ACAR Honi is produced, published, and distributed on the stolen land of the Gadigal people. As editors of this paper, organisers, and people of colour — whether immigrants, refugees, or ‘australian’-born — we benefit from ongoing colonial dispossession. Sovereignty was never ceded. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
Invasion has never been a single event. It remains a structure. For over 237 years, First Nations peoples in so-called ‘australia’ have suffered the destructive impacts of invasion, genocide, dispossession, and colonisation. White ‘australia’ has always considered the
experience and survival of First Nations people to be a threat to the emergent settler colony. The Stolen Generation and other attempts to extinguish Aboriginality are a testament to this fact.
The University of Sydney is an inherently colonial institution, not only built on stolen land but also upholding colonial ideologies that serve to devalue Indigenous systems of knowledge and systematically exclude First Nations peoples.
We are in unwavering solidarity with First Nations movements and all Indigenous struggles toward decolonisation worldwide.
We also recognise that land acknowledgements are largely performative and used to assuage settler liberal guilt. ACAR demands concrete actions, not empty words.
Decolonising ‘australia’ demands a dismantlement and radical reimagining of structures that perpetuate colonial violence and overpolicing of Indigenous communities. Since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, there have been over 600 Indigenous deaths in custody, while their perpetrators evade accountability, protected by the settler state.
We must prioritise community-led justice and health initiatives that actively empower First Nations peoples through healing, not punishment.
Moreover, true solidarity in activist and anti-racist spaces in socalled ‘australia’ demands that we recognise the ongoing struggle of First Nations peoples and centre Indigenous voices and sovereignty in our efforts for justice. Only through these actions can we begin to address the injustices faced by Indigenous communities and support genuine self-determination for First Nations peoples.
Editors
Comedy
The layup of ACAR Honi to me exemplifies what ACAR is. Under the depths of a mysterious virus / illness / stress-sickness, ACAR (heavy on the ‘collective’ part of the acronym) came together and, in such a short timeframe, made this momentous task happen. From the cover art (thank you to Leila Frijat!!!) to last-minute news articles to not-very anonymous T1 Western Sydney analysis surveys, ACAR is everything. I adore you all with my whole heart.
This edition of ACAR is as diverse as we
are (lol): satirical, heartwarming, analytical, brooding… it is reflective of the capacity of community, as a living, breathing organism. As a wannabe archivist, I am eternally grateful that this version of ACAR, at this moment of history, is forever preserved in this edition. I hope people read it and smile or have a think.
In every Palestinian girl’s necklace (you know the one), there is a line from a Mahmoud Darwish poem. It is roughly translated to: we have on this earth what makes life worth living. Oh, but things are grim, and grave, and the gravity of the world is exhausting to bear. But we are closest to liberation than we have ever been.
Within our lifetimes.
Dana
Purny Ahmed, Eko Bautista, Ravkaran Grewal, Kayla Hill, Mehnaaz Hossain, Dana Kafina, Aron Khuc, Charlotte Saker, Tyberius Seeto, Vince Tafea, Victor Zhang
Front Cover
Leila Frijat
Artists
Eko Bautista, Bipasha Chakraborty, Kayla Hill, Dana Kafina
Back Cover
Dana Kafina
Jaseena Al-Helo, Mohamed Allouche, Juneau Choo, Sidra Ghanawi, Ravkaran Grewal, Kayla Hill, Dana Kafina, Aron Khuc, Imane Lattab, Pimala Leo, Chantel Marcelene, Marc Paniza, Tyberius Seeto, Vince Tafea, Victor Zhang, Shayla Zreika
Letter to the Editor
Dear Honi Soit,
It explains in revelation of The Bible: Revelation 13: 16–17 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666. Get food and water supplies before it is too late. Jesus returns for his church in eight years. Take care! If you already have a microchip implant you could leave your job and have it removed. You can work until the microchip implant comes into the public arena.
Yours Sincerely,
Natalia Truex
Dear Natalia,
HELP! I can’t remove my microchip implant. Actually, I don’t want to remove it.
Beep Boop, Assimilated Drone
What is ACAR?
The Autonomous Collective Against Racism (ACAR) is an autonomous collective within the Students’ Representative Council for people who selfidentify as Black, Indigenous, a Person of Colour, someone who comes from a minority ethnocultural background, and being marked or marginalised by white supremacy. We are fundamentally grounded in anti-racist and anticolonial politics. We organise and support various initiatives to combat racism, including protests, mutual aid campaigns, workshops, and social events.
This year, ACAR has organised a multitude of events on campus to advance anti-racist and decolonial struggles. For Welcome Fest, ACAR distributed merchandise, recruited new members (message @usydacar to join!), and hosted a welcome dinner. During Israeli Apartheid Week, we hosted an Iftar potluck, a film screening of Jenin, Jenin, and a workshop with the Women’s Collective about the thawabet
Renting 101 with the Tenants’ Union 21st of August, 10am Eastern Avenue SRC Stall
ACAR Honi Launch Party
21st of August, 6pm Hermann’s Bar
Nationwide March for Palestine 24th of August, 1pm Hyde Park
USyd Engineering Revue
28–30th of August
Everest Theatre
USyd Law Revue
28–30th of August York Theatre
Central to ACAR is the support of other struggles for liberation. We see ourselves as part of an ecosystem of other groups built on mutual trust and solidarity. We regularly organise contingents and give speeches to rallies off campus, and get involved in the campaigns of other organisations.
Looming over the work of ACAR is a growing hostility to political dissent, both by the University and the government (just see what the uni has done to our bakesales!). The disgraceful policies and laws alike that have beeen introduced foster intimidation and violence against protests at the egregiousness of white supremacy. Know, we will not cower into silence. Scrap the CAP. Repeal the anti-protest laws.
So long as our peoples are colonised, murdered, dehumanised, and erased, we will be unwavering in our solidarity even if our voice shakes.
More about SRC Week
More about ACAR!
Australia moves to recognise Palestine
Victor Zhang reports.
Australia has indicated that they will move to recognise Palestine at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.
Over 140 nations currently recognise Palestinian statehood. Canada, France, Malta, Portugal, and the United Kingdom will join Australia in recognising Palestine in September.
Australia has placed conditions on recognition, such as the removal of Hamas from power and demilitarisation.
However, the Australian Palestinian Action Network (APAN) warned that recognition without decisive action to hold Israel accountable for genocide is a “political fig leaf”.
APAN President Nasser Mashini stated that “recognition without decisive action is an insult to Palestinians.
“Australia must stop enabling apartheid and genocide by cutting all military ties, imposing sanctions akin to those we’ve placed on Russia, and standing up for Palestinian selfdetermination in their historic homeland.”
The Jewish Council of Australia (JCA) expressed a similar sentiment, calling on the Australian Government to match recognition with action including sanctions and ending all arms trade with Israel. JCA Executive Officer Sarah Schwartz said that Australia “cannot endorse Palestinian statehood with one hand while supplying parts of the weapons that destroy it with the other.”
A recent investigation from Declassified Australia revealed that as recently as early July 2025, F-35 fighter jet parts have been exported directly to Israel.
Indonesian Independence Day at the MUA
Kayla Hill reports.
On 15th August, 50 people gathered at the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) office to reflect on 80 years of Indonesian independence.
The event commenced with the screening of Joris Ivens’ film Indonesia Calling, which narrates the events of the Black Armada. The Black Armada was a four-year-long boycott of Dutch ships set to sail from Australia to Indonesia for reinvasion following the end of World War II. Indonesian maritime workers started the campaign, then sought support from the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia (WWF), one of the MUA’s predecessors. As supporters of Indonesian selfdetermination, WWF joined the boycott and mobilised various other unions. With this unity of trade unionists, workers were able to materially and abstractly resist Dutch occupation.
Following the film was a discussion by academics and organisers for Indonesia.
Shane Reside, Sydney Branch Organiser for the Maritime Union of Australia, addressed the audience, drawing parallels between the struggle for Indonesian independence and Palestinian liberation. Reside emphasised the gravity of the Black Armada as an internationalist, trade unionist
effort. He spoke of present-day efforts by maritime workers and activists alike to resist Israel. Protests took place in Port Botany in 2023 and 2024 against the unloading of Israeliowned shipping company ZIM. Similarly, Greek dockworkers have refused to aid in the shipment of military cargo to Israel.
Nick Dobrijevich, a researcher and Indonesian translator, discussed the significance of Indonesian independence, highlighting that “ordinary people brought down a regime… It was millions of people that refused to submit anymore to the humiliation and exploitation of Dutch colonial rule.” Multiple speakers also raised the significance of multinational solidarity in the backdrop of the White Australia Policy. Dr Sarah Kennedy Bates, a University of New South Wales (UNSW) historian and sociologist, explained this paradox: “the history of the relationship between states is, and can be radically different to, the history of the relationship between ordinary people.”
Alya Triska Sutrisno, a Social Sciences PhD candidate at UNSW, reflected on the relevance of the independence struggle in present-day Indonesia. She made reference to the 2024 election of Prabowo Subianto,
New parliamentary petition calling for transport concession fares for all students launched
A new petition to the NSW Legislative Assembly has been launched calling for the extension of transport concession fares to all students including part-time and international students. The petition was lodged by Weihong Liang, Chair of the NSW International Student Representative Committee and Education Officer of the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA).
NSW remains the only state in Australia where international and part-time students are not entitled to transport concession fares.
Liang, having been involved in this campaign for several years, said that “providing concessions
would promote equity among all tertiary students, encourage public transport use, reduce car dependency, and support environmental goals.”
In October 2024, the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) recommended that Transport for NSW work collaboratively with higher education and government stakeholders to explore the possibility of extending concession fares to students currently excluded from receiving them.
Liang affirmed that this is an important step in the campaign: “We see IPART’s recommendation gives us a strong basis for another petition to the NSW Legislative Assembly.
It demonstrates the broad public support for transport concession equity.”
SUPRA and the USyd Students’ Representative Council (SRC) have previously launched a petition to call for transport concessions for all students, which reached 21,000 signatures in April 2024. Jenny Leong, NSW Legislative Assembly Member for Newtown, presented this petition to the Legislative Assembly, to which former Minister for Transport Jo Haylen did not support, citing budgetary issues.
In a statement to Honi, Leong reiterated her strong support for the campaign and her disappointment at the intransigence of the NSW Government.
the son-in-law of dictator Suharto, and ex-military leader accused of committing human rights abuses and war crimes. She also spoke to the recent mass-protests against ongoing inequality and discrimination post-independence.
As speeches ended, discussion opened to the floor. Many comments centred on the evolution of political resistance in the years following independence, with reference to the mass killings of 1965-66 which quashed Indonesians’ revolutionary spirit. The final question from the audience asked how Indonesian diaspora can advance revolutionary struggle from afar at a time of immense political upheaval. Two conclusions arose from the speakers: firstly, the cultivation of community through events such as these is a meaningful way to foster Indonesian political organising. Secondly, the memory of history is crucial in light of Indonesia’s historical and modern erasure of political events.
The struggle that forged Indonesia as a nation is ongoing. To conclude, Reside asked us to reflect on “what we can do to rebuild that kind of politics, power, and momentum in the here and now”, not only for Indonesia, but for all global struggles.
“It is absolutely ludicrous that after over a decade of campaigning and multiple community petitions with thousands of signatures, this blatantly discriminatory policy continues when we have Labor governments at federal and state levels.
“How many more international and part-time students have to be pushed into financial precarity because they are locked out of travel concessions and other cost of living support for NSW Labor to finally act?”
At the 2024 NSW Labor Conference, the Rail, Tram, and Bus Union (RTBU) along with rank-and-file members of Labor moved that the NSW Labor Party should support “the provision
Victor Zhang reports.
of transport concessions to all tertiary students, including international and part-time students”.
Despite the conference resolving to adopt this item in their platform, the NSW Labor Government gave no indication that there will be a change in government policy.
The NSW Minister for Transport, John Graham, was contacted for comment.
The current petition is open until 25th November, 2025 and requires 20,000 signatures to be presented to parliament.
Photography by Kayla Hill
UTS announces temporary suspension of courses
Tyberius Seeto reports.
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has announced the temporary suspension of intake to 146 courses as the university pursues $100 million in cost cuts.
The decision by the university comes in response to its controversial Operational Sustainability Initiative (OSI) and UTS 2030, which aims to make the university around $640 million in capital investments over the next five years by shedding $100 million in costs.
With the university’s Open Day coming up in two weeks, student ambassadors whose courses have been suspended have been left in limbo with little to no communication from the university.
Moira-Kelly Cruz, a double degree student ambassador who was supposed to represent the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation Honours (BCII), has said the announcement by the university has come at a shock to her after hearing that only a few courses were set to be temporarily suspended.
“The announcement [of the temporary course suspensions] came out as the same day I confirmed my shift for Open Day,” she said.
“The whole thing as a student ambassador [is] to talk about my experience with my faculty and promote it to new students. What am I supposed to promote if the course isn’t there?”
With Open Day organised on 30th August, Cruz also shared concerns of what to tell students and parents who were interested in coming to UTS to study one of the 146 courses that has suspended intake.
The temporary suspension comes as the university’s OSI is set to cull around 400 jobs from the institution. With affected staff set to lose their jobs, the university sent an all-staff email of suggestions to mitigate stress which included “washing delicates” and “brushing and flossing your teeth” as ABC News revealed.
In an all staff email, Vice Chancellor Andrew Parfitt has said the suspensions would be
temporary and no final decisions have been made on job cuts or permanent course cuts.
Vice Chancellor Parfitt also said the 146 temporarily suspended courses had “low enrolment numbers”, saying it was necessary in case the course could not proceed ahead.
UTS Students Association (UTSSA) General Councillor and Stop the Cuts UTS spokesperson Ella Haid has said the temporary suspensions are merely a “soft launch” into more permanent course cuts.
“We should be clear that management is doing this because they’re pursuing a hefty financial surplus. They’ve had no interest in seeking student or staff consultation on this major restructure,” she said.
UTSSA Education Officer Samiha Emran reiterated similar comments by Haid, the suspension of the BCII Honours course taking a personal affect on her.
“I’m upset and disappointed not only on a personal level,
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but on behalf of the wider UTS community, especially students and staff who are having to navigate last-minute uncertainty,” she told Honi
“This decision feels like it was made without genuine consultation or consideration of the ripple effects it’s having across faculties. UTS cannot claim to prioritise student outcomes while quietly stripping away the very programs that enable them.”
Speaking to CityHub, National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) President Dr Alison Barnes called the universities suggestions of mitigating stress “disgraceful” and “tone-deaf trivialisation”.
“UTS staff are in shock after widespread course suspensions and looming cuts. This just added insult to injury,” she told the publication.
The temporary suspensions of courses has only added fuel to the fire at UTS, with the media having a field day of anonymous leaks and reports.
In May, The Saturday Paper revealed a leaked report that the University had commissioned $5 million to consultancy firm KPMG on identifying “high risk” subjects and courses which were losing money for the University. In June, a column in the Australian Financial Review revealed that SafeWork NSW issued a “notice to give information” to the University after an anonymous complaint was lodged over the psychological risk the OSI had on staff as well as the lack of consultation by the University.
A month later an NTEU survey seen by the ABC revealed that 35 per cent of 380 respondents had experienced high levels of psychological distress from the OSI restructure, while leaked document revealed five senior UTS executives including VC Parfitt had spent more than $140,000 for an alumni trip to the United States in May.
UTS has been contacted for a comment but could not provide one in time for print.
“Without Parallel”: UN Commissioner Exposes Systematic Erasure of Palestinian Heritage
The systematic destruction of Gaza’s cultural heritage represents “extreme episodes in a 100-year war”, United Nations Commissioner Chris Sidoti told a packed audience at the Chau Chak Wing Museum Tuesday night, presenting evidence that Israel’s targeting of museums, archaeological sites and educational institutions constitutes a deliberate attempt to erase Palestinian identity.
Sidoti, a USyd alumnus (‘69-’74) and former Australian Human Rights Commissioner, joined Dr. Ihab Shalbak to discuss the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry’s latest report on the destruction of heritage sites in Gaza. The seminar comes at a crucial moment, just days after Australia announced it would recognise Palestine as a state following the historic Sydney Harbour Bridge protest that drew around 300,000 people demanding justice for Palestinians.
“This is not only an attack on archaeology, but an attack on a people, identity, memory,” Sidoti said, emphasising how the destruction undermines Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
The scale of devastation Sidoti presented was staggering. Drawing from the Commission’s report, he cited World Bank figures showing 53 per cent of Gaza’s heritage sites destroyed or damaged, with the 13thcentury Pasha Palace and Samaritan Bathhouse among those demolished. The destruction represents a 100fold increase in damage from the 2014 assault on Gaza, which Al-Haq had already documented as causing “enormous damage.”
These numbers carry profound meaning. When the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) bulldozes an archaeological site, they’re erasing the stratigraphy that proves continuous Palestinian presence on the land. Every layer destroyed is evidence lost forever. The fate of museum collections remains unknown, with Sidoti noting uncertainty about whether artefacts in the Gazan university museum were destroyed or looted.
Some museum property has been placed in “safekeeping in Geneva, temporarily in French Institute of Arab World”, offering limited hope for preservation.
Sidoti detailed how 725 educators have been killed and 90 per cent of schools and universities need total reconstruction. “Virtually all” university buildings have been destroyed, with over 658,000 children having no formal education for 22 months.
“The attacks on schools and archaeological sites were intentionally targeted,” Sidoti stated unequivocally, dismissing Israeli claims of military necessity. The Commission found only a single verified case of Hamas using a school for military purposes, “but no evidence obtained of widespread” use, while documenting the IOF’s own war crime of “expropriating education infrastructure for military purposes, storing munitions.”
The Commissioner revealed that IOF soldiers filmed themselves mocking the destruction, quoting one video: “For all those asking why there is no education in Gaza... That is how you will not be engineers anymore.”
Sidoti also addressed the legal principle of proportionality, explaining that it “overrides potential unintention of attack,” meaning even unintended damage can constitute war crimes when disproportionate to military objectives.
Dr. Shalbak contextualised these findings within the ongoing genocide, while Sidoti explained how the destruction serves a broader agenda of “enhancing an exclusively Jewish identity” in occupied territories “at the expense of many peoples who have walked through the Levant.”
This “ideological agenda over scientific” approach extends beyond Gaza across occupied Palestine, including destruction in Jenin and other West Bank areas.
The seminar highlighted ongoing tensions at Australian universities regarding discussion of Palestine. Sidoti opened with a joke that he
would have been expelled under USyd’s new Campus Access Policy, referencing the university’s recent restrictions on protests. He separately addressed the issue of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which Australian universities adopted earlier this year. Sidoti criticised this definition as “no longer relevant” and noted it “impedes ICJ investigation.” He advocated instead for the Jerusalem Declaration, which better distinguishes between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israeli policies. “I feel sorry for Australian universities,” Sidoti said, suggesting that both protest restrictions and the IHRA definition stifle legitimate discourse on Palestine.
The museum event itself reflected these tensions, with its title reportedly going through “iterations” to change from active to passive voice, removing Israel as the named agent of destruction.
Sidoti’s most striking revelation concerned Australian legal obligations, particularly significant given the government’s impending recognition of Palestinian statehood. Following the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 ruling, states have a responsibility to prevent aiding war crimes. “I would expect urgently that the Australian government conducts a review into all aspects of relationships with the Israeli government,” he stated. “We’re not meeting those obligations.”
Crucially, Sidoti confirmed that dual Israeli-Australian citizens serving in the IOF are liable for federal war crime investigations under the Australian Crimes Act. This warning comes as the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, “largely in response to the Commission report,” according to Sidoti.
The Commissioner painted a bleak picture of international accountability, describing both the ICC and ICJ as “not effective.” The UN Security Council is “the most dysfunctional body of all,” he stated, while “the international system has never been more at risk... on the brink
of collapse.” The Commission itself has “no power to act” beyond issuing reports, representing what Sidoti called a “failure of international law and the international system.”
When an audience member challenged Sidoti, arguing that “we’re beyond BDS” and demanding “direct intervention” against the IOF, the Commissioner’s response was sobering. Rather than endorsing escalated action, Sidoti suggested that even basic accountability measures haven’t started: “The response hasn’t even begun.” He characterised BDS as “predominantly political” while emphasising that Australia has “immediate obligations” under international law that it’s failing to meet.
Drawing a parallel to Australia’s Bringing Them Home report on the Stolen Generations, Sidoti reflected: “I don’t know whether anything will come of this exercise, but at least the history will be recorded.”
The Commissioner also noted how Israel has banned him from Israel and Palestine since taking his UN position in 2021, while explaining that the Commission’s chair had resigned due to old age, “not other facts.”
Sidoti emphasised that reform of international law is “absolutely” needed but not happening, requiring the will of states that doesn’t exist. His assessment was stark: the “whole thing is on the brink of collapse.”
For those of us who understand that archaeology is never just about the past, the implications are clear. When you destroy a people’s heritage, you’re attempting to destroy their future. The question now is whether Australia, with its citizens potentially implicated in war crimes and its government finally moving toward recognising Palestinian statehood after unprecedented public pressure, will act on what Sidoti called our “immediate obligations.”
The history has been recorded. What remains to be seen is whether it will lead to justice.
Marc Paniza reports.
On 17th August, Indonesia celebrated 80 years of independence, an end to a 350 year rule riddled with mass atrocities committed by the Dutch, as well as an eventual end to the Japanese empire during World War II. What soon followed after this declaration of independence was a four year war between Dutch colonial forces and Indonesians, who took up arms to rightfully resist their occupiers. This resistance would lead to Indonesia’s liberation, breaking the shackles of Dutch colonialism. Such struggle, however, would be exploited to appropriate West Papua’s own independence movement and instead take over the neighbouring country completely — the colonised becomes the coloniser.
After four years of struggle, Indonesia gained independence from the Netherlands in 1949. Indonesia subsequently stressed its right to West Papua given the countries’ shared struggle of colonisation through the Dutch East Indies.
Over time, President Sukarno spouted rhetoric about the ‘uncivilised’ nature of West Papuans who were incapable of selfgovernance, as well as the claim that the Dutch were holding onto West Papua as a desperate means to hold diminishing power in the region.
Many futile negotiations took place over the next decade between Indonesia and the Netherlands. During this time, Indonesia used diplomacy to advance its goals for West Papuan land. Indonesia used the 1955 Bandung Conference, a gathering of Third World countries to discuss anti-imperialism and westerndecentralisation, as a means to enhance the legitimacy of its claim to West Papua.
Simultaneously, the height of the Cold War gave the US a chance to expand its influence, with Indonesia slowly turning to the Soviet Union for support in the occupation of West Papua. To quell the communist influence in South-Eastern Asia, the US eventually threatened to withdraw Marshall Aid away from the Netherlands if they did not give up the land to Indonesia.
Indonesia uses the 1955 Bandung Conference, a gathering of [Global South colonised] countries to discuss anti-imperialism and westerndecentralisation, as a means to enhance the legitimacy of its claim to West Papua.
In 1961, West Papua held a congress in which they declared their independence, and expressed support for the Luns Plan, a proposal by Dutch Foreign Minister Joseph Luns that the Netherlands cedes
sovereignty over West Papua and the UN administers a plebiscite over West Papua’s self-determination.
In 1962, the New York Agreement was signed by Indonesia and the Netherlands, in which West Papua would be transferred from the Netherlands to the United Nations Temporary Executive Authority for administration, and eventually to Indonesia. One of the stipulations within the agreement was that Indonesia conduct a referendum in West Papua over their self-determination. As Douglas Gerrard describes it, the New York Agreement is to Papua the Balfour Declaration to Palestine, with both Indigenous peoples “shut out of the negotiations that signed away their land.”
In 1969, the Act of No Choice was conducted by Indonesia. 1,000 West Papuan tribal leaders were hand-picked and taken at gunpoint to vote against self-determination. The UN accepted the results of the referendum despite the autocratic electoral procedures.
Following the results of the plebiscite, Indonesia launched a military invasion on West Papua, throwing Morning Star flags into bonfires and destroying Indigenous artefacts. Indonesian occupation would expand.
West Papua Today
1889
The Netherlands colonises West Papua under the Dutch East Indies
15th August 1945
The Second World War ends and Japan surrenders the Dutch East Indies
17th August
1945
Proclamation of Indonesian Independence is signed
27th December 1949
Indonesia gains independence from the Netherlands after four years of national revolution
15th August 1962
The New York Agreement is signed by Indonesia and Netherlands, transferring control of West Papua from the Netherlands to a UN administration, then to Indonesia following self-determination referendum
July-August 1969
Act of No Choice, Indonesia forces tribal leaders to vote against self-determination at gunpoint, prompting a groundinvasion of West Papua by Indonesia
From Papua to Palestine, occupation is a crime!
The violent occupation of West Papua is upheld in all areas of life. Its tactics — state violence, displacement, resource extraction, and political repression — are evident among all other occupiers, such as: Israel, Australia, Amerikkka, Canada.
ICF Brutality
Tens of thousands of Indonesian police and military personnel, henceforth referred to as the Indonesian Colonial Forces (ICF), brutalise, humiliate, drown, starve, rape, and shoot West Papuans. These are some of the most notable examples.
Operation Kikis (‘Chipping Away’) was conducted on the Central Highlands of West Papua between 1977 and 1978 in an effort to punish the Free Papua organisation (OPM) for their direct action against the Grasberg mine. Over 4,000 West Papuans were killed, many by bombings. During the attacks, the ICF mass-arrested West Papuans and drowned them in containers that were often thrown into rivers, and buried people alive in wells that were then covered with soil. Survivors recount violence being especially targeted towards tribal leaders. Lieutenant Colonel Soekemi forced tribal leaders to drink the blood of Nalogian Kibak, who the ICF murdered. In a similar act of cruelty, the ICF also forced elderly West Papuans to eat soldiers’ faeces and drink military officers’ urine. Sexual assault was another major feature of Operation Kikis. The ICF forced a couple to have sex in public and filmed it, distributing it widely to frame West Papuans’ ‘animalistic’ nature. Soldiers raped West Papuan women in Jayawijaya to death with heated iron rods. Female victims’ breasts and genitalia would be mutilated. The ICF would cut the penises from killed Papuan men and force them into Papuan women’s mouths. Reverend Matius recounted his traumatic experience of witnessing the ICF insert batteries into a Papuan woman’s vagina.
Twenty years later was the 1998 Biak massacre. The West Papuan Morning Star flag was raised at a water tower in the town of Biak during an independence demonstration involving a declaration of demands regarding West Papuan sovereignty, chants, singing, and traditional dance. The ICF attempted to move the crowd on; met with resistance, they opened fire on the demonstrators, killing over 150 West Papuans and terrorising hundreds more over the following days. A citizens’ tribunal was held for the massacre at the University of Sydney in 2013, revealing horrific testimonies of sexual abuse and slaughter. One ICF soldier threatened a West Papuan woman with “we are going to use this [a razor blade] to cut off your vagina, from above and below and from the left to the right.” She testified that “A lit candle was penetrated inside me, they cut off my clitoris and they raped me.” To this day, the Morning Star flag is still banned and West Papuans continue to be charged with treason for raising it.
The 2011 Papuan Congress — a gathering of thousands of Papuans to discuss their struggle — was met with brutal violence
by the ICF. The ICF beat, hit, and opened fire on delegates; 300 were arrested and two died.
Danny Kogoya, the Jayapura regional commander of OPM, was poisoned to death in 2013 with toxic chemicals during his time at a police hospital where his leg was amputated without his consent. The autopsy was subsequently blocked by Indonesian officials.
In 2014, a 12 year old in Enarotali was assaulted with rifle butts by the ICF, after he and his friends shouted at soldiers whilst setting up Christmas decorations. The following day, around 800 West Papuans gathered in peaceful protest outside Indonesian military and police buildings. Protestors engaged in various traditional Papuan practices including performing the waita dance, singing, mimicking the bird of paradise, and holding ceremonial items. The ICF began to strike protestors with batons to disperse the demonstration before opening gunfire, murdering five West Papuan teenagers.
In 2015, the Timika Region was invaded by the ICF in response to Indonesian police officers and a Freeport mine security guard being killed. The ICF burnt down the village of Banti, displacing thousands of West Papuans. Additionally, over 100 villagers were indiscriminately arrested and tortured. Later that same year, one West Papuan highschooler was killed and another critically wounded from a shooting. The ICF falsely claimed that the victims’ fathers were in OPM.
In 2019, 43 Papuan students in Java were arrested for the alleged vandalism of an Indonesian flag on Independence Day. During the confrontation, the ICF teargassed the students and called them monkeys. This triggered protests across West Papua, wherein the Indonesian government shut down the internet, and the ICF killed at least 10 Papuan protestors.
In September 2021, following allegations by the Indonesian government that OPM had caused conflict in the region, the ICF launched a military attack against Papuans in Kiwirok. Over 150 bombs were dropped over Kiwirok through rockets and drones, and ICF soldiers used snipers and M16s against civilians, ultimately killing over 300 West Papuans. Thousands of Papuans fled Kiwirok to isolated mountains. They continue to be displaced to this day, out of fear of Indonesian retaliation. As of 2023, the ICF still guards Kiwirok, placing stun grenades on tripwires in the journey back to Kiwirok, and shooting at Papuans who try to return. Due to the isolation of the mountains, at least 2,000 displaced Papuans from Kiwirok have died from starvation, and many others of sickness as well.
In 2023, the ICF raided the Fakfak Regency. During these raids, the ICF killed five Papuans by shooting them when they “resisted arrest”. The ICF arrested 12 others, including women and children. 500 West Papuan villagers in the Fakfak Regency became displaced when fleeing the raids, in fear of ICF response. A week
later in the Yahukimo Regency, the ICF killed five West Papuan teenagers on the suspicion that they were members of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB).
On 10th August 2025, the ICF immediately and lethally escalated their response to reports of alcohol consumption among young Papuans in Dogiyai. The ICF indiscriminately shot the group of Papuans, resulting in two teenage Papuans being seriously injured from gunshot wounds to their shoulders. Hostility against Papuans continued throughout the day, and the ICF shot dead 14 year old Martinus Tebai.
Ecocide
The exploitation of West Papua’s rich natural resources has been a central weapon of its continued colonisation. Imperial powers have preyed upon the country’s gold, copper, palm oil, and nickel reservoirs.
The Grasberg mine is one of the largest gold and copper mines in the world. Freeport, the U.S. company that holds primary ownership of the mine, was given a 30 year contract by Indonesia two years before the Act of No Choice. This agreement lacked any stipulations about environmental or social responsibilities, giving Freeport free reign for exploitation. The entire operation is expected to create 6 billion tonnes of waste. The mine is also partly owned by Rio Tinto — the same corporation that destroyed the 46,000 year old Juukan Gorge cave in Australia to expand an iron-ore project.
The Tanah Merah palm oil project spans over almost 3,000 square kilometres,close to twice the size of New York City. The project has, since its inception, been plagued with corruption. An investigation conducted by The Gecko Project and Mongabay found that permits for the project have consistently been falsified. Such forgery enables ecocide to go unchecked, with the deforestation required for the project projected to create 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. The Tanah Merah project uproots the Awyu people’s inherent ties to the land. Hendrikus Woo describes this innate connection: “without our ancestral forest, our people cannot survive.” Projects such as Tanah Merah commit not only physical acts — of ecocide and forced displacement — but also acts of cultural erasure, spiritual violence, and social disempowerment.
Despite claims by Indonesia that extraction projects such as these offer economic opportunities to otherwise impoverished West Papuans, it is precisely the imposition of exploitative, capitalist systems into West Papua that deprives the people of autonomy. The true beneficiaries of extraction are Indonesia and foreign investors from imperial states that benefit from colonisation: USA, UAE, Australia.
Furthermore, Papuan resistance to Indonesian ecocide is met with collective punishment. As outlined in the previous section, direct action by militant and
peaceful Papuans alike leads to intensified ICF hostility. West Papuans are oppressed through violently extractive industries, and any dissent to these circumstances only exacerbates the colonial power that enables such industries in the first place.
Transmigration
Indonesia’s transmigration program is an egregious part of its erasure of West Papuans. The program is a legacy of the Dutch East Indies continued by the Indonesian government, dispossessing West Papuans from their land by moving Indonesians away from denselypopulated Java. West Papuans currently make up less than 50 per cent of Papua. In 1971, they made up 96 per cent of the population.
This is ethnic cleansing.
West Papuans continue to be forced out of their homes through bombings, evictions, land-clearing, and armed force. Not only does transmigration inflict cultural violence, but the dispossession of land economically disempowers West Papuans. Such impoverishment forces them to engage in colonial economic and physical relations to the land, particularly extraction industries.
Political repression
The ban on raising the Morning Star flag, unlawful arrests of activists, internet blackouts, as well as the well documented cases of state-sanctioned violence from both the ICF and Indonesian police are salient examples of political repression in West Papua.
Some key activists in the movement have been forced to flee overseas to escape persecution from Indonesia over the fight for independence. Benny Wenda, founder of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua, a coalition of pro-independence groups, escaped prison after being wrongly accused of leading an attack on a police station in 2000 which killed three Indonesian police officers. Wenda was not even in the country at the time of the attacks nor at the alleged planning of the attacks — a clear case of Indonesia’s intent to jail activists for their work. With the help of other activists, Wenda fled the country and now lives in the United Kingdom.
The Indonesian government has barred human rights organisations and NGOs operating in West Papua while under its occupation. In 2015, CNN Indonesia reported that the Indonesian government had ordered all international NGOs to shutter their offices and leave the region. Prior to this order the Red Cross and Peace Brigade International closed their offices in West Papua in the 2010s.
For foreign journalists, covering West Papua comes with close monitoring from Indonesian authorities. A complete ban on foreign journalists was lifted by former President Joko Widodo in 2015; however, journalists have still been detained and prevented from doing their jobs. In 2018, BBC Indonesia bureau chief Rebecca Henschke was detained after posting
photos of supplies sitting on a dock during a measles outbreak. The photos “hurt the feelings of soldiers” according to a ICF spokesperson as Henschke captioned the supplies as aid. The spokesperson said that it did not show aid but supplies from a local merchant. In 2020, editor for environmental news Mongabay Philip Jacobson was arrested and deported for “visa violations” after meeting with the provincial government in Kalimantan and the Indigenous People's Alliance of the Archipelago (IPAA), an indigenous rights advocacy group, to understand more about local environmental issues. Indonesia claims the meeting breached the visa rules journalists use in West Papua. However, speaking to Vice News, the head of the IPAA said the arrest of Philips is most likely a response to his plan to cover Indonesian law prosecuting farmers for using fire to clear land plots.
While foreign journalists face arrests and deportations, local West Papuan journalists are more likely to face violence. Last year the offices of local tabloid Jubi Papua, who cover human rights abuses in West Papua, were firebombed by two unknown men. Despite clear security footage of the men and the motorcycle they rode on, no arrests were made by Indonesian police, a recurrent issue the publication has faced whenever they’ve become victims of violence. In 2023, editor for Jubi Papua Eddy Mambor, who had faced violence throughout his tenure as editor, had a bomb explode outside his house. Indonesian police failed to not only arrest the perpetrators but also failed to produce key evidence such as clear security camera footage as well as eye witness testimonies during their official recollections. Mambor did not find out the case was thrown out until several months later after being contacted by Papuan representatives from the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights. The International Federation of Journalists have said these instances set a dangerous precedent of impunity for crimes against journalists in the region, calling for transparent, effective investigations that considered all evidence.
Australia’s complicity
Like its complicity in the genocide and occupation of Palestine and Aboriginal land, the colonial powers of Australia continue to aid in the oppression and occupation of West Papua.
In an effort to maintain its colonial grasp of Papua New Guinea in the ‘60s, Australia initially supported the Netherlands plans to give West Papua full autonomy and independence. However, Dutch concerns of a military incursion into the region by Indonesia would later quell this plan, after the United States said it would not aid the Dutch militarily if independence were to happen. Australia would also backtrack on their support for this plan.
As West Papua fell into Indonesian control, thousands of innocent West Papuans became victims of atrocities by ICF. Then, the OPM began to ramp up resistance against the colonial force.
The colonial powers of Australia continue to aid in the oppression and occupation of West Papua.
Like in Palestine, Australia would play a role in the violence through military support of the ICF, with a 2013 report by the Asian Human Rights Commission finding that the Australian government supported the colonial forces with two helicopters. These were used during Operation Kikis, which saw the killing of 4,146 known people while some survivors estimated that around 13,000 were killed in the region. The Australian government also sent out Royal Australian Air Force fighters to the region, for mapping purposes which were used to aid the ICF across the Highlands of West Papua.
The previously mentioned Biak Massacre in 1998 is yet another example of Australia painting its hand red with the blood of West Papuans by destroying photographic evidence of war crimes being committed by the ICF. An unredacted intelligence report, written by a former Australian military attaché and intelligence officer, given to Guardian Australia in 2021 revealed the extent of the massacres committed against West Papuan demonstrators. The local water tower, where demonstrations took place riddled with bullet holes as well as oral evidence by Australian volunteer aid workers on the island detailing the length of gunfire produced by the ICF. One local man also gave the officer a roll of film which contained photographic evidence of the senseless brutality inflicted against demonstrators. However, it was later found that the photographic evidence which was handed to the officer was destroyed by the Department of Defence in 2014. This was due to policy surrounding the handling of intelligence material after West Papua activist Anthony Craig requested an unredacted copy of the intelligence report without redactions from the National Archives of Australia.
In both examples, Australia has chosen to hide its complicity behind a charade of “raising concerns with the Indonesian government”, not being able find evidence in the Department of Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade archives, or even destroying any key evidence under the guise of government policy.
Despite Australia’s historical denial in its complicity, the Australian wing of weapons manufacturers BAE Systems, Northrop Grunman, Thales, and Rheinmetall Defence — who provide the ICF with ammunition, tanks, and Bushmasters — are more than comfortable to have their profits covered in the blood of West Papuans, with a full green light from the Australian government. Australia also provides Indonesia with “counterterrorism” through training programs and equipment to the Indonesian National Police through the Australian Federal Police (AFP). In 2011, the AFP donated
three patrol boats which cost around $10 million including operational cost as well as $7.3 million worth of funding to the Indonesian National Police Cybercrime Unit. This support by the AFP is likely used to quell protests against the Indonesian occupation.
While the West Papuan boycott movement has not achieved similar levels to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement for Palestine, groups like the OPM have called for targeted boycotts against products whose companies source their palm oil from West Papua, such as Oreo, KitKat, and Smarties, while other groups have advocated for a total boycott of Indonesian sourced products. Despite the ongoing violence and repression, hundreds of thousands of Australians continue to flock to Bali as a holiday destination, financially aiding Indonesia through its tourism sector. If the Free West Papua movement were to reach the same international momentum that we are seeing for Palestine, the decision of Australian holidaymakers could make a difference.
Australia’s continued support of Indonesia and its total denial of its complicity in war crimes however suppresses the support needed for a Free West Papua.
From Papua to Palestine, occupation is a crime!
Conclusion
Indonesia continues to hold itself on the global stage as an ally to Palestine, refusing to recognise the Israeli occupation and sending aid to Palestine. While doing so, Indonesia violently occupies West Papua and enact its own genocide against West Papuans. The Act of “Free” Choice in the ‘60s was not a fair and equal representation of what many wanted.The autonomy of West Papuans was shackled by Indonesia’s flagrant disregard for the New York Agreement, which requested ALL 800,000 West Papuans to take a vote. Instead, a handpicked group of 1,025 West Papuan, voted whilst they were threatened with violence against themselves or their families if they voted for independence. What came after this sham vote — the ethnic cleansing, the ecocide, the enablement and complicity by Australia — is clear evidence that Indonesia’s grip is not welcome nor is it legal.
Freedom for some is freedom for none. The very spirit that liberated Indonesia from the Dutch has been lost. Indonesia has become a traitor to its own struggle of decolonialism and appropriated the very logics of extraction and exploitation by the Dutch.
Papua Merdeka and Merdeka to all those occupied, from Gadigal to Gaza and from the West Bank to West Papua.
Ravkaran Grewal digs up the dirt.
I recently took a stroll around the Royal Botanical Gardens of Sydney. Amongst the magnificent collection of native and exotic plants and trees is the striking Succulent Garden. This is my favourite section of the garden and hosts some of its strangest and most beautiful plants. Radiant aloes, towering cacti, and thorny sap-producing euphorbias are planted in cascading rows of beds separated by rusted metal. During this visit, one particular plant caught my attention: the succulent shrub known as the crownof-thorns. Its spiny stems were used, according to legend, to make the crown placed on Jesus’s head before his crucifixion. Its presence here reminded me of the wholly artificial nature of gardens. They are cultivated to serve the interests of those who claim ownership over their land. The colonial project necessitates a violent assertion of the ‘supremacy’ of Western values and canon. The crown-of-thorns, its allusion to Jesus, the white man’s God, planted on unceded Gadigal Land within a state institution, represent nothing less than this.
During the 18th and 19th century, European empires created a worldwide network of Botanical Gardens in order to understand the flora of the New World and of Asia. This knowledge was a vital basis of colonial power and expansion; the domination of the land required an
understanding of the plant life that covered it.
Nature for Frantz Fanon, is fundamentally hostile, obstinate and rebellious and is “represented in the colonies by the bush, by mosquitoes, natives, and fever, and colonisation is a success when all this indocile nature has finally been tamed.” Botanical Gardens, perfectly cultivated and manicured, formed the ideal realisation of colonial mastery over nature.
Plant matter is an often aspect of colonial plunder. As plant germplasm reproduces itself, a single theft of germplasm can provide the basis of an entirely new sector of production. Materially, Botanical Gardens greatly contributed to the agricultural development of the colonial empires. Foreign plants would be shipped in and acclimatised in the hope that they would bear produce in new environments or help terraform the landscape to support capitalist agriculture. Later, these institutions systematically documented and conducted research on the world’s plant material. Behind the seemingly dispassionate ‘scientific pursuit’ was the explicit goal of commodifying native plants or otherwise determining their usefulness to the empire. Given the Faustian element, the council of Goethe is relevant here: grey is all theory but green is the tree of life. The botanists would instruct where to find a ‘useful’ plant; how to improve it through species selection, cultivation, and hybridisation; where to cultivate it easily and how to process its produce for global trade.
Imperial Botany: Colonialism & Botanical Gardens
The central institution of this ‘imperial botany’ was the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Located in the outskirts of London, these gardens coordinated the efforts of, as stated by director Joseph Hooker, “the many gardens in the British colonies and dependencies… capable of conferring very important benefits on commerce, and of conducting essentially to colonial prosperity”. The Kew Gardens played a crucial role in the development of a multitude of highly profitable agricultural industries. The small, scientific elite, in touch with each other globally but headquartered at the Gardens in Kew, made and implemented decisions of major ecological and agricultural importance. Among these scientists was Joseph Banks, who participated in Captain James Cook’s first voyage of the Pacific (1768-71) and landed with him at so-called Botany Bay. Banks spent his time here feverishly looting the native flora and surveying the land. In 1779, he gave evidence supporting the establishment of a colony at Botany Bay to a House of Commons Select Committee. Colonialism, then, was coordinated not only by the ministries and administrations of the imperial core but also by its botanists and ecologists.
For the most part, however, the exotic flora that had greatly excited Banks in 1770 turned out to have little commercial possibilities. This continent is unique as none of the world’s significant culinary or industrial crops originate from here. Ironically, ‘Australia’ today is considered one of the world’s principal breadbaskets but relies almost entirely on plants originating from elsewhere. Many of these plants, upon reaching Australia, were first planted, acclimatised, and experimented on at the Sydney Royal Botanical Gardens.
Upon his arrival to Sydney with the First Fleet, Governor Arthur Phillip remarked on “the wild appearance of land entirely untouched by cultivation”. Within a few short months, European settlers engaged in large-scale destruction and clearing of the land where the Botanic Gardens sit today and around other parts of the harbour. The formation of capital in ‘Australia’, like elsewhere described by Marx, comes “dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt”. Eucalyptus trees that had stood for centuries and provided medicine, sustenance, and materials to the local Gadigal people were cut down to make way for the first farm. Cabbage tree palms and acacias, also useful food and medicine sources, fell to the settler axe to be turned into huts. With continued and unabated clearing, the local fauna — particularly kangaroo, possum, emu, and wallaby — were also driven from Gadigal lands, further depriving the indigenous population of food sources. Many of the early skirmishes between the Gadigal people and the settlers revolved around indigenous resistance against the ecological impact of settlement. For indigenous people, “railways across the bush, the draining of swamps” is, Fanon suggests, identical to being “non-existent politically and economically”.
The Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney were established in 1816, and the gardens attached to the governor’s domain that preceded it, collected and experimented on native plants to appraise their value to the empire. For example, eucalyptus tree species native to ‘Australia’ were transported globally. They were deemed suitable to act as windbreaks, to reduce soil erosion, and for wood production due their fast-growing nature. Eucalyptus trees also draw large amounts of water and can be used to drain swamps and reduce soil salinity. From California, southern Europe, Africa, South America, West and South Asia, eucalyptus trees helped terraform the landscape to be better suited for capitalist agriculture. The catastrophic wildfires in California in recent years — greatly exacerbated by eucalyptus trees — attest to the disastrous consequences these invasive species have had on local environments.
Today, the main instrument pertaining to plant matter are large multinational agribusinesses. Botanical Gardens have lost some of their former significance here and instead mostly focus their research on ecological preservation. The plant genetic material looted by the West through these gardens would return, many years later, as a commodity in the form of commercial seeds. In celebrating its 100th anniversary, the Ferry-Morse Seed Company stated: “For the watermelon, America owes a real debt of gratitude to Africa. Ferry-Morse is helping in part to repay that debt by supplying North African and Eastern Mediterranean countries with thousands of pounds of watermelon seeds each year.” The seed supplied by Ferry-Morse is, it must be stressed, not given freely. Research and development conducted by agribusiness has continuously made plant seed more amenable to commodification. Such advances include hybridisation, a breeding technique that increases productivity but prevents the possibility of replanting the same seed, forcing the farmer to continuously repurchase seed externally.
By enlisting the botanical and ecological sciences, capital has truly conquered the soil, making plants essentially indistinguishable from any other commodity. In order to return the earth to common ownership, to reconcile nature with humanity, it is necessary to first expropriate the expropriators. In usurping the crown we must cultivate our own garden.
Crown of Thorn Euphorbia milii var. splendens source: RBGS Garden Explorer
Outside the politics of genocide recognition, the word “Nakba” must be used against the West.
History repeats itself. Zionists repeat history.
In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) presented a petition to the United Nations charging the United States with Black genocide. Despite the antiBlack racism of slavery, lynching, and sterilisation, lawyer Raphael Lemkin denied genocidal destruction by the USA. Lemkin contended that the Jim Crow era was not an instance of genocide because the Black population was growing in size.
By comparison, Zionists argue that, because the Palestinian population is increasing in size, the ongoing Nakba is not a genocide — despite the blockade of Gaza.
In 1968, Biafra appealed to international public opinion, charging Nigeria with genocide. Despite the sentiments of the 1966 anti-Igbo pogroms, political scientist Robert Melson and others denied the genocidal intent of Nigeria. Scholars argued that the blockade of Biafra was not an instance of genocide because Nigeria’s aim was to suppress Biafran secession, not the Igbo people.
By comparison, Zionists contend that Gaza’s Holocaust is not a genocide because the Zionist entity’s objective is to suppress Hamas’ rebellion, not Palestinians — despite the invasion, bombing, and starvation.
We Charge Genocide, We Charge Nakba
condemn the Biafra genocide and other genocides, and we allowed impunity.
We repeat history, too. From 1975 to 1979, 1.5 to 3 million people were killed in Cambodia. A tribunal charged the Khmer Rouge with genocide and was endorsed by Western powers such as the USA. By contrast, no tribunal was endorsed by Western powers to charge the Guatemalan genocide that killed 200,000 people from 1960 to 1996.
In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal did not charge the USA with the genocide, despite the American bombing of Cambodia that cleared the way for a Khmer Rouge regime. It also did not charge the United Kingdom under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, despite the British policy on the Khmer Rouge which provided diplomatic support for the genocidal regime in the aftermath of indiscriminate killing. By comparison, foreign involvement by the USA and the Zionist entity in the Guatemalan genocide was never investigated by a court, in addition to the role of the USAbacked Guatemalan military.
Zionists repeat history because we did not condemn Black genocide, we did not
Juneau Choo condemns the West.
the ethnic affiliation mandated by Belgian colonial power, which classified people as either Hutu or Tutsi based on economic criteria. It also did not charge France under the leadership of François Mitterrand despite French support for the Hutu-led regime that let genocidal militias escape to Zaire after the wholesale slaughter of Tutsis. By comparison, foreign involvement by the USA and so-called “Australia” in the East Timor genocide was never investigated by a court, in addition to the role of the USAbacked Indonesian government.
In Palestine, a tribunal may or may not be endorsed by Western powers to charge the Zionist entity with genocide. And courts endorsed by Western powers will never investigate foreign involvement and support by the USA, UK, Belgium, France, “Australia” and others.
Genocides repeat themselves because we failed to learn from our mistake: not charging Western powers apart from the génocidaires prevents justice.
In Palestine, Western powers either blame other perpetrators and beneficiaries, or debate the definition of “genocide”. To advance the agenda of Western powers, the label “genocide” (or lack thereof) has become highly politicised.
But without arguing the concept of “genocide” with the perpetrators, we should charge the West with another term. Outside the politics of genocide recognition, the word “Nakba” must be used against the West.
Nakba is a recurring violence, a structure of displacement by settlers using direct and indirect means of colonialism. It is a logic of elimination of Indigenous peoples through land grabbing, conflicts, and diseases, such as COVID-19, Hepatitis C, and malnutrition.
From 7th April to 19th July 1994, 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsis were killed in Rwanda. An International Criminal Tribunal charged Hutu militias with genocide and was endorsed by Western powers. By contrast, no tribunal was endorsed by Western powers to charge the East Timor genocide that killed 60,000 to 308,000 people from 1975 to 1999.
In Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal did not charge Belgium with the genocide against the Tutsi despite
Also, it is worth noting that the word “genocide” is a politicised notion. The label is abused as a political tool for the West — the perpetrators and beneficiaries of genocides. In Cambodia, Rwanda, and other countries, it is used by Western powers to protect their reputation. In Biafra and other states, its lack is weaponised by Western powers to evade their responsibility and potential prosecution.
This is in no way suggesting that we don’t charge the West with the Gaza genocide.
Mother knows best: a look at Greenlandic Inuit forced child removals
Keira, a woman residing in Denmark, had her daughter, Zammi, ripped away from her just after childbirth. Her crime? Being Greenlandic Inuit. Zammi is nine months old now; to this day, she is under the custody of white Danish foster parents. The Greenlandic Inuit, or Kalaallit, people are meant to be under self-rule in the Danish kingdom, but they are policed according to white Danish norms. Greenlandic parents living in Denmark are assessed under parenting competency tests called forældrekompetenceundersøgelse, or FKU. Keira is not fluent in Danish, to the detriment of the future of the Danish state’s nation-building; the state did not provide Keira a translator for any of her FKU tests. Furthermore, when Greenlandic Inuit people are assessed, these parenting competency tests are not adopted to cater to Kalaallit culture.
Despite being indigenous to Greenland, the Kalaallit are subjected to assessments that judge their parenting skills under the values and ideals of the colonisers. The FKU tests are used to legalise the removal of Kalaallit children from their parents and prompt placement with Danish foster parents. Keira’s lawyer, Jeanette Gjørret, is an expert in children’s rights;
With resistance movements from the Black Panther Party to the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), we the people must charge the West with denial of Biafra genocide and other genocides of Black and Indigenous peoples perpetrated by them.
Outside courts endorsed by the West, we must charge the Zionist entity, USA, UK, the European Union, “Australia” and other Western powers with continuous Nakba.
“Never again” means we never repeat history again.
INTIFADA UNTIL VICTORY.
Pimala Leo examines the violent assault against Greenlandic children.
she believes the tests are illegal. In her change.org petition, Keira points out that, “As an Inuit, I am protected under ILO Convention [...], which Denmark has signed, as well as the UN declaration, [...] which prohibits member states from committing genocide, including the forced removal of children from indigenous peoples [...].”
Distressingly, forced child removals are not a new policy to the Danish colonial regime. The Danish state kidnapped 22 Kalaallit children from Greenland in 1951. This group was taken to live in Denmark to learn Danish and be trained to become leaders of a planned process to ‘modernise’ Greenland; this became known as the Little Danes experiment. Six of them were adopted by Danish families after a year. The rest were sent back to Greenland, not to their families, but to a special orphanage to continue learning in Danish. The Greenlandic staff, who did not know much Danish, began speaking to the children in their own language. However, when the Danish manager arrived, they barred the staff from teaching Greenlandic because “these children need to be educated.”
What the Danish state called
‘modernisation’ was blatant genocide, robbing 22 children of their Greenlandic upbringing, family, and language. What the Danish motherland deemed good for the Greenlandic child was according to white Danish culture; the Greenlanders would never have full control over their existence. The Danish regime used their role as the parent, or the coloniser, to baby the children by removing them from their homeland and family, destroying security in their Greenlandic identity. Many victims of the Little Danes experiment suffered from mental health problems and substance abuse; over half of them died as young adults.
Colonial care conducts the subordination of the Kalaallit child, as “the severance of (...) the Inuk child from kin racialises these relations and attachments not only as ‘lacking’ or ‘inferior’ but as disposable,” as theorised by Riikka Prattes and Lene Myong. Colonial care is not only ‘care’ for the child, but also for the ‘carers’, whether it be parents looking to build a nuclear family or charities wishing to assist society, with the state providing them with the guardianship of children they can ‘look after’. Prattes and Myong say that Danish ‘carers’ of Greenlandic children fulfil a sense of purpose, such
as familial or philanthropic, while being able to simultaneously ‘help’ with the ‘modernisation’ of Greenland by ‘educating’ its future elites on the ‘desirable’ white Danish way of living. This training allows more ‘ideal’ Danish families to exist and the white Danish mindset to spread, with the stripping of ‘racial’ tendencies from the racialised child.
Learning of Keira’s story was the first time I had heard of Greenlandic child removals, let alone Greenland’s relationship with Denmark. The actions of the Danish state are shocking, but not surprising. When a nation rules over a colony and its people, it tends not to listen to its citizens but rather talk past them or over them. While I was writing this piece, news came out detailing recent updates on Keira’s fight to gain custody of Zammi. Her case is finally getting reassessed. However, that is barely justice served. Over 300 Greenlandic families have been separated under FKU, and they should be reunited immediately. However, the colonial regime lags behind justice significantly. The coloniser stubbornly drags their feet, while the colonised wearily pushes them to face accountability for all the violence they have committed.
The Rise of the Japanese Far Right
In July of this year, Japan’s conservative nationalist party, the Liberal Democratic Party (Jiminto or LDP) and its centerright coalition partner, Komeito, failed to reach a majority in the Japanese upper house elections, after the coalition also lost its majority in the lower house last year. This historical blow to the LDP in particular is a first. The party has never lost its majority in both houses since it was established in 1955. This year, the coalition has been marred with chaos from trade tariffs by Washington, DC, a shrinking economy, as well as scandals that have ripped through the LDP’s factions. A genuine discontent can be felt among Japanese voters, with several Japanese media outlets polling his approval rate to less than 32 per cent. Renewed calls of resignation as well have come from his own party, Ishiba refusing to do so.
So out of the litany of issues that have plagued the coalition, what exactly has caused this major loss in the coalition’s majority?
Let’s take a look at the Sanseito, Japan’s ultra-right populist party that saw a massive gain in seats.
The party won 14 seats — a massive win for the party, which only won a single seat in the 2022 Upper House elections. The party initially started off as a YouTube channel in 2019 called Political Party DIY by current party general secretary and former LDP branch head of Higashiosaka
Sohei Kamiya, as well conservative internet personality KAZUYA and political analyst Yu Watanabe. As the COVID-19 pandemic began to shut down the world, the YouTube channel was established as a legitimate political party in 2020, spouting mass COVID-19 conspiracy theories as well as vaccine misinformation.
Post-pandemic, the party is now more well known for their xenophobic and racist politics, adopting a “Japan First” policy to entice people who felt the LDP were not “right-wing enough” and “soft on immigration”. Speaking to BBC News, senior associate of The Asia Group Japan Practice Rintaro Nishimura said this sudden uptick in votes to the Sanseito comes from the LDP’s conservative voter base’s frustration of their party’s slow turn away from its status quo of Japanese conservative politics. Under the nationalist Shinzo Abe faction of the party came a slow but steady ease in immigration laws, while the moderate Fumio Kishida faction passed progressive laws surrounding LGBTQIA+ rights and awareness. While the LDP remains undoubtedly right-wing, the few times the party pushes for progressive policies has created upset to a large swaths of supporters in the party who have now fled to the Sanseito.
Japan’s economic status, as well as its overtourism as well as created issues for Japanese citizens, right-wing populist ideas often feeding into these concerns
and producing support for parties like the Sanseito. A strained relationship between Tokyo and Washington DC due to President Donald Trump’s tariff impasses, as well as shifts in demographics, have created a perfect storm for right-wing populist parties like the Sanseito to capitalise on.
As mentioned briefly earlier, overtourism has created its own set of issues for Japanese locals.
The tightly made streets of Kyoto now gridlocked with hundreds of people and local governments are having to put up large barriers with netting to prevent tourists from accidentally walking onto a main road while trying to take photos of that one Lawson convenience store with Mt Fuji in the back. Like its YouTube channel beginnings, the Sanseito spread racist misinformation about both immigrants and tourists (both often characterised under the term “foreigner” by the party).
Tyberius Seeto casts his vote.
young Japanese people to become victims to his misinformation. Both TikTok and Instagram profiles are followed by a combined 20,000 users, while the main Sanseito YouTube channel reaches half a million subscribers. A poll conducted by public broadcaster NHK found that the party was popular for men aged between 19 and 39 — a generation who are most likely using one or more forms of social
Weeks prior to the election, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper covered a rally held by general secretary Sohei Kamiya as he spouted claims that “foreigners are good at forging and finding legal loopholes”, passersby and supporters nodding or cheering in agreement.
The utilisation of social media as well by the Sanseito have allowed a generation of
Against Anti-Natalism in the Anthropocene
Hill is pregnant with hope.
As tipping points are reached and emissions agreements are abandoned, the climate apocalypse nears. Tuvalu is literally sinking away, unprecedented heatwaves are killing thousands each summer, and species are dying out into extinction.
Consequently, people en masse are refusing to have children. Climate change imposes a crisis so existentially threatening, and full of suffering so horrific that we must concede our collective death and stop reproducing henceforth.
The West has long advocated for antinatalism, but historically only against Black and Brown people. Billionaires
will throw money into Africa and South Asia for contraception programs, including through sterilisation (this is eugenics), invoking arguments about the outrageous suffering such babies would endure under poverty — suffering so profound that it would be too cruel to have them at all. These same billionaires, of course, represent the very systems of neocolonialism and capitalism that subjugates the Third World.
Anti-natalist philosophy has expanded its reach to the liberal West itself, where the destructive impacts of climate change are closing in on us. This emerging climate anti-natalism has rendered a red line against suffering.
Mary Annaïse Heglar coined the concept ‘existential exceptionalism’, which refers to the phenomenon of climate change being exceptionalised as a uniquely profound threat to existence, neglecting the centuries of Black and Brown people being existentially threatened. Heglar points out the disproportionate moralising over climate change (and specifically the suffering it creates)
compared to white supremacy and colonialism, despite climate change being a direct product of the two. Despite the theoretical universality of climate change, the anti-natalist response comes from the abstraction of a very particular suffering against a very particular group of people — those who will live in relative comfort compared to the global majority.
Not only is the selective outrage towards climate change racist, but the philosophy itself that underpins climate anti-natalism is reductive. Central to this anti-natalism is a grim orientation towards the future — a future that also accepts defeat; that is embedded in a ruthless pursuit of money, and the White Man exerting mastery over the land.
In believing that other worlds are possible, we can see that it is not life that is unfit for the future, but the future that is unfit for life.
Childbirth and childrearing are undoubtedly charged with political meaning. To live inherently demands
As Shigeru Ishiba continues to dodge calls to resign from this electoral failure, an interesting year awaits for the opposition parties which, including the Sanseito, compose of 7 other political parties, from the far right to the slight centre left. Who knows if this broad left-centre-right opposition will appropriately keep the minority coalition party in check? Will the Sanseito work alongside the progressive Reiwa Party? Will the Communist Party of Japan finally achieve a “democratic revolution” it desires from aid by the right-wing, economically liberal Japan Innovation Party? Or will we see a predictable repeat of LDP blunders from year after year?
A shitstorm is brewing for the Japanese political establishment if nothing is done.
Art by Eko Bautista
being confronted with the struggle of hardship, deprivation, and violence, as much as the pursuit of love, meaning, and joy. Climate change creates new challenges and questions about how we ought to live and flourish.
A moral high ground cannot be reached on the basis of having prevented unimaginable suffering for a five-yearold that does not exist. But your morality does come into question elsewhere. What will you say to the children of 2050 about what you did to reduce the burden of climate change? What will you have done to stop the genocides? How will you be fostering life, even if not through reproduction?
Tomorrow, and next week, and next decade, we will wake up to the same horrific conditions as yesterday. Unless you do something about it.
Kayla
Art by Dana Kafina
“Glad You’re Here”:
On Latecomers to the Palestine Solidarity Movement
The march for Gaza across the Sydney Harbour Bridge drew hundreds of thousands into Palestinian solidarity — celebrities, families, and thousands of first-time participants. One of them was a friend of mine — politically engaged in conversation but rarely at protests — who, after having grappled with the immensity of the moment, decided to join us that day.
Seeing them there was energising. We’d known each other for years, but I couldn’t recall a memory of the two of us at a protest together. Yet there they were, in the rain, chanting alongside strangers on the bridge.
And, if I’m honest, it was also a little frustrating.
Where had this energy been over the past year? The past several years? That tiny flare of resentment — the instinctive “Where have you been?” — is something I know every long-term organiser has felt. It’s a strange combination of relief and irritation, and you have to acknowledge it if you want to understand how movements grow.
Movements don’t expand steadily, they grow in surges. At least in Sydney, Palestine activism has been sustained by a relatively small core of people putting in time and effort they barely had — doing the slow work of building relationships and shifting opinions. Most of that work is invisible to anyone outside it.
Then, suddenly a cause hits a broader cultural moment, and new participants appear en masse. Some are celebrities and public figures using their platform for the first time; others are people you know from your lectures or workplaces, or people from high school you’d never considered particularly “political”.
The emotional tension plays out like this: on one hand, there’s relief, and a sense of excitement, that more people care. On the other hand, that quiet “Where were you when we needed you?” lingers in the back of your mind.
This isn’t really unique either. Every major movement seems to have gone through it. The Vietnam Moratorium swelled far beyond the small anti-war circles in the late 1960s. Marriage equality saw waves of straight allies arrive after the issue became mainstream, off the back of years
of campaigning by queer activists. Even during my beginnings as an activist, School Strike 4 Climate ballooned in 2019, bringing in thousands of parents, teachers, and local councillors who’d never attended a climate march before.
That ‘late swarm’ phase is when a movement has the best chance of scaling its impact — but also when it’s most vulnerable to friction, or even collapse.
It’s tempting to ‘test’ these newcomers. To ask how long they’ve been ‘in it’ or whether they’ve paid their dues. I’ve called people out exactly like this, and I’ve been called out the same way. But social psychology suggests this approach backfires.
Moral licensing is the term for this. It explains that those first steps — showing up to a march, signing a petition, sharing a post on social media — can feel like a contribution in themselves. If those gestures are met with judgment, or basically anything short of affirmation, people are less likely to continue participating.
That kind of attrition is exactly what movements cannot afford. The antidote
is to radically welcome those latecomers, and to redirect that curiosity into sustained engagement.
This doesn’t necessarily mean ignoring critiques or dissent within movements. In writing this, I’ve had it pointed out to me how large influxes of people can obscure priorities or create political blind spots. Those critiques are essential. They keep a movement sharp. But they shouldn’t be used as an excuse for gatekeeping or cynicism. Growth and accountability are both necessary.
One practical principle I’ve found is: call in, don’t call out. Instead of “Where were you?” try “Glad you’re here.” My friend from the bridge didn’t need a lecture on political tardiness. They needed a concrete path: an invite to an organising meeting, a link to donate, an essay to read, or a documentary to watch.
The job of long-term activists is to keep that bridge (the metaphorical one) open.
And if we do it well, the movement for Palestine won’t just grow in its numbers. It will become stronger, more committed, and better equipped for the long road ahead.
The Phenomenon of Empty Empathy
Sidra Ghanawi wants you to put your empathy where your mouth is.
There is a strange and silent violence in being seen through the lens of someone else’s suffering. Trapped behind the one-way glass, I am on the receiving end of stolen grief, apologies that do not belong to me. My acceptance of such feels like a surrender to the flattened Arab identity — I am forever condemned to carry the burden of “Middle Eastern grief”.
“I’m sorry. You must be so sad about what’s happening in Gaza.”
That word, “you”, it screeches and echoes within my soul like a fork on a porcelain plate. Why me? Do you even know where I am from? That my roots are from a neighbouring land? That I negate my verbs with ‘moow’ and not ‘mish’? That my people have suffered a different kind of oppression and injustice? That I speak with the rhythm of a Syrian tongue — not a Palestinian one?
How dare you turn this on me?
My internal monologue is now occupied by the quandary of whether I must devote my energy toward reminding them I am not Palestinian, clarifying that not all “Arabs” are the same, or accepting their allegedly sincere apology.
As an Arab, you learn to triage from a young age. You rationalise the irrational: “I can tolerate them thinking we are all the same, so long as they are bearing witness and standing against these injustices”. You compromise. You sweep it all under the magic carpet.
But there comes a time when you sit down and realise: the world only sees us through our suffering.
Since the genocide “began,” I’ve lost count of the apologies, story reacts, sad eyes, pity stares — all tainted with a sort of twisted empathy that rapidly drains my soul.
I respond, extending an olive branch: “It’s tragic and abhorrent. Let me know if you’d like to attend a protest and need a familiar face.” But it’s too late; my words
pour into the air and stay put. In ensuring that I am made aware of their sympathy, they have paid their dues and moved swiftly along. The thought of awkward silence is somehow more sickening to them than the thought of a genocide being perpetrated and funded by imperialist states. They can now carry on with the rest of their day, satisfied that they’ve done enough — after all, they said it to a Middle Eastern person. That counts for something, right? And that’s as far as the conversation — if you can call it that — will ever go.
collective, not misplaced. I cannot forgive myself for writing that sentence, speaking it into existence, even. But, it seems I missed the day we were taught how to be the perfect receptacle for tragedy.
Make no mistake, I live every day under survivors’ guilt. Not merely for surviving instead of them. But for surviving in a world that will watch them die and have the audacity to turn away in the name of “self-care”.
Dana Kafina chants.
In our thousands, in our millions, in our billions, in our trillion —
Every Sunday, hundreds march down the Sydney CBD. In (semi-stuttered) unison, the streets echo: “In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians!”
I am struck by a surprising bitterness. It has been almost two years into a relentless genocide. New horrors are being invented to further dehumanise my people, with continuous callouts of ‘let’s do more’, ‘keep fighting’, ‘Palestinians are the most patient people on earth; heroes...’ All you have to do is look at the comments of any popular Palestinian figure’s social media to see this sentiment in action. For withstanding the weight of this genocide and occupation, Palestinians are noble. Superhuman.
There’s a fire I want to start, but I cannot bring myself to set it ablaze because I fear my anger or what is better described as “ ” qahr, will be mistaken for overreaction.
Why do you presume I am grieving more than you?
As if pitying me changes anything. I don’t want your empty words, I want your outrage. I want your humanity. Riddle me this: why, according to you, should I somehow be more afflicted by a genocide than you? Forgive me, but I cannot figure it out.
And yet, the world doesn’t listen when Palestinian grief is wrapped in white shrouds. It must be delicately dressed up in tiny “Artist4Ceasefire” pins worn by celebrities on suits and dresses that cost enough to feed 1000 Palestinian families, all so they can be praised for their immense bravery in speaking out — yes, even braver than a father digging through the rubble for his lost family — and captured in a glamorous red carpet stock photo that will be reshared more times than a limbless child. Grotesque. And yet, you probably read that last line and thought, “okay, that’s a bit much”.
What’s worse than misplaced empathy is fake empathy — empty, performative, and hollow, the kind built on the assumption that I am somehow a victim of a genocide happening thousands of miles away.
Selfishly, I find myself yearning for the time when Palestine was just an “Arab” issue — when the grief felt
A genocide. As you read this very sentence, people are being erased and ethnically cleansed. Why must it matter more to me than you?
Not because I am Arab.
Not because I am grieving.
Because I am human and I refuse to concede to the notion that empathy must be palatable to be valid.
Empathy should disrupt. It should discomfort. It should demand.
How can you live when a genocide is taking place?
Actually, scratch that.
How do you live with yourself
when a genocide is taking place and you are doing nothing?
You pity me — but I pity you. Because you’ve learned how to turn away and call it “empathy”.
We are almost 700 days into a genocide.
You offer me pity. I offer you your truth: your silence is complicity.
I want to scream. But maybe it’s time you did, too.
This mass parasocial relationship with Palestinians negates the reality of Palestinian struggle. Yes, we are patient, samidoun (steadfast, having sumud). But how much more can Palestinians take? This attitude ends up dehumanising Palestinians and normalises Palestinian suffering, lessening the urgency of the struggle under the guise of admiration. “They can bear it.” This is not just enacted by white people or people in the Global North, but also by our neighbours in Arab countries, who see missiles shooting down in our shared sky and yet stand idly with prayers.
When will your admiration lead to escalation? Is suffering inherently more noble?
Similarly, our activism is littered with comfort-seeking. In some ways, this desire for comfort is a subconscious attempt to rid ourselves of complicity — separating ourselves from the oppressive class. We are all Palestinians. You materialise this connection with watermelon earrings, a tatreez tote bag, coin earrings, keffiyeh print on assorted paraphernalia. Palestine has been a marketable aesthetic and an ideal. Salma Mousa describes this symbol transformation as “the representation trap’, a form of assimilation that ‘strips away what made you dangerous to begin with”. To expand on her point, this ‘activism’ that comes with taking Palestinian culture, perhaps in the name of preservation, or promotion of the cause, does not amount to anything inherently impactful anymore, not if you aren’t doing the absolute most you can (within
your capacity) to stand with Palestine. Comfort-seeking is further present in the usage of vague terms to describe Palestine, like the commercialised watermelon, which has not been a symbol of Palestinian resistance, but sprouted from an analogy Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour made when describing the oppressive conditions faced by him and his fellow artists, or a singular other New York Times article from 1993. Separate yourself from whiteness, from your state’s complicity, from taking up space that should go towards Palestinians and First Nations voices, subdue Palestinianism and make it easy for you to handle, all the while limiting yourself to condemnation. Virtue-signalling.
Claims like “we are all Palestinians” erase the actuality of genocide. Most of us will
Martyrdom, Misconception, and Me:
Growing Up Muslim in the West
I was always hungry in the winter.
The kind of hunger that sharpens your senses, that makes your breath visible in the morning air and your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth. The kind of hunger that isn’t just about food, but about invisibility.
Every year, when Ramadan came, I’d sit in classrooms lit by white Australian sunlight, whispering, “no, not even water” to the girl who asked why I wouldn’t touch my juice box. I learned early how to starve - not just my stomach, but my difference.
My faith was something to keep quiet. To tuck away like a crumpled permission note. It lived in the shadows of school canteens and camp kitchens, folded between lies I told for ease - no pork, not halal only. Just intermittent fasting, not I am Muslim.
I was Muslim, yes. But I didn’t know how to be it out loud.
My childhood was an in-between - Australian sun and Arab silence. I lived with my parents, my tayta (grandmother), my baba (father), and my khalto (maternal aunt). In that house, Islam wasn’t enforced. It was woven. I fasted all thirty days of Ramadan from the time I could string together semi-complex sentences, not because I had to, but because I wanted to.
No one told me to pray.
But I’d always find tayta facing the qibla, lips murmuring verses I barely understood, and I’d sit beside her. When I had strange dreams, she’d pull out a thick blue ombré book with clouded pages and decode them like prophecy.
When I had a headache, she’d rub zayt (olive oil) into my temples and recite over me.
When I asked about a nightmare, she’d tell me what the Prophet once said about dreams.
Islam, to me, was not an instruction manual.
It was rhythm.
It was presence.
It was softness.
But outside that house, God was a stranger.
I went to scripture in public primary, then to Christian high schools where Jesus was in every assembly but not on every tongue. Still, I remember chapel. The claps. The chords.
“Lord I lift Your name on high.” And I did. I really did. I praised Him too… but in silence, in difference, in a language they didn’t speak.
The irony gnawed at me.
That I had to explain I was from the very place they wrote carols about.
That I had bowed my head in Bethlehem, lit candles in Jerusalem, held bracelets blessed by priests.
That I brought those bracelets back to Catholic teachers, who’d smile and say thank you, but never ask where exactly I came from.
(I was from the land. But not of the faith. Not in their eyes.)
Being Palestinian and Muslim in those classrooms meant constantly translating yourself. Constantly being reduced to a dot on a map… one drawn by someone else. You are both ancient and erased. Revered and rejected. Spoken about, but never spoken to.
And still, I stayed.
Because something in those songs, those readings, those liturgies, made me want to know more. If they loved Him, who was He? And if I already had my God, did I still believe? And if I believed, then why?
never experience being starved to death. We will never experience opiates being crushed into flour given as ‘aid’. We will never experience our organs being harvested and stolen. Or flyers dropped down from the sky with threats. We should not all have to be Palestinians to be cared for by the rest of the world. You should not have to synonymise yourself with an oppressed peoples in order to practice empathy.
We are not all Palestinian. We know nothing about this level of suffering. At least not in our current lifetime.
And suppose we are all Palestinian — we know that, as James Baldwin wrote to Angela Davis, “if they come for you in the morning, they will be coming for
us at night” — the phrase “we are all Palestinians” does not stand to scrutiny. We chant support for Palestine and yet carry Australian flags and preach multiculturalism in a settler-colony that negates it. We rely on trauma porn to move us into action. Allyship is not enough. We have to be active accomplices, as bearing witness cannot be the most we do, not anymore. Zionism has infested every facet and tenet of our society and we are constantly ravaged by empire in our individual and collective lives. This shared system of domination does unite us all (there are more of us than there are of them).
Like it or not, we are complicit (yes, even Palestinians in the diaspora, even Arabs in the Levant). We have failed
Jaseena
I was thirteen when I first truly confronted God.
Not just inherited Him. Not just heard about Him. But stared Him down -trembling, and asked, Are You real?
And if You are, then what do You want from me?
That was the beginning. Of questions. Of ache. Of a slow-burning return.
Every day at 1:15pm, the bell rang for the Lord’s prayer.
Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come…
And I would whisper Al-Fatiha beneath their recitations:
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to God, Lord of the worlds. I never knew if I was praying with them, or despite them.
Maybe both. Maybe neither.
But in that quiet moment, I belonged to something they couldn’t hear.
My faith didn’t look like the diagrams. I didn’t know what madhhab I followed. Didn’t always pray on time. Didn’t always pray at all.
But I knew the gravity of the prayer mat beneath my knees. The silence between Allahu Akbar and Salaam.
The comfort of knowing I could cry without translating the pain.
Al-Helo will burn you a CD.
And when I asked why suffering existed, Islam didn’t flinch.
“God does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear”. (2:286)
Not when I was sick… visibly healthy, invisibly breaking.
Not when Gaza burned and I was expected to submit essays like it wasn’t happening.
Not when the world said it was all too much, and faith whispered that it was already written.
It was in those moments I realised Islam wasn’t frightened by doubt.
It invited it.
My questioning was not abandonment.
It was return.
“And then, with hardship comes ease.” (94:6)
Sometimes I’d lie awake, feverish, afraid. The room spinning. My chest tight with grief I couldn’t name. And still, I’d reach for prayer. Not because I had to. But because it was the only thing that tethered me to hope.
Islam was never a checklist.
It was a conversation.
A quiet one.
An honest one.
“So remember Me, and I will remember you.” (2:152)
tremendously. Palestinians are gracious, kind, hospitable, but we are also human. The trauma that Palestinians are facing is irreversible, brutal. Surviving under trauma that is so, so severe, irreversible trauma, is ugly. There is no room for Palestinian ugliness, however, not in the eyes of the world.
Palestinian life is sacred. We are united in anti-imperial struggle. But sometimes, my diaspora ugliness thinks: if you do not live a Palestinian life, can you claim being a Palestinian?
*Disclaimer: this does not apply to our First Nations siblings and Black and Indigenous siblings around the globe, who have experienced settler-colonialism and a genocide, also manufactured by the
media. These parallels are undoubtable, and our solidarity is the most honest, genuine solidarity there.
by
Art
Kayla Hill
The Boy
Mohamed Allouche writes.
The night of the attack at the church, I slept a furious sleep, and the next morning I woke having much to read. From the breakfast table, to the station, to the train, my eyes were wide and harrowed with each update published. I read words and they broke off from their respective stories into a separate space — an ether, a vacuum that would echo around, bounce off each other as if they were shrieks and my head a cave. Terrorism charges. Teenager. Middle Eastern appearance. Muslim. Arab. Send them back! Religiously motivated. AFP. Sectarianism. Minor injuries. Riots. Stubborn. Ungrateful. Ungrateful. Ungrateful.
I gazed around my train carriage wondering if anyone had figured me out yet. I sat up straight like a well-raised gentleman. I shrunk into a corner so as to not be so greedy and take up so much space. I smiled as I got on and as I moved around. I did not speak unnecessarily and did not strike fear into the land.
In the window, I tried to find traces of the young boy in the church from last night, donned in all black and with a head sick and without direction. We hadn’t seen his face yet (you could surely find it if you asked the right person), but the news had confirmed it — young, Lebanese, Muslim, teenager. History with the police (The Assyrian culprit now obviously a piece of misinformation amidst the hysteria).
Did I have his face? Had my beard been too long today — am I this boy? Had the people found the boy in this fellow passenger? Do they know my name by just looking at me, and thus, my crimes? If they found out my name, would they move my hand from my pocket to find a knife like the boy at the church? To them, I do not say a word, I am silent. Today I will don no thobe and wear no flag, and make no prayers in plain view. My beard is short like the rest of the White bearded men. They see my face and it is not precisely from here nor there. The white skin that refuses to darken, the eyes that oscillate between green and brown, the ambiguous hair, mouth, nose: it belongs to no land or religion today. The passengers, they might think: vaguely Mediterranean, perhaps progeny of the Italians or Greeks or Maltese from the 1950s and 60s, now essentially an echelon away from the native Whites. It is all ambiguous enough to pass as something other than what I am. Today I am silent to their assumptions — for anything that rids me of the smell of the smoke, the blackening soot, the blood from the hands of the boy at the church, is, in some warped way, a blessing. Today I will be good. I will not be Arab, I will not be Muslim, I will not be the stupid young boy at the church. I will atone for the crimes that the boy and I committed. The train stopped, and the window was now just a pane of glass.
The boy, gone.
For those who don’t know, the T1 Western is the most goated train line as it is, of course, the line I personally utilise. It also allows people like me to attend the University of Sydney (USyd). Entering the hallowed and white, upper-class halls of USyd gave me perspective on the insight (or lack thereof) of the outsider. Growing up in public housing in Penrith, I found it genuinely funny that some private schoolers from the Eastern suburbs I chatted with in my first year had not one clue of where West Sydney was.
“My brother in Christ… Strathfield is not West Sydney.” – Vince Tafea
Bless their ignorant souls (not really). To be fair, I have no idea nor any care to know where the North Shore or East Shore or whatever starts. It’s just one
large mass of primarily white NIMBYs. This small but intellectually crucial interaction caused mass ripples in the small talk I then engaged in at parties. I am an EP-P (Emu Plains - Parramatta) reductionist. Parramatta is the start of where it’s undeniable that you can claim #west #sydney, if you grew up there. Likewise, the Emu Plains western boundary remains uncontroversial in the field. I do sympathise with arguments for Granville as the start, but I take the stance that it is a gray area that can be treated on a case-by-case basis. Lidcombe is not West Sydney. However, it’s a mistake to think that #west #sydney is purely a matter of geography. It’s a philosophical and cultural outlook that cannot be understood from the outside. In fact, 2025 Autonomous Collective Against Racism (ACAR) convenor Dana Kafina has mentioned sparks of “West Sydney aura” from people from as far south as Wollongong.
“Bro… Wollongong is lowkey West Sydney” — 2025 ACAR Convenor Dana Kafina
Nevertheless, the train line binds us all and is, at least, foundational to the discussion. I conducted a pilot study, where I asked people (last minute during ACAR Honi Soit layup) to highlight on a map where they believe #west #sydney starts with respect to the T1 Western train line.
With a sample size of N = 9, the results were fascinating. Unsurprisingly, all participants indicated Emu Plains as the western boundary. As for the eastern boundary, one Strathfieldian indicated Strathfield as the start of West Sydney (boo). There were three Lidcombe apologists from Strathfield, Parramatta, and Ryde. Two participants indicated
SuperWOKE 2025: Anti-Immigration,
Fear Politics, and Fascism
‘It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s an… illegal alien?’
After three weeks of winter break spent yearning for a Eurosummer amidst the winter blues, James Gunn’s Superman flew onto the big screen and crash-landed into the jaws of internet discourse.
This movie could not have chosen a better (or worse) time to enter the media sphere.
In days, everyone and their Labubus had an opinion on the film. Praised by some and condemned by others, this once all-American superhero was accused of harbouring anti-American sentiments.
In this digital epoch, the death grip of centralised mass media on public opinion has been slipping thanks to social media. From the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza to Trump’s draconian immigration “enforcement”, these livestreamed atrocities have never been more salient. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that viewers were readily drawing these parallels with the film.
In stark contrast to previous Superman iterations, Gunn bows to tradition and pulls Superman straight from the dusty covers of the 1938 comic. He’s corny, unapologetically optimistic and steadfastly loyal to humanity despite his perpetual “otherness”.
Gunn’s Superman explores the consequences of advocating for justice as an “alien.” In this story, public sentiment
is manipulated and turned against him after he intervenes in US foreign affairs, threatening the interests of the oligarchic antagonist Lex Luthor. Compassion is reframed as dangerous overreach. Soon, Superman is labelled a national threat, locked in a black-site prison and paraded as a cautionary tale for noncompliant outsiders.
This Superman eerily mirrors the lived experiences of those facing the draconian terrors of supposed immigration enforcement. “Yes, Superman is an immigrant, and yes, the people that we support in this country are immigrants,” Gunn affirms in an interview.
But who exactly is the ‘immigrant’? Who defines the boundary between immigrant and alien? More importantly, does this boundary even exist?
Migration as a Western concept demands physical and metaphysical borders between social groups. It relies on the invented dichotomy between ‘us’ and ‘them’. In Orientalism, Edward W. Said writes, “There are Westerners, and there are Orientals. The former dominates; the latter must be dominated.” The ethnocentric European relies on imaginative geographies to affirm their superiority over “the Orient”. If they are civilised because they are Western, then everybody else is uncivilised because they are not. Once the antithetical nature of Black, Indigenous, and other people of colour’s identities is established, then follows their dehumanisation and demonisation.
Born out of European exceptionalism and Western hegemonic interests, antiimmigration propaganda manufactures consent for supremacist ultranationalism. Mass media further subjugates BIPOC by presenting immigrants as “foreign aliens” who threaten Western society. The criminalisation of migrant actions gives it “scientific truth”, inflating nonpermanent resident numbers through bureaucratic hurdles. In a fit of ahistorical hypocrisy, the immigrant is branded an illegal land occupier.
Finally, public permission is granted when these “illegal occupiers” become scapegoats for societal collapse. Neoliberalism joins forces with fascism to instrumentalise this racist, fascist falsehood and distract us from the real causes of our material conditions. As Edward S. Herman puts it, “Convenient mythologies require neither evidence nor logic.”
Moreover, a ready-made permission structure for enacting state-sanctioned violence against marginalised communities is erected. BIPOC populations become a symbol of fear and easy targets for discriminatory authoritarianism.
The demand for order and uniformity goes beyond aesthetics, into the depths of policing ideology, theology and political speech. The ‘illegal immigrant’ concept is intentionally ambiguous and ensures that state power can be arbitrarily expanded. Put frankly, the groundwork has already been laid for the suppression of freedom and dissent for all.
Auburn, and one participant indicated Granville. Interestingly, one participant indicated Seven Hills as the start of West Sydney. Only one EP-P Reductionist was present in the sample (me). More research to be done, as this is an important area for further inquiry. Eshayz.
We have already seen this with figures like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who is well known for his pro-Palestine activism, held in prolonged Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention despite being a legal United States green card holder. Khalil’s story is emblematic of how so-called ‘immigration enforcement’ becomes an antecedent for indefinite imprisonment of non-conforming and dissenting people. Much like Superman, no one initially objected to his ‘lawful’ presence on American soil. Not until he exercised his constitutional rights in ways that defied expectations.
I could not tell you that Gunn’s Superman was a flawless political allegory or that its screenplay will soon replace my pocket edition of The Communist Manifesto Evidently, it struggles to grapple with the complex nature of immigration and its intersection with racial identity. But I would argue that is not a flaw. The fact that a major Hollywood blockbuster could so easily abandon bipartisan palatability in order to wade into the deep waters of political commentary — something mainstream journalists treat like Kryptonite — signals a serious shift in the cultural mainstream. The film defies the expectations of an industry notorious for sanitising politics, glorifying US militarism and upholding American exceptionalism. Though it may not spark the next Bolshevik revolution, it signposts a growing willingness to challenge the political status quo.
Vince Tafea reflects on the T1 line and boundaries of #west #sydney.
Persisting in the continuous colony of Australia, the racialised concept of suburbia predates migration and remains employed to not only factionalise Indigenous and migrant communities, but maintain their exclusion from the image of the Sydney-sider.
(Suburbian) Pride &
(Racial) Prejudice
Often thrown around in the icebreakers of our schools and workplaces is the simple question:
“Where are you from?” An urban legend so culturally significant it was turned into a song for The Footy Show. Essentially a reference to one’s suburban origins, “Where are you from?” asks a question of local identity. However, to some, the answer to this question is more than simply a fact of location, but rather, one’s position in a system of racial hierarchy.
In the culture of our suburbia, the further one lives from the city’s Central, the further one is in proximity to the identity of Sydney. It’s what makes one’s morning surf session more quintessentially ‘Australian’ than another’s visit to the local kebab shop. Underneath the white sands of this ‘true blue’ Sydney-sider lies the foundations of The Racial Contract, a social theory developed by Jamaicanraised academic Charles W Mills. He breaks down the social agreement made not “between everybody (‘we the people’), but between just the people who count, the people who really are people (‘we the white people’)”. Within his theses of the ways racial hierarchy persists in contemporary society, the systematic polarisation of Sydney’s suburbia can be drawn to the intersectionality of two theses: The Racial Contract involves the ‘norming of space’, and the ‘norming of (sub)persons.’
In the norming of space, powerful labels of ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’, reflect colonialist notions of ‘superior’ or ‘inferior’, and create a socially acceptable dichotomy between two separate entities. This can be tied to concepts such as demographics, populations and localities to ultimately create a hierarchy of power based on where one fits within these structures — creating persons and sub-persons.
In the space between the Paddington Markets and Paul Keating Park lies the divide of Sydney’s identity. Being at a farproximity to the Eastern suburbs and the Northern Beaches, South-West Sydney is not only physically at a distance from the
central metropolitan, but conceptually kept distant from the collective identity. By associating one’s social superiority or inferiority with a certain area, we perpetuate a racial hierarchy through segregation. Our suburban stereotypes are a means of segregation.
Western Sydney carries a heavy stigma, often mentioned in the context of Centrelink crises and criminal conflicts. It is known as a land occupied by residents of various foreign dialects and the potential underrated food spot to experience the flavours of an obscure global cuisine. The Area, as locals call it, is a place heavily stigmatised as a land vastly distinct from the quintessential Sydney identity — the true blue Sydney-sider. However, to its locals, it is the home of one of Australia’s most diverse communities.
The Racial Contract persistent in the ostracisation of Western Sydney be read in line with Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, stating Western supremacy persists in the symbolic dehumanisation of the Eastern ‘other’, or the Orient. It is seen in the prevalence of cultural appropriation and the false prejudices we are conditioned to hold within us.
Drawing on this, one can reflect on the ways the factional nature of Sydney’s Suburbia is sustained by the crafting of local identities. Cumulatively, such neighbourhood prejudices are built upon concepts of racial superiority, with neighbourhoods populated by people of migrant and First Nations backgrounds painted with stereotypes of incivility, poverty and most significantly, excluded from the image of the Sydney-sider.
The reality is that highways are not the only thing that separates our collective identity — it is our system of suburban prejudice.
Here, the concepts of space and persona are interconnected and used to create an identity based on myth. It is an idea manufactured to segregate the concept of the ‘un-Australian’ as one of foreign ancestry, sustaining Mills’ Racial Contract in our streets. This is the stereotype Western Sydney carries on its shoulders — a cultural melting pot of residents of all cultural and religious backgrounds, however, nationally recognised as one of Sydney’s more ‘unstable’ regions. Deemed inferior as its population is both approximately and racially distant from the myth of the ‘true blue’ Sydney-sider.
It is The Racial Contract of space and sub persons that underpins the racial foundations of the very land this metropolitan city was built on: colonialism. Amidst the subjugation of residents of colour lies the continuous struggle for First Nations peoples, who are kept distinct from the collective identity through the suburban stereotyping of their very own land. Persisting in the continuous colony of Australia, the racialised concept of suburbia predates migration and remains employed to not only factionalise Indigenous and migrant communities, but maintain their exclusion from the image of the Sydneysider.
However, as systems can be built, they too can be changed.
The concept of localities must be stigmatised, and in doing so, eliminate the oppressive biases posed upon the cultural makeshift of our diverse suburbs. A primary means of doing so is beginning with our tongue, altering our language in speaking about and representing our suburbs. Drawing upon ancient Indigenous practices of gathering and storytelling, we must reconstruct our views on localities through empathy and education. This can be fostered in the nurturement of third spaces and community festivals.
An example of an incredible Western Sydney initiative is the lifeblood of one of Australia’s longest-running Arts events: The Bankstown Poetry Slam. Tucked in the auditorium of the Bankstown Arts Centre, the heart of the neighbourhood is enlightened with an open-mic poetry competition. The Slam has run on the last Tuesday of every month since its founding in 2015, and continues to gather Sydneysiders from all backgrounds through rhymes, clicks and most importantly, the act of truly listening. It defies all prejudices imposed on its locality, promoting creative literacy and artistic expression — a safe space for all.
Where space and subpersons are utilised to sustain the Racial Contract, it can also be used to unite a nation and foster a collective identity of inclusivity and kindness. It is only when we reflect on our suburban prejudices, that a new outlook on our status as residents of Sydney’s metropolitan is revealed.
So tell me, where are you from?
Sexual Violence Officers
President
Angus Fisher
Another week and another SRC President report, take a look.
Announcing the USyd meeting for the National Student Referendum on Palestine at 3 pm Thursday. August 28th at the USYD Quad lawns. Across the country, the National Union of Students and Students For Palestine will be organising mass student meetings to vote to censure the Australian government for its complicity in the genocide in Gaza and call on our universities to break ties with weapons companies. The SRC will be out in full force to encourage participation and ensure student voices are heard loud and clear. More details will be shared.
In my lieu, SRC Global Solidarity Office Jessica Heap attended the International Student Roundtable, hosted by the University of Sydney’s International Student Roundtable in partnership with
Vice President
Shovan Bhattarai, Ethan Cao
Hope everyone’s semester has been off to a smooth start!
Next week is a big one for your SRC and we’d love for you to be part of it.
Student Housing Roundtable: Thursday, 21 August
Our long-awaited roundtable kicks off this week. We’re bringing students, alumni, and university leaders together to push for better, more affordable housing.
Fighting for Fair Opal Concessions
We’re still campaigning for fair Opal travel concessions for all studentsbecause
the NSW ISRC. Jess spoke about the ongoing campaign to secure concession Opal cards for international students, highlighting how current transport costs create unnecessary barriers to access and inclusion. The conversation brought together students, university staff, and stakeholders to share perspectives and push for fairer policies.
The $5 Hot Meal Canteen at Laneway Café continues to run, providing affordable and (hopefully) filling lunches for students. We’re inviting feedback to help improve the program and make sure it’s meeting student needs, whether that’s menu variety, serving times, or any other suggestions. If you’ve had a meal there, let us know (via the QR code or bitly below) what you think so we can keep delivering a service that works for you.
bit.ly/45oQvT7
no one should pay more just for being international or part-time.
SRC Week: 18–21 August
From Monday to Thursday, join us for:
Meet your student reps, Learn about your rights, Enjoy freebies, food, and fun activities on campus
Come along, get involved, and make your voice heard. Together, we can build a fairer, stronger student community.
Ethan
Int’l Student Officers
Christine Peng, Fengxuan (Mary) Liu, Yuanbo (Bob) Song
The International Students Collective had a great performance during the happy o’week of 25S2, with a lot of effort demonstrated by the International Students Officers and Volunteers. At the o’week stall, we handed out more than 1000 our own-designed fridge magnets with our ISC mascot Milo and SRC logo on it, as well as over 1000 passport protectors which have been so popular throughout this academic year. In addition, plenty of snacks were supplied, and trends of new students were welcomed to the event group chat. The classical Tote Bag lucky draw was also held to promote our popularity and social media presence, to let the Uysd international students actually know that there is a collective for them.
In the upcoming weeks, there are events such as board game night and weekend hiking in plan, please stay tuned with
Ishbel Dunsmore, Grace Street, Lucy Sullivan, Saskia Morgan
CW: mention of sexual assault
This past month has been another heavy month for survivors. Last week, the university released its annual report into sexual misconduct. Like last year and previous years, the University is still abysmally failing survivors, with only a handful of complainants (those lodging a formal complaint - rather than a disclosure - to the university) had their complaints substantiated through disciplinary action against perpetrators. A number of complaints were withdrawn, the average time for a resolution was over a month and a half for students, and only 4 of the 231 total complaints and disclosures were resolved through assisted resolution. A number of complaints ‘could not be substantiated’ by the university, a far cry from our demand that survivors be unconditionally believed.
While the university has continued to push its mandatory ‘Respect’ module, we know that this is completely insufficient to tackling a structural problem at its root. Last week, it was revealed that yet another horrifically violent sexual assault occurred at the hands of a St. Paul’s college student in 2022. Like many other cases, the toxic drinking, misogynistic, and elitist
In the words of BTS’ Min Yoongi (Suga) from years ago: love yourself, love myself, peace
Sometimes it really is just stress
culture of the USyd colleges allowed this to happen, and also allowed it to stay quiet. We stand with the survivor and demand justice for her. If the University is serious about tackling sexual violence, it would heed the Women’s Collective’s longstanding demand to abolish the colleges and turn them into safe and affordable housing.
Join the fightback with the USyd Women’s Collective. Message the Instagram or Facebook page to be added to the group chat!
Check out our page of resources on how to respond to a disclosure of sexual assault, how to make a report, and how to access University- and community-based services is found on page 30 of this year’s Growing Strong.
In love and rage,
Ishbel, Grace, Saskia and Lucy
Dana
HAIKU FOR THE TIMES: Springtime is coming.
BNOCS, MNOCS, together
Prepare to suffer
our social media announcements! Furthermore, the International Students Lunch will be held on the 19th of August, 12:15–13:00 at the Law Lounge. There will be free food and speed-friending sessions along with practical information regarding academic integrity and international students renting matters, feel free to join and have fun. Lastly, the SUIHAA (The University of Sydney International House) Panel will be held both in person at the Auditorium 1, F23 Michael spence Building and online via zoom (uni-sydney.zoom.us/j182279400237 or bit.ly/4lvXcr2) starts from 17:00 on the 21st of August.
Happy 25S2!
Your International Students Officer - Bob Song
Mālō!. This is The Big Uce Report. I hope one day there is another Sāmoan that can continue the legacy of this… But, for now, the certified Big Uce On Campus (BUOC) is Vince Tafea of @vincetafeamemes.
I did some DJ sets n sht in the past few weeks and played KAYTRANADA – Out of Luck every fkn set. Also been listening to SWAG non fkn stop cos ts goated. ALSO
DAWG NEW DIJON AND NEW KAYTRA DROPPED TODAY AS OF WRITING… we eating good. On that note, if you need some more r&b in ya life, @yearn.fm on
Vince
SURGFM Tuesdays at 7pm! (I don’t have any branding yet doe cos im trynna get Dana to do it but they busy asf. In any case, shout out lil quz aka lil uce aka dandoush aka the chosen one aka Dana).
Academically speaking, I’m two weeks behind already... but I have a good reason. I’ve been scheming against the Labor party and all those who serve to uphold their genocidal hegemony. Wallah cuzz I actually haven’t even scrolled reels ONCE brah, that’s how locked in I am.
Hello everyone. I present to you my first report as AKAR Officer. This is an offshoot of ACAR, but closed only to me, Kayla. Due to the collective’s small size, I am only able to be renumerated with half-used SRC pens.
During my term, I have come to some conclusions:
1. We should gentrify pandan, but just a little bit
2. This is the bad place
3. Dubai chocolate and Labubus are spiritually israeli
4. KPIs? More like PKI
5. Covid isn’t over (and a lot of you need to act on that)
5a. Long covid is hell
5b. Masking is really hot and cool #CommunityCare (get free masks from DisCo!)
6. The stupol scaries will never end
7. We’re still looking for Wasia
8. Stay soft
Kayla
Difficult homelife? What are your options?
If You Can’t Live at Home
One of the ways of establishing independence for Youth Allowance with Centrelink is to show that it is unreasonable for you to live in your family home. To apply for this payment, you will need to complete three forms in addition to the regular paperwork: One by you, one by a parent (I know… ridiculous right) and one by a third party. Centrelink will probably ask to contact your parent, but you can instruct them not to if you believe this would put you in danger.
The third party should be aware of your family situation and should be someone like a counsellor, doctor, police office, teacher, religious leader, grandparent, adult relative or – as a last resort – friend.
What is “Unreasonable”?
It is considered unreasonable for you to live in a home where there is extreme family breakdown, where there is serious risk to your physical or mental wellbeing, due to violence, sexual abuse, or other similar unreasonable circumstances, that occur in your home. It does not have to be perpetrated on you or by someone who lives there. It is also considered unreasonable to live in unstable accommodation. This might include a lack of electricity or running water, or illegally occupying the property. You cannot be receiving continuous support, whether directly or indirectly, and whether financial or otherwise, from a parent.
What is extreme family breakdown?
Extreme family breakdown does not refer to the “normal” differences
Ask Abe
SRC Caseworker Help Q&A
Recreational Drug Use
Hi Abe,
I’m struggling a lot lately. I feel very lonely because all my friends and family are overseas. I’ve also been using N2O bulbs by myself, because they help me to disconnect and forget that I’m so sad. I know I need help, but I don’t even know where to start. Nangs.
The University’s wellbeing team can provide free confidential advice, or Headspace.org.au have an online or phone service
There are a lot of myths and misinformation around recreational drugs, so get your information from reliable sources, like, health.nsw.gov.au/aod. They will tell you about science behind the drugs and the risks that you are taking.
If you would like to talk about how your studies are going, contact an SRC caseworker through our online contact form Abe. Extreme family breakdown does not refer to the “normal” differences that young people have with their parent(s). Centrelink will look for documented evidence of violence, behavioural problems, or threats to your emotional or physical wellbeing.
that young people have with their parent(s). Centrelink will look for documented evidence of violence, behavioural problems, or threats to your emotional or physical wellbeing. Centrelink does not deem extreme family breakdown to have occurred just because your parent(s) disapprove of your relationships or lifestyle, (e.g., religion, sexuality, (transgender), unless this is a threat to your physical or emotional wellbeing.
Before moving out?
Consider your safety. If you are at immediate risk of harm talk to an SRC caseworker or Uni Wellbeing team member about emergency accommodation. Also consider your accommodation choices if you move out before making any decisions. Talk to an SRC caseworker about what options you have.
Hi Nangs,
I am sorry to hear that you’ve been having such a hard time lately. It might be helpful for you to speak with a mental health professional, so that you can develop some healthy coping strategies.
2 One example of a cloud computing service? (3)
4 Wall unit (5)
6 En ___ (capture) (7)
8 Cold sci-fi snooze (9)
10 Polish (5)
11 Pastrami places (5)
13 Ornithologist’s study (5)
1 Cheese with holes (5)
2 Torch job (5)
3 Hot coffee hazard (5)
4 Theorem about conditional probabilities (5)
5 Leg joints (5)
6 One who foretells (9)
7 Gets there in no time? (9)
Semester 2 Week 2 Crossword Answers
15 Truth ___ (5)
17 Capital of Vietnam (5)
18 Computer brain (3)
19 ___ Merdeka (5)
20 Part of a pound (5)
22 Eminent (5)
23 Stop slouching (3,2)
25 Harder to find (5)
8 Persistent (7)
9 Downloads textbooks (7)
10 Stuffy site? (5)
12 Retirement savings made compulsory in 1992 (5)
13 Xiao long __ (3)
14 Acronym of West Papua Independence movement (3)
16 Wet dirt (3)
26 Occupiers (9)
28 Holds grudge against (7)
29 Good to go (5)
30 Holds PhDs (3)
21 Pioneer of calculus (5)
22 Foul (5)
24 Put forth (5)
25 Orange coats (5)
27 Gets closer (5)
Across (by individual row): CAD, Can Of, Almanac, Tradition, Grime, Stroh, Reason, Has At, Pander, Lenin, Prize, FWC, RSTUV, Step A, Revolt, Trane, Senile, Scans, And Co, Tic Tac Toe, Slumber Sneer, GRE
Down (by individual column): Lanai, Camden, Don’ts, Clamor, Faith, Arise, Coral, Trade Pact, No Service, Gen-Zers, Han Solo, Raitt, Title, PRS, IWW, Nut, Anais, Renter, Endor, Encls, SacBee, Stung, A Mere
Fill In The Stations
Colonial Clearance
All proceeds go towards the brutal occupation of West Papua and fortnightly BBQs on Eastern Avenue.
