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Vol. 76/No. 33      September 10, 2012

 
Communist League candidate in
Australia defends asylum-seekers
 
BY RON POULSEN
AND LINDA HARRIS
 
SYDNEY, Australia—“Working people in Australia and around the world are bearing the brunt of a far-reaching world capitalist economic crisis that is just getting under way,” said Joanne Kuniansky, Communist League candidate for mayor of Canterbury, in announcing her candidacy. She is on the ballot for the Sept. 8 election. “Here as elsewhere, we are starting to see working people respond to the attacks on their livelihoods.”

Kuniansky joined a Sydney protest Aug. 12 organized by the Refugee Action Coalition in defense of asylum-seekers. “It is in the interests of the working class to defend freedom of entry for asylum-seekers and other would-be immigrants,” she said. (See article on page 9.)

“My campaign condemns the bipartisan moves to hold asylum-seekers, who reach Australia by boat, on Pacific islands,” Kuniansky said. “Mandatory detention of these refugees, whether offshore or in Australia, should be immediately ended.”

Kuniansky was invited to speak on a panel during an Aug. 18-19 conference here on Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution. She addressed the fight to free the Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González—Cuban revolutionaries framed up and imprisoned in the U.S. since 1998. They were living and working in Florida at the request of the Cuban government to monitor activities by Cuban-American counterrevolutionary groups with a long record of violent attacks on Cuba.

Kuniansky explained how the harsh treatment and long prison terms for the Cuban Five are a result of Washington’s decades-long determination to overthrow Cuba’s socialist revolution.

“The U.S. government will not let them out without a massive struggle,” she said. “As Gerardo says, only a ‘jury of millions’ will free them. Our task is to continue to win new forces to that jury.”
 
 
Related articles:
‘Socialist campaign starts with the world’
SWP vice pres. candidate tours in Montreal
SWP candidates confirmed on ballot in 7 states so far
Washington unionist endorses SWP campaign: ‘Bosses think we’re dumb, but I see change coming’
SWP candidates tour schedule
Socialist candidates turn over bosses’ ‘blood money’ bribes
‘Undocumented and unafraid,’ immigrant youth line up across US
Australian gov’t reopens offshore detention camps
UndocuBus tours South for ‘Jobs, justice, dignity’
Legalize undocumented workers!  
 
 
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