road at the blockade to prevent removal of mother and baby. There were many quiet heroes, especially from Refugee Action Collective, there day in, day out, sleep deprived but determined.

I came, just one body, and played no special role, other than to be present when I was able, feeling hope again. I came like everyone else, with a fierce love and in solidarity, for the bravery of Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital staff and Baby Asha and her family.

The physical space of the vigil became a sacred space, where we started to build a country of sanctuary and solidarity. I saw no borders in the way this country was drawn in our imagination and no borders between people. I found an activist space that was not overwhelmed by competing egos and ideologies, which is sadly rare. A space that felt safe. People of diverse backgrounds spoke to others with curiosity and open hearts, listened actively, left judgments behind, and learnt from each other’s experiences and skills. Over the nearly two weeks of the vigil, I watched the potential grow for a real and powerful Sanctuary Movement in Australia, through new relationships and understandings formed.

What is the context for a Sanctuary Movement, in Australia?

When Reverend Peter Catt first made his offer alongside other faith communities, it highlighted a centuries-old religious concept, common in the Middle Ages where people facing persecution could claim sanctuary in churches. In 1995, a group of church organisations around Australia offered sanctuary to around 1400 East Timorese refugees that Gareth Evans and Paul Keating planned to deport to Portugal. They were inspired by the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s in North America, which provided sanctuary and safe passage, to Central American refugees.

The East Timorese refugees were not deported at that time, as the government spent a decade delaying the processing of their refugee claims, so Sanctuary has never been tested legally in Australia. Later in 2003 when 84 Darwin-based East Timorese refugees again faced deportation, traditional owners offered Sanctuary in their communities.

More recently in Australia, the Tent Embassy in Canberra has offered symbolic passports to asylum seekers and refugees, including to Reza Berati’s family after he was murdered. This itself was an offer of sanctuary on the land of traditional owners who have never ceded sovereignty.

Why do I think a Sanctuary Movement is possible?

I’ve seen how many diverse communities and groups have been brought together. I’ve watched Love Makes A Way staging sit-ins over the last year and getting in the way of so many politicians who claim to be Christians. I stood by the side of the road with a placard at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital and heard the constant stream of car horns, encouraging faces and words of support from drivers, for the vigil. This surprised me, used to facing only apathetic blank stares or abuse at street actions and marches. Once on a march, a middle-aged man in a business suit screamed at me,“They are all illegal, shoot all of them!” He wasn’t the “racist bogan” so many progressives love to blame instead of our government’s continued White Australia policy of profitable and systematic abuse.

A Sanctuary Movement can bring more Australians with us — an emotive Let Them Stay campaign with a moral appeal has inspired compassion in more ordinary Australians. Finally, after nearly twenty years, more Australians care about the abuse, rape and torture of asylum seekers, especially children (I still don’t know what took them so long, but I am glad they are with us now).

The discourse at the vigil was not just about babies and children. Even those new to the cause had or quickly gained, a nuanced understanding of asylum seeker human rights issues and immigration policy in Australia, and the importance of ending mandatory detention. This was achieved through conversation, not soapboxing. They were able to link this with the rights of other oppressed groups in Australia, including Indigenous peoples.

When Let Them Stay was employed, we meant, Let Them All Stay. An “open borders” (still “too radical” for many on the left) argument in this space seemed widely accepted. The vigil brought in many new people (including conservatives), charged with the energy of their compassion, wanting to make a difference. This space helped them find new advocacy and community groups to join, and sign up for non-violent direct action training, should they be called on when sanctuary is needed.

Powerfully, many Christians were inspired to confront for the first time where their faith intersects with their morality and sense of social justice, and what Witnessing really means. The involvement of more communities of faith is especially important, given so many of our politicians claim to act on Christian values. Malcolm Turnbull seems to think if he just repeats the word “compassion” enough times, we’ll believe their doublethink. Regardless of faith or non-belief, we came together united in our sense of compassion and social justice.

What is different about the initiative of a Sanctuary Movement?

What is different about this movement after two decades of activism for the human rights of asylum seekers, while their conditions only worsened? An offer of Sanctuary is not only a commitment to clothe, feed and shelter the vulnerable, but to promise, I will protect you with my body. The work of sanctuary is the work of bearing witness to injustice, oppression and suffering. Sanctuary and witness are not just the work of Christians. Activists, artists and community workers also bear the responsibility of witness, and for many it is central to our practice. Witness allows us to develop moral and political positions from which to act on our observations, and sanctuary creates a community space for this work together.

A Sanctuary Movement is something all citizens can participate in, regardless of our background. The personal risk of facing Border Force, arrest or jail is something only the individual can choose, but we will not be acting alone. As Sophie H Pirie writes about the North American Sanctuary Movement,

It also provided participants with a sense of belonging to a tradition of empowerment, rather than one based only in protest or charity.

Sanctuary is not the only strategy that will end mandatory detention in Australia and create a country that upholds the UN Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, instead of pissing on them. Building ondivestment campaigns from mandatory detention is crucial. Empowering unionised workers in refusal to participate in work related to mandatory detention. Good allyship with asylum seekers and refugees and amplifying their experiences and voices above ours, friendships, charity, pro bono legal work, visits to detention centres, activism, letters and art, are all central to our compassionate labour against this regime.

In all we bear witness. What Sanctuary offers is a practice of empowerment and a vision to radically alter our society and our role in it. Sanctuary offers hope in each other, and a way to reach out to people the government has tried to separate us from. To form relationships of solidarity, as we grow together in compassion and understanding of political and social conditions. To feel risk as citizens, in protecting those who are denied the same rights as us.

At the vigil, I kept running into a colleague, raised Irish Catholic like me (I’m non-practicing, or “collapsed”) and active in her local Amnesty International group. On the last day of the vigil, I asked her what she thought of it. She said to me,“There’s a gentleness here.” I was so struck by her words. This fight has been long and will be long, but despite the urgency of the situation, there were times at the vigil that I felt relief. There I saw what my colleague saw, people being gentle with each other. I haven’t experienced this in other “protest” spaces before.

I experienced gentleness in conversations, prayer and teachings, and in how people looked out for each other in shifts, sleeping overnight outside the hospital. Gentleness in those that came (many of them refugees) with coffee, food or supplies, and wide smiles. People just being with each other, wholly present. I saw gentleness even in the fierce determination of vigil participants surrounding Federal Police cars and calmly and peacefully searching them to ensure they weren’t taking Baby Asha and her mum.

The night of the blockade I slept outside the hospital for the first time, with over thirty others. This was the largest overnight shift, covering all entrances, as we had a well-founded fear Border Force would take Baby Asha and her mum in the middle of the night. The morning after, knowing they were still safe inside, I woke up early in the cool weather to gentle rain on my face. I got up and met a mum and her two-year-old boy. He was so joyful at being there, smiling as he held a sign. She shared that he’d seen it on the news and he told her, “I look after babies”, so they had to come down. Such gentleness.

In the final days of the vigil and at the wrap-up, after Baby Asha and her family were transferred to community detention, Peter Catt and David Busch again called on us to commit to a Sanctuary Movement. They warned we will be needed soon, perhaps in the coming weeks, as the threat of deportations loom.

While our personal risk may feel great, it is nothing compared to the risk of an asylum seeker facing deportation to abuse, rape, torture, indefinite detention or jail, and possibly death. That is weighed against a decision about jeopardising their claim by breaking the law, if they seek sanctuary before they have an outcome for their claim, or hear from Border Force. To promise, I will protect you with my body, is a transformative commitment to make. At the vigil wrap up I attended, all those present stood up and committed to this.

Will you join us?

Originally published at The Vocal by Kathleen McLeod