We went on an incredible journey to Nauru in 2004 to bring hope to the refugees imprisoned on Nauru. On the way there we were warned that the Australian Government may play dirty and get someone to contaminate our fuel so it was best not to go to Honiara to get supplies. Honiara is the capital of the Solomon Islands. So we didn’t go there, we went to Santa Cruz, the most isolated island of the Solomons on the way to Nauru.
On our return journey to Australia it was safe to go via Honiara and this was when we discovered the city’s Chinatown. If you want to know about the history of the Chinese merchants in Honiara just click here.
In 2006 there were major riots which destroyed 90% of Chinatown. The photos below are just some that I took when we visited in 2004. Someone on Twitter was grateful that I shared a couple of these photos because it brought back many wonderful memories they had of Chinatown.
So, the first photo is of the fires in 2006.
The rest of the photos of Chinatown, Honiara I took in 2004.
People have asked whether there is an “archive” of the various human rights actions which I’ve been involved in over the years. I have recorded some of these on this blog but I think one page which takes you to these stories may be useful.
I am aware that there are many people who have done some incredible work supporting social justice and human rights but no one knows about these. Many people across the world do think globally and act locally but we don’t hear about it. One reason is that mainstream media quite often does not tell or record these actions and we find these local actions don’t even make a footnote in a local history book, let alone in a “big” history book.
So, I’ve written about some of our local actions just so people do know about them.
2020 – what a time to be an activist! I can’t help but reimagine some of the stuff we did before Social Media, before Go Fund Me, drone photography. Maybe, the Flotillas of Hope could have raised so much money we could have chartered some boats? We wouldn’t have needed a giant Kite with a camera to film the refugees in Woomera. A drone would have done the job magnificently.
Anyway, there’s lots of opportunities and means to fight for social justice today with the technology available to all of us.
What’s our local area? Newcastle, in the Hunter Valley, NSW, Australia.
Newcastle, Australia
I am listing these local actions in chronological order with a short description.
The Cultural Stomp had its birth in 1997 when Pauline Hanson launched her One Nation Party in Newcastle. We decided that she wasn’t going to launch it without hearing what we in the Hunter felt about it. We formed a group we called Cultures in Action and every year since 1997 for ten years Newcastle celebrated its cultural diversity in Civic Park.
Refugees and Asylum Seekers held a hunger strike in this detention centre stuck in the South Australian desert. Some people in Melbourne decided to organise a Festival of Freedoms at the Woomera Detention Centre. Hunter Organisation for Peace & Equity joined them and we became a Caravan, a HOPE Caravan.
With all the racist crap pushed by the Liberal National Party we thought that Newcastle should become a Welcome Town for Refugees. For those not in Australia, the conservative right wing party which aligns itself more with the USA Republican Party & UK Tories is called the “Liberal” Party. Yes, one couldn’t get a more Orwellian name for a political party than that.
While we talked about the possibility of visiting the most isolated gulag in the world at Nauru most thought it was an impossible dream. But we visited the island.
I’m attempting to reach a state where I am a born again virgin soul, a state where I can dream once again of clouds passing through my ear into my head and out again through the other ear carrying life giving water.
I’m looking at the process of writing this down and it has opened up a little river of opportunity. Action … it seems acting (doing something) sets up its own dynamic in a super structure sense. The action into the unknown allows another higher order world that shows signs on the crossroads. The GPS here is set to the inner satellite orbiting one’s heart. Obviously the muscle pumping blood around the body hasn’t got a Latter Day Sputnik bipping around it. The heart I speak of is that part of ourselves which tastes truth and sees through the onion layered worlds we live in. Sees through? Yes, like a prehistoric insect sees through amber before it solidifies.
One of my greatest “heroes” is a guy called Gurdjieff. Someone wrote that the Fourth Way which Gurdjieff brought to the West was a method of making the real – super real. In fact, it is practical surrealism. So now I want to practically surrealise some of my dreams. Using the template of power-in-action through visualisation, various projects were able to be given a material existence (like the Cultural Stomp and the Flotillas of Hope). It is not “me” who did it, or who does it. In fact, my job as a person with heart is to move out of the way so that the forces attempting to make whatever needs to happen, happen.
I remember one time when the Flotillas of Hope project was white hot in its birthing. Two websites had already manifested, as well as a satellite phone and 2 boats. An art auction was about to happen in Sydney, where we raised over $8,000, and I get this call from a guy heavily involved in the Socialist Alliance.
He says, “Stavros, this is big. How the fuck are you managing this – where’s your committee?”
I laughed and told him that if he knew the truth he wouldn’t want to work with me because he’d think I was absolutely crazy. Really crazy! He pleaded with me to tell him the truth.
So I told him,”My job is to just keep the fire burning while aligning myself to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life using the astrological chart of the project as the foundation.”
Tree of Life from Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi’sAdam and the Kabbalistic Tree, Rider, London 1974
Tree of Life - another aspect from Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi's "Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree", Rider, London 1974
He went quiet. I added, “I am just focussing on the vision – the image of us sailing to Nauru and the focus is the fire.”
He replied slowly as if it pained him to hear something like that, “B-u-l-l-s-h-i-t !!”
I laughed and told him that it was true and if it was all bullshit, how did he explain the manifestation of boats, websites, satellite phones, art auctions, crews, inverters etc etc that are here in the real world? He didn’t ask me again how I was managing .
I’m trying to get out of the way so that what is most necessary at this time comes to fruition. Who knows, it may be a book, a million dollars, a shop with hidden treasures or a beautiful garden. It may be the birth of another grand child, or my recently planted grapevine bearing fruit this coming year.
Having a shed allows me to play and tinker to my heart’s delight. At the very least, I want to have made my scaled down Great Pyramid to experiment with to see if Pyramid Power is real, my very own Orgone Accumulator and a simple Dream Machine within a year or so.
I suppose to gain a born again virgin soul is really to regain the innocence of a child. We were all once children, so innocent and then experience came in and made us fall from that state of grace. This is so beautifully expressed in William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience”.
William Blake's Frontispiece for "Songs of Innocence and Experience"
The Divine Image by William Blake
The Divine Image
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God our Father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is man, His child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
Way back in 2002 I was part of two groups which had a focus on human rights and refugee issues.
The more “operational” and lobbying aspect had expression in the group Newcastle Action for Refugee Rights (NARR). My more “cultural jamming” and “Situationist – Anarchist” aspect had its expression in HOPE Caravan. It was through HOPE Caravan that I was involved in the Easter Actions at Woomera Detention Centre in 2002 and Baxter Detention Centre in 2003. It was also as part of HOPE Caravan that the Flotillas of Hope found expression.
Hope Caravan logo we used on our now absent website. The drawing was based on an original pencil drawing made by a prisoner at Woomera Detention Centre. He gave us permission to use it.
As part of NARR, I, along with others presented a proposal to Newcastle City Council to make Newcastle, Australia, an official Welcome Town for Refugees. Here’s the link to the whole proposal we presented at Newcastle City Council >> Welcome Town Presentation – thanks Jack for taking the time to make it available on your website.
Now that the dark years of the John Howard’s Decade is over in Australia, it is important that we are reminded that there were people in Australia (many, many of us) that were ashamed at the opportunistic tickling of the xenophobic underbelly of the Australian people that Howard’s genius did. People say that he was not a racist. Maybe he wasn’t in a way that Hitler was, but his myopic vision and policies that demonised innocent people who were seeking a new life were.
Anyway, I don’t want to go on about him here, suffice to say that there were Australians around during the Dark Howard Decade who stood against his crap.
My social conscience is clear and I’m proud to say that I was one of them.
NARR conducted a sympathy fast with the hunger strikers at Woomera Detention Centre in 2002. This is the tent we lived in at Civic Park, Newcastle. The head on the corner is a paper mache of Philip Ruddock, the Immigration Minister at the time.
Below is the introduction to the Horoscope of the Flotillas of Hope Project in 2004. I sent this out to a few supporters of the Project around the world who I felt would not laugh at the idea of an astrological – magical approach to a human rights campaign. Now, since the Action is complete and Nauru Detention Centre is shut down I feel that I can reveal my own inner stance to such external actions publicly.
I will also upload the complete reading of the Flotillas horoscope to a storage site. When I do I will give you the link.
“..the apparently lifeless data of astronomy can be used to produce a calculated and objective emotional effect.This is astrology. But it is an astrology quite unlike astrology today.”
John Anthony West and Jan Gerhard Toonder
I feel like experimenting with my beginner’s astrologer mind on the Flotillas of Hope. Part of me is uncertain as to how it will be taken by you and in what spirit. My concerns revolve around the bad press that astrology has received since the Age of Reason. I am not going to justify the working rationale of such an ancient method of making sense of the world. Astrology is one of the oldest science – arts in the world, globally used by the first great civilisations of humanity, in Egypt, India, China, Americas, Africa, and Australasia. Written history shows that the Babylonians or Chaldeans developed it to a fine art. In fact “Chaldean” was synonymous with “astrologer” in those days because the practitioners of that country were considered the best practitioners of the art. Abraham, the root of Judaism, Christianity and Islam was a Chaldean. In those days the dichotomy between science and art did not exist. One could argue that our 21 St Century “West” is schizophrenic when we compare ourselves to the unitive vision of the ancient worlds. Check out Jaynes “The Origin of Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind” to see where I’m coming from. Sure we’ve got Eye of Hubble taking and transmitting beautiful images of the heavens from the edge of our Solar System to us on ground zero. However, we cannot see ourselves as an integral part of a living organism we call the Universe. We don’t believe that the Eye of Ra looks over us. Funny that, because the Sun still shines and that is what the Eye of Ra is – the Sun. This reminds me of William Blake’s response to someone who said that the Sun was just a guinea coin shape in the sky, “For you the Sun is a guinea disc, for me it is a chorus of Angels singing Alleluia! Alleluia!”
I want to reclaim that sense of wonder. Astrology helps me ponder the interconnection between myself and the universe, between all of us and the universes.
I want to experiment to see if Astrology as a symbolic language can demonstrate the noumenal underpinning of reality. This two way communication between mind and symbol may help manifest the Flotillas of Hope. I’m more comfortable in using the French “symbolique “ in the Schwaller de Lubicz sense than symbolic. The difference is so small yet it adds another world of meaning. Symbolic in the usual sense means a sign that stands for something. Symbolique means that the sign is the represented ie the symbol is alive in its own essential meaning – it is in itself what it symbolizes. The aliveness is the symbolique.
The underpinning I am referring to is not a static slab of concrete but rather a cluster of “energetic” patterns. If David Bohm is right about implicate and explicate orders of the universe then the pattern crystallizing between the implicate and the explicate orders as pin pointed at the moment of sending the Flotilla email is the Sky Map – a particle of the Holographic Universe . That moment carries with it space and we enter the zone of descriptions, associative tracings dancing across nervous systems and neuronal connections making “realities”. The Horoscope/email did not cause the journey of hope to Nauru. We are not talking about Causes here but rather acausal resonances, synchronicities, patterns of what is.
It is a fundamental premise in this reading that there are multiple descriptions of reality and that these descriptions have an equal being status. Consensus reality, in which we are embedded, is not the only one around. Australian Aboriginal people can discern over twenty different words for different kinds of desert sand where through Western eyes only one sand word exists “SAND”. The same applies to the ground. Original Australians see sacred ground where Western consensus reality only sees a potential dollar making resource.
The more you look into it, with a beginner’s mind, you find that the macroscale physics of relativity is in contradiction to the micro scale of the quantum universe. The humble electron orbiting around the nucleus of an atom cannot be placed. The electron cannot be pinned down as to where it will be at any moment. Its location is probable only. Picture the journey of a car in the centre of a city. You will see the car stop and turn, make its way in a continuous action. The car moves through space in a certain amount of time. This is the macroscale, however in the microscale, within the heart of matter it is a different picture. The analogous image of the car-electron travelling through the city centre, is the discontinuous location of the car. Instead of moving and turning around a corner for the car to be at a particular place, the quanta car first appears in one place and then another and then another without the “journey”. It is this discontinuity which is the quanta – a time –space packet of probabilistic matter. In fact, it seems that the micro universe of probabilistic matter is in closer concert with Astrology than the macro scale of “separate” stuff in an open universe. That moment, according to astrology encompasses the position of the planets and stars and the time the email was sent – it is all an Event Organism. The astrological hypothesis is based on a resonance between that which is above (the heavens) and that which is below (the everyday world of our existence – Earth). In other words there is a coincidence between the positions of the stars at that moment and the event. I won’t even try to enter synchronicity’s whirlpool to explain the connection. Check out Carl Jung’s Introduction to Richard Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching. It is the best summation of the synchronicity idea. Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic resonance comes to mind applying its theme to a time body. The Flotillas of Hope may even be tapping into morphological roots in archetypal memory …..Jason and the Argonauts on a quest for the Golden Fleece. By the way, Jason is pronounced Yiason and when Greeks say “Yiasou” it means “long life and health to you”. Yia and as it means “hygia” as in hygiene…it also means to make Whole and is the Earth – Gaea = Yia both in pronounciation and in meaning. Gaea Mind – Hive Mind.
In other words the emerging pattern from the invisible world into the visible 3 D world of what is called “Flotillas of Hope” may be revealed in a symbolique exploration of a Sky Map. Not necessarily the future but the potential trends and cycles of an emerging future. Kind of like seeing the lineaments of a living time body. Seeing the curve of the Flotillas time sail, tiller and anchor may indicate certain needs. Sure, its not prediction pure and simple but it is better than nothing at all. This kind of astrology is as far removed from fortune telling as Reality is from Reality TV.
The Flotillas of Hope was conceived as an event organism when the “SEND” button was pressed. The idea entered the web-mind-womb and the flotilla was conceived. We know it was at that moment because we have witnessed its embryonic movements and now, at the time of writing, 4 boats – 3 from Australia, one from Colombia are here in the 3 – D World of our senses. The baby is kicking in the womb waters of both the web and the earth. On World Refugee Day, 20 June, 2004, the Flotilla of Hope will be born at Nauru, Longitude 166 E 55, Latitude 00 S 32.
Astrology for me is a means of exploring the edges of rational thought as it touches the unknown. The horoscope is like a semi permeable membrane, it can suspend the ordinary associative processes of the mind and allow a different kind of attention to manifest. This attention striking off from the symbolique elements of the horoscope gives a different kind of mind environment. Psychologists call it imagination. Sometimes, in flickering moments it can be vision. A vision – feeling into another dimensional world that is holographic in structure, energetic and alive. In these glimpses, a human and the universe are seen as the same organism. As above so below, as Hermes Trismegistus says. A different relationship exists between things – or at least that is what appears when astrological Sun glasses are worn.
Astrology for me is a mantic science with an intuitive technos.
In political or judicial astrology the beginnings of any event is deemed to hold its potential futures. Note the plural for it shows that there is no predetermined single end but rather multiple futures resonant to a common end. It was believed in ancient times that a study of the stars could ascertain the rise and fall of kingdoms and dynasties. It has also been recorded that the birth of Jesus was predicted by astrology when the three magi in a caravan crossing the Middle Eastern desert followed the Star of Hope to Bethlehem. Astrologers were employed to chart possible battles and voyages trying to predict what may happen and advise accordingly. Someone wrote, “In my beginning is my end and in my end is my beginning” Judicial or mundane astrology (mundanus from the Latin meaning “material world”) sees events in the same light – in a beginning is its end and in its end is its beginning. Judicial or political astrology deals with events in the social sphere. It is not as well known as the personal natal astrology but it has been of enormous influence in shaping history up to the Age of Reason. Some say, even until today.
Art of Manifestation
Another aspect to this reading is that the actual exercise of casting a chart, reading it and writing out the interpretation can be an intentional act of manifestation. Well, according to all the stuff I’ve read and been told, it can be. If the miraculous or the lyric by Leonard Cohen, “God is alive, Magic is afoot “ irritates your sensibility then so be it. I take those words literally. The secret seems to be “not doing” and “resting”; in knowing “how to wait”. It is a contradictory state >>> manifesting an intention by not doing. Something like Tao and the process of “From Little Things Big Things Grow” – Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody.
Look, I am new in this kind of work. One of the main things anybody has to do when learning a new skill is to apply it, try it out – practice. So, this effort of mine is a beginner’s effort. It may all be fantasy but at least I got another chart out of the way for my personal target of 1000 completed practice charts. It is an experiment in using a different model of the world to see if it can have an effect. Who knows what powers lie both within and outside ourselves when we remain open to different modes of apprehension.
“When positive, equational logic rejects feeling, it makes as great a mistake as when intuitive feeling rejects logical control.”
Schwaller de Lubicz
If the interpretation is all mere fantasy with no true moments of seeing, do not blame the stars. Blame my faulty vision. If astrology has no objective reality, it may yet have a reality in the subjective world.
In many ways, this reading is an experiment in communicating a social – political event and its intentions using categories that are Astrological. Whilst every attempt has been made to keep the Astrological technical language to a minimum, no prior knowledge of Astrology is required to understand its intentions.
The Flotillas not only sail on physical oceans they also sail in peoples’ hearts as courage and compassion bringing an end to the heartless and inhumane incarceration of refugees on Australia’s Islands of Shame.
This is just my small effort to do something, armed with a computer and a sense of wonder at the oneness of it all. As you read the interpretation you are also helping to manifest by reinventing and recreating the Flotillas of Hope in your own imagination. In effect you are creating your own vision of what may be.
Any other astrologers both beginner and advanced please send me your comments. I‘d be interested in hearing your views and interpretations of the Flotillas of Hope Sky Map.
Final word to those who know:
Somehow you’ve come to the conclusion that at the very heart of matter, at the turning point of decisions, at the core of bone marrow, molecule, atom, neutrino and pepperino there is an intelligence operating. You know that Earth is a stone with a lick of moisture on its surface orbiting about a type G star we call the Sun. You don’t disdain science and you also know that there is a blueprint of the whole of Creation. This blueprint, this plan , this informational map is embedded within every atom, cell, organism and living whole from a sand flea to Andromeda, from a child playing with a ball to the Milky Way.
How you came about this knowledge is your business. It could have been through a book. It could have been a friend who told you. It could have been a certain altered state of mind that led you to this knowledge. It doesn’t really matter where you got your knowledge or even how. The important thing is that you know that there is an imperishable spirit in every piece of matter, in every volume and in every measure. This means that there is an imperishable immortal part of human nature. It is here and now, we only have to slice through the onion layers of conditioning to see it. This knowledge we are speaking about is certain knowledge. It is an X ray vision of the imperishable in matter. It is not a mere belief and neither is it an open conclusion of faith. It is certain knowledge based on direct experience…nothing is in the way. Having this knowledge gives a different spin on the Earth as a stone orbiting a medium sized type G star.
In fact having this knowledge makes words like Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto mean something different to hunks of rock gravitationally stuck in orbits about the Sun. They are verbs in one context and gods in another. They are as far removed from the astronomical planets and Sun as green cheese is to the moon. This is where the possession of this knowledge instead of bringing fame and fortune will bring instead ridicule and laughter, sometimes scorn and banishment. The possession of this knowledge has marked you as an outsider. Even though it is invisible, your mark of Cain is your knowledge. If you are lucky you may have found a way to manifest secretly and keep a semblance of an ordinary householder life. Being an invisible outsider gives you great opportunities to observe and learn how to be a partner in creation. For this is what it comes down to. In essence humans are not a symbol of the Universe – we are the Universe and in this kind of partnership we all do our bit or we get flushed out of existence. Where’s our immortality then? It’s still there waiting for another to clothe it.
The denial of human rights of one is the denial of humanity for all.
Method of Approach
I’ll try to see if I can delineate the “soul” of the event as if it was a living organism, you know, the “Flotillas of Hope”. It is my way of considering the project in a holistic manner. I will try to place this Organism within the context of the socio – political world. One moves from the particular to the general – a person to a nation. – a local event to a national and global context. Astrology allows you to zoom in and out of the various contexts within contexts like a telescope . It can sometimes be time free and so indicate trends invisible to the naked eye. Trends seen through a time free zone? A contradiction and yet possible. Pataphysics and the Third Mind juxtaposed by situational poetics, the poetry of the moment shown not only in words but by the signs of the stars and our living motions.
Mount Athos is in north eastern Greece, east of Salonika and only accessible by boat from Ouranopolis (ouranos means sky so Ouranopolis means Sky Town). The Holy Mountain is located on the red peninsular of Halchidi.
When are true beginnings of events, births and resurrections? I ask this question because I’ve been asked when did the “Flotillas of Hope” begin? Common sense answers that it was the day and time the boats set off for Nauru. “Eureka” left Sydney on 15 May and “One Off” and “Eureka” left Brisbane for Nauru on 23 May, 2004. However, before the boats even existed, “Flotillas of Hope” was an email sent at a particular date and time from somewhere. Was this email “Call to Action” the real beginning of the project? A feeling anchored in my heart for a few months before the “Call to Action” email was sent over the internet. Was this feeling the real beginning that only needed my fear of ridicule to disappear to express itself? Where did this feeling arise from?
I believe the real beginning happened four years before we set sail for Nauru. My father died in December, 1999 and being the eldest son of a Greek family it was my duty to go to Greece and check out some property stuff. I hadn’t been back to Greece since I left when I was four years old. I couldn’t afford to return to my birthplace, my roots, until I was 48. Over the years I dreamt about returning and all the special places I would visit. One was Dodona which is about 5 kilometres from Anatoli, the village where I was born. It is the oldest oracle in Greece, older than the Delphic Oracle. Legend has it that Jason, before he sailed off with the Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece, visited the oracle of Dodona. The miraculous priam that spoke in prophecies from the front of the Argonauts’ boat, was carved from wood of Dodona’s sacred grove.
Dodona, oldest oracle in Greece. I sat on one of the rocks and listened to Zeus speak through the rustling leaves before I left for the Holy Mountain.
This is near the spot where Mary, Mother of God (Theotokos) shipwrecked on Holy Mountain’s beach.
One other place I dreamt of visiting was Mount Athos, the Holy Mountain as Greeks call it. The monks who live there consider themselves gardeners for the Mother of God’s Garden on Earth. When Mary and Saint John set sail from Cyprus their tiny boat was blown by strong winds off course to the north east coast of Greece where it shipwrecked. When Mary saw the beauty of this place she asked her son Jesus if she could have it as her garden. Soon after, seekers of truth arrived, some remained to become gardeners and others left after some respite. This is why it is called the Holy Mountain.
I was baptised as Greek Orthodox when I was a baby. In my late teens and early twenties I searched far and wide, behind book covers and the open roads of Australia and New Zealand looking for something. As part of that search I found that the Holy Mountain may have something of what I was looking for. I had sought answers in religions and philosophies alien to my heritage. Now was the chance to look into my own indigenous faith.
Ouranopolis – this is where you leave by boat to go to the Holy Mountain.
It was Easter, 2000, there I was sitting opposite Geronta Pavlo at the table with the wood oven heating some water behind me. I was inside a time bubble hugged by mud, stone and timber walls. Byzantium breathed in this small kitchen that has cooked meals and boiled water for over a millenium.
The tiny church next door to the room I stayed in at the old Byzantine house.
Of all the cats scampering for fish heads in the saucer near the door, two – the twins, Alpha and Omega ran towards Geronta, finding their way onto the table top. Geronta was quietly reading a newspaper. His hair, like small waterfalls of grey, fell over his shoulders and behind his back. Strands of his long white beard fell on the table. Gerontas, 90 years old, looked like a middle aged biker, with the full round belly of body armour and broad shoulders. Alpha and Omega tugged at his beard, he said, “Off with you,” and then smiled. I went to lift the boiling water off the stove and when I returned I saw Geronta folding a page of the newspaper. Over and over he folded. I wondered if this was some kind of Holy Mountain origami. When he finished folding he held it up.
He said, “Here Stavros, this is for you.”
I said, “What is it Gerontas?”
“It’s a boat. I don’t know why but my heart told my hands to make this for you.”
As I received the gift he said, shrugging his shoulders, “Who knows, it may mean that you return to the Holy Mountain sooner than you think. Or maybe something else. It is for you.”
The paper boat folded by Gerontas and given to Stavros.
What was interesting in retrospect is that he gave me the boat a day after we had a discussion about what is needed to alleviate suffering and injustice on Earth. I was thinking about the dispossessed, the homeless, the weak, the persecuted, the refugees of the world. I told Gerontas that the needs of the world are such that people who can do something should not hide on Holy Mountains but be in the world and try to change it for the better, Smiling, he said, “Our Christianity is esoteric, it is hidden. Here on the Holy Mountain you are no longer in the exoteric world. Our concerns are spiritual.”
“Gerontas, you appear not to care for the very ones Jesus tells us we should care for.”
“Stavros, from where you are it appears that way. You know, the Holy Mountain needs at least five monks to survive in caves and feed on light. Without these monks connecting Heaven and Earth through their sacrifice, the Mother of God’s Garden will wither and die. How do you know that this house, this monastery, this Holy Mountain does not play a similar role for the whole Earth? How much more pain and injustice would be on Earth now if the Holy Mountain did not exist? We, each of us has our calling, our vocation. My work is here while yours is in the exoteric.”
“Gerontas, do I need to become a monk to fulfil what is needed or is there another way?” I asked him.
Alpha or was it Omega, crawled softly towards his hand. He reached for the cat’s head and stroked it gently. He said, “This is what is needed from all…..the practice to bring the spiritual into the material, Heaven on Earth. You don’t need to be a monk or a nun to do this. All you need is pure intention. If your intent is pure, the way is open. Do what you have to do, follow your conscience and allow this particle of God,” he pointed to my heart,” your conscience, guide you.” He looked at me with soft eyes and added, “You must die before you die and then be reborn, this is what Easter is all about.”
A few days after I was on my way to Istanbul or Constantinople as Greeks call it with the paper boat and lots of material for thought. My journey over the next two months was along the ancient trade route from Istanbul to Cairo.
I took the paper boat with me on Eureka. I now believe that the beginning of the journey to Nauru was the moment when Gerontas gave me the paper boat. He, as a gardener, planted a seed.
St Paul at the base with Mount Athos in the background.
Entrance path to the house I stayed in with the two monks.
Lance Gowland, Skipper of Eureka on the way to Nauru with the Flotillas of Hope.
On Saturday, November 22, a celebration of Lance Gowland’s life was held in Sydney. He was a proud 78’er for Gay Liberation risking life and limb for the rights of LGBTQI people. I couldn’t go because of my broken leg but I did send some photos and and some words to be recited as the photos appeared in the appropriate space of Lance’s life in the slide show.
I first met Lance when he answered the Call to Action, for the Flotillas of Hope, to bring hope to the refugees imprisoned on Nauru. He wrote me an email saying he had a boat and he was willing to sail it to Nauru. For him very simple words to utter, but for me, they were miraculous sounds that further crystallized the dream of going to Nauru. Now we had at least 2 boats – Eureka and One Off in Brisbane. When the Call to Action was sent on its email trajectory, there were no boats, no money, no technology, no crew. All there was, was a dream quickening into life any time someone offered some support for the dream to manifest.
Lance also asked me later on the phone if there was another experienced sailor that was going on the trip to Nauru. He wanted to know because he had a terminal illness and he didn’t want the people like me who had never sailed, to be stranded out in the deep blue ocean with no way of returning to Australia. He also asked me to not say anything to anyone about his condition until we returned safely.
Luckily I could answer with a resounding YES!
Ruth Boydell on Eureka.
Ruth Boydell, a Maritime Teacher at Newcastle TAFE, was not only an experienced sailor who had sailed solo from India to Australia but was also a TAFE teacher of sailing and other maritime esoterica. Ruth and I both work in TAFE at Newcastle. I work in Multicultural Education.
The words below were recited on 22 November, 2008 at the Celebration of Lance’s Life.
It was a windy night, the Southern Cross flag flapped behind us, we the crew of Eureka, sat listening to Lance telling us the story of the Eureka Stockade. We were about 400 miles away from Nauru out in the deep blue without any certainty that we would arrive safely and even if we did whether the Nauruan people would greet us peacefully or with the Australian Federal Police armed with their guns.
The Southern Cross flag on Eureka. Photo taken on the night that Lance told us the story.
After a short spell of silence, with the wind blowing, Lance with great feeling quoted these words from the Eureka Stockade:
“We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and defend our rights and liberties”.
For most of us, it was the first time we heard these words and on Eureka out in the deep blue, sailing to Nauru to bring hope to imprisoned refugees, hearing our Skipper, Lance say them, made it an unforgettable moment.
Lance, our Skipper, thank you for standing by me and the crew. Thank you for your courage and generosity of spirit standing by the impoverished refugees who sought hope on Nauru.
You, Lance, are a man who will live on in any action done by any person for the cause of social justice.
Since writing the above Australia has legalised Same Sex Marriage in 2017 and in 2018 the 40th Anniversary of the Mardi Gras was celebrated. Just before this ABC TV broadcast a documentary about the struggle for equal rights for gay people.
Mardi Gras named Lance Gowland the Father of the Revolution.
The Flotillas of Hope was a voyage by two yachts carried out in 2004 by protesters critical of the Australian government’s asylum policy. The boats sailed to Nauru, a Pacific island nation which was host to Australia’s offshore immigrant detention center until the new Labor government came to power in 2007. They intended to deliver goods to those interned (most detainees are families who fled conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq), but not surprisingly were not allowed to land by the Nauruan government. Under an agreement put into effect earlier that year, Australia had taken responsibility for the island’s finances and civilian police force. John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister at the time, forced the Nauru government to take armed Australian Police Force to “protect” the island nation from the Flotillas of Hope flying Teddy Bear flags. The Flotillas of Hope project had two intentions 1) to give the refugees caged on the Island of Shame – Nauru, hope – that they have not been forgotten by people, that the Pacific Solution – out of sight, out of mind, did not work and 2) to bring the world media spotlight on Nauru on World Refugee Day, 20 June 2004. This the project achieved and it saw the granting of asylum to over half the refugees on Nauru and the release of Aladdin Sisalem who was in solitary confinement on Manus Island, New Guinea while we were sailing to Nauru.
Hand made flags with messages of hope and love made by the people of Australia flew on Eureka and One Off.
The way the Flotillas grew from an idea, a dream that manifested at first as an email Call to Action using the internet as a nervous system which then as an organsim, gathered into the Flotillas intention – satellite mobile phones, life rafts, high frequency radios, laptops, generators, sun power inverters, flags painted by community hands, dolls and teddy bears in handmade clothes, knitted sweaters, a large canvas sail painted by local Sydney artists along with other paintings expressly made and auctioned to raise money for the safe passage of the Flotillas of Hope, all of this and more occurred during the event.. From the finer embedded world of qualities, the realm of hope, love, justice, freedom – the realm of the spirits, the realm of creation, the Flotillas sparked into the internet. It was Art – in – Action using the world wide web to manifest. Hope was generated in not only the refugees caged on Nauru, but also in all people of good will who felt despondent that nothing will change the government’s heartless policy.
Trade Union Choir singing at the launch of the Flotillas of Hope in Sydney, 15 May, 2004.
Along the way, to the launch of the Flotillas, musicians performed live gigs to raise money for the project. There was a theme song written, performed and recorded along with poems about the Action. Check out Ernesto Presente’s poem on Poetry for Change website here. The lyrics of the Flotillas of Hope Theme Song is below. You can download the song here. You can also check out Joanna Leigh’s myspace profile here.
University students made videos. At the send – offs from Sydney, Newcastle, Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay and Brisbane, the Flotillas of Hope gathered the communities wishes and intentions to bring Hope to the refugees in the concentration camp of Nauru. The Flotillas did this by accepting hand made toys, hand made clothes for the dolls and teddy bears, the drawings and paintings of love and hope by Australian children, hand made flags with hand written words of love and hope from the people of Australia and overseas who sent gifts by post. Communities made beautiful flags – one with a Mandala made under the direction of a Buddhist priest, another of a Teddy Bear made by people who cared.
Poster promoting the departure of the flotillas from Brisbane.
On route to Nauru, the Flotillas docked at Santa Cruz Island, a far flung island of the Solomon Islands. The local indigenous people were so touched by our intention and by how far we had sailed and were sailing that they carved a beautiful wooden oar and gave it us to symbolize that they were rowing all the way with us to Nauru. They gave us the gift on the day we departed Santa Cruz with a send off that included singing, dancing, eating and words of power and encouragement.
The Flotillas carried the cargo of hope through the 12 mile No Go Zone and got to within 500 metres of Nauru coast until they were chased out by 6 Nauruan boats. The boats, Eureka and One Off became living talismans of peaceful and compassionate energies from Australians.
On the way to Nauru, refugees were freed and the websites designed to be the communications hub of the project informed the world about what was happening. There were live interviews with ABC, SBS, BBC, NZBC, Houston Radio, USA along with commercial radio and TV in Australia. A filmmaker, Angela van Boxtel made a Lucid Launch Flotillas of Hope website where artists contributed their art on the website. The Flotillas of Hope was an idea that touched people from across the world and it was an effective art action in all its levels of manifestation.
Santa Cruz, Solomon Islands locals dancing at the departure ceremony.
Santa Cruz, Solomon Island dancers at the departure ceremony wishing us luck and grace.
Various artists painted sections of this canvas sail which was auctioned off along with other original works of art in Gallery 179, Darlinghurst to raise funds for the Flotillas of Hope..
It was also an expression of the newly coined word “Noopolitics” which encompasses Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere of knowledge / information (Teilhard is often called the patron saint of the Internet) because we not only made the news, we also reported the news which was transmitted across the world wide web and TV, radio and text media through our logs and the live satellite phone hookups with global media. The narrative of the journey was transmitted live by the logs of the crew.
The crew received messages of hope – poems and passionate prose from people all over the world who sent text messages from the web directly to our sat – phone in the middle of the deep blue sea. People following the journey on the web were informed as to the exact location of the boats by maps updated by satellite phone to the communications cluster. The project has been archived at the Australian Maritime Museum.
Artists that contributed the sections on the Sail are in order from the top to the bottom, left to right: Dale Dean, Euan Macleod, Mareia Brozky, Angelica Greening, Ingrid Skirkia, John Bell, Lorna Grear, Neil Mallard, Euan Macleod (one more section), Leo Robbia and Martin Sharp.
The first poster to promote the Flotillas of Hope by Matt Hamon, who was also the computer wizkid for Hope Caravan and Ground Crew for the project.
TheFlotillas of Hope was a Journey of Hope, to bring hope to the innocent people imprisoned on Nauru by John Howard’s Australian government. Please note that most of the time the plural “Flotillas” is used instead of Flotilla even though on the surface there was only one flotilla of two boats that sailed to Nauru. The reason that Flotillas is used is because all the actions, the ceremonies, the prayers, the chants, the letters, the songs, the rituals, every action, are ALL flotillas of inner and outer vessels used to bring hope to the refugees imprisoned on Nauru.
The Woomera @ Easter 2002, Baxter @ Easter 2003 and the Flotillas of Hope Actions were not part of an organisation and in fact the websites which supported the Actions have virtually disappeared. The Actions were organic institutes – of – the – moment and like a Tibetan Buddhist sand painting, once the Actions were completed, the organisations like sand grains were blown by the wind to the four corners of the earth. They remain in peoples’ lives that have been transformed by the granting of freedom from the Australian gulags of shame.
When I sent the Call to Action for the human rights social action groups to unite to shame John Howard and highlight the plight of innocent refugees caged on the so called “Pacific Solution” – Nauru, it was deemed an incredibly audacious and unrealistic call. Why? Because Nauru is 4000 kms from Australia and when the call went out, we had no boats, no technology, no crew, no money, indeed, for me – no sailing experience. Well, within 2 weeks of the Call to Action over 250 people from around the planet had joined the new Internet group “Flotillas of Hope”. Within the first two weeks, the creators of the Woomera 2002 website contacted me and created the Flotilla2004 website. Another website was created for digital artists by a film maker and our own Hope Caravan website was the “hub”. A theme song for the project was recorded by Joanna Leigh, “HOPE”. You can download the mp3 version of the song here .. “HOPE…We Bring You Hope” .
Within a short time 2 boats appeared and in the weeks and months before we took off on our journey to Nauru we had received satellite telephones, solar energy inverters, radios, life rafts, money and the incredible creative output of artists and communities across Australia which gave our Cargo of Hope, toys and Teddy Bears for the kids in the gulag.
The Flotillas of Hope Mascot – Azadi Koala. The script on the koala’s shirt says “AZADI” which means Freedom in the Farsi language. The koala is steering Eureka to Nauru 🙂
Following the action, asylum was granted to over half the refugees on Nauru and Aladdin Salanin who was in solitary confinement on Manus Island, New Guinea was released.
Along the way to Nauru, the Flotillas docked at Santa Cruz, a far flung island of the Solomon Islands Where they were met by the local indigenous people. The Flotillas carried their cargo through the 12 mile No Go Zone
Below the map is an article written by a close friend who was a member of the Ground Crew. It gives you the background to the Journey. Lynda, along with some others, made sure that our messages sent by the satellite phone would get out to our website people and so to the world. Lynda was based in Far North NSW. After this article you will find the links I mentioned earlier. After the links and photos of the boats, there is an article by another friend and member of the Ground Crew, Angela. She looked after one of the websites for the project and was based in Melbourne.
Route taken by Flotilla of Hope to Nauru to reach Nauru on 20 June, 2004 – World Refugee Day.
Back in Easter 2002, a group of concerned people from the Hunter region of NSW, Australia, appalled by the Australian Government’s attitude and policy on asylum seekers, joined the actions of the Festival of Freedoms in the South Australian desert. This became Hope Caravan. Along the way, the ‘O’ in Hope transformed from an organisation to an organism.
In 2003, Hope Caravan went to the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia. Many strong bonds and friendships were formed with some of those people initiating the Flotillas of Hope project, which in association with Hope Caravan, sails to Nauru this month to arrive on the tiny impoverished Pacific island of Nauru.
This diverse group of people include a research scientist, an award winning film maker, teachers of maritime studies and multicultural education, a shipwright as well as a soccer coach from the Brisbane based, Tigers Refugee team.
NAURU
Nauru is the smallest republic in the world with a population of only 12,000. It not only faces an environmental catastrophe but also economic bankruptcy.
The exploitation of Nauru’s rich source of phosphate began in the early 1900s. After World War l, the Australian, British and New Zealand governments took over the original mining company that had been previously German owned. It was called the British Phosphate Company. As demands grew for fertiliser, so did their profits. However, only 2% of the revenue went to the Nauru people. At the time of Nauru’s independence in 1968, mining had destroyed over one-third of the tiny island. In 1991, Nauru took the Australian Government to the International Court of Justice for the exploitation of its economy and environment. In 1993, Australia settled out-of-court for $57 million with an additional $2.5 million per annum for the next 20 years. By the late 1990’s, the money had all but dried up.
During the Australian federal election in 2001, the Howard government seized the opportunity to pressure Nauru into taking asylum seekers from the shores of Australia in return for many millions of dollars. These refugees were removed by the Australian military in violation of the International Refugee Convention. This was the beginning of “The Pacific Solution”. Many of these people were initially rescued by the now infamous Tampa, a Norwegian Freighter off the Western Australian coast. In denying the Tampa refugees access to the Australian mainland, and their rights under Australian law, Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, said, “whilst this is a humanitarian decent country, we are not a soft touch and we are not a nation whose sovereign rights in relation to who comes here are going to be trampled on”.
Nauru continues to deny entry to all lawyers, journalists and representatives of human rights groups as well as independent doctors and psychiatrists from assessing the health of the refugees.
Nauru has since been called Australia’s Guantanamo Bay.
These refugees merely sought to flee life-threatening persecution and repression, economic deprivation and poverty and to bring themselves and their families to a safe and secure environment. This must be surely the most basic right of any individual, yet in seeking to exercise it, they have come face to face with the Australian army.
In the last week, three Australian lawyers were ordered off Nauru before they had a chance to appear in a court case challenging the legality of the island’s detention centre for asylum seekers. Their visas were revoked by Nauru’s Minister for Justice, Russell Kun. On April 27, he appointed his uncle, former Finance Minister and paralegal “pleader”, Reuben Kun, to present the detainees’ case.
MANUS ISLAND
There are approximately 21 million refugees worldwide, yet there is only one who is on a remote island in solitary confinement. The Australian government pays $23,000 per day to detain Aladdin Sisalem, a 25 year old man who has suffered persecution most of his life. The son of a Palestinian refugee (his father) and an Egyptian mother, Aladdin was born in Kuwait. Persecuted in his home country, he began a perilous journey in search of a country that would accept him, travelling via West Papua, Papua New Guinea, finally arriving in the Torres Straight Islands, where he was seized by the Australian Police before being taken to Thursday Island. When he asked Australian authorities for asylum, he was removed and taken to a detention centre set up by the Australian Government on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Even if he wanted to return, Kuwait will not take Aladdin back after his period of absence. Egypt does not want him. Israel does not consider his “right of return” as a Palestinian.
It is noted that the 1948 Universal Declaration Human Rights, Article 14, states “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. Ongoing, indefinite suffering by asylum seekers both here and on the offshore detention centres is a clear indication that these basic human rights are being violated.
On 15th May, Flotillas of Hope departs Sydney Harbour, sailing up the east coast of Australia, converging in Brisbane, before departing for Nauru on 23rd May. The boats should arrive at Nauru on 20th June (World Refugee Day) with their “Cargo of Hope” which will include toys, educational, recreational items and a generator for the country’s hospital.
The voyage of this Flotilla recalls the old law of the sea – which obliges us to give assistance to anyone in peril, without regard for flags – and seeks to open a multitude of flows toward a new world for which maps are yet to be created.
Therefore, the Flotilla will use a diversity of tactics: boats converging to Australia’s north in mid-2004 crewed by autonomous affinity groups ; media streams and online protests; radio waves and OpenFlow events.
The view from Eureka’s porthole, somewhere between Santa Cruz, Solomon Islands and Nauru.
Yacht Eureka
The Eureka is a yacht sailing from Sydney in May 2004 for Nauru, in the Pacific Ocean. Together with other vessels, the Eureka will make a Flotilla of Hope to visit people held in the Nauru Detention Centre and draw attention to the plight of people who come to Australia without the right papers. She is being crewed by people from Sydney, Newcastle (Aust.) and London.
Eureka is a sloop-rigged Swanson 42. Sloop rig means she has one mast, and one headsail. She was designed by Ron Swanson and is 12m / 42 feet long. She is fibreglass construction, and heavily built for cruising rather than racing. She is a double-ender, which means she has two ‘sharp ends’, which is for the purpose of breaking a following sea. She was lovingly built by Rob D and Roger C, and they intended to call her Imagine. Bought by Michael C, ex-Hydrographer (chart-maker) of the Australian Navy, launched in 1981 as Eureka, she sailed around the world. Eureka is now owned by Lance, who has sailed her for the last 10 years up and down the Australian east coast and into the Pacific.
The One Off
One Off is a gaff rigged timber vessel, 34 feet long and although launched in 1974 she is a much older style of boat. She is sound and sails well for her type. She was built by Authur and Agnes Pitt for use as both professional fishing and enjoyment. She has a 65HP BMC diesel engine.
Flotillas of Hope
by Angela Mitropoulos Melbourne, June 3, 2004.
There are currently boats travelling 4,000 kilometres to Australia’s internment camp on Nauru. This is the most recent culmination of a series of protests against successive Australian governments’ policies of interning undocumented migrants. The boats are presently at the halfway mark and, weather permitting, expected to reach Nauru by June 20. The crews have been threatened with imprisonment for crossing borders without the proper papers. The importance of the internet to the communication and character of noborder protests is here amplified by distance, threats of violence and the risks of sea travel.
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Some background
It is well known that since 1989, successive Australian Governments have administered a notorious policy subsequently referred to the ‘mandatory and non-reviewable detention’ of all those who arrive by boat and without papers. This was a response to the (by international comparison) extremely small rise in undocumented boat arrivals after 1989 – many from the Middle East, Vietnam and Cambodia – whose internment was often successfully challenged through legal action.
The post-1989 regime of border policing effectively and over time legislated that the refugee determination process exist outside the rule of law in the form of ministerial and administrative dictate and be discharged through concentration camps and military intervention.
It is also well known that in 2002, protesters on both sides of the barbed wire scaled the fences at the Woomera internment camp in South Australia and a number of escapes occurred. www.woomera2002.antimedia.net Woomera, which closed shortly after this, was emblematic of the Australian Government’s strategy of interning undocumented migrants in remote, rural camps as a means of containment and control. Woomera was located 1,000 kilometres from the nearest capital city (Adelaide) and, for a time, held the largest number of detainees.
2002 was the culmination of four years of protests by detainees in Australia’s internment camps, including hunger strikes, the destruction of buildings, and mass escapes. Many of those protests were met with tear gas, riot police and the use of chemical restraints. www.antimedia.net/xborder
Following this, the Australian Government shifted its strategy toward a combination of ‘dislocation’ and electrification in an attempt to decompose the protests against the post-1989 regime of the camps. The so-called ‘Pacific Solution’ was introduced which established camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea (Manus Island) funded by the Australian Government and managed by the International Organisation for Migration. Australian military vessels would forcibly remove undocumented boat arrivals from territorial waters and Australian islands, and transport them to those camps in the Pacific.
In Australia, a new technology of internment was constructed (such as at Baxter) which replaced the grim (but scalable) coils of barbed wire and steel fences with hi-tech, refined systems of electronic barriers, surveillance and a greater reliance on technological and chemical restraint. (The Government has also budgeted for another of these hi-tech camps in Broadmeadows, Melbourne to replace the current, smaller one in Maribyrnong.)
The result of these changes to the architecture of the camps were immediate: the protesters outside Baxter in 2003 were unable to get close to or even within sight of any of those imprisoned there, many of whom had been relocated from Woomera. www.baxter2003.com Whereas Woomera2002 had managed to break with the symbolic character of protests by those outside the camps; Baxter2003 signalled the restoration of such, and subsequently ushered in a decline in the impetus of the movements against the camps.
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Flotilla 2004
Having circulated as an audacious, but regarded as impractical, strategy after Woomera2002, the idea of shifting the protests against the camps to the northern waters of Australia became an imperative with the inauguration of the ‘Pacific Solution.’ After Baxter, Hopecaravan distributed a call for boats to travel to the internment camp on Nauru. That voyage is currently underway, with boats presently located at the halfway mark, and expecting to reach Nauru by June 20.
The Nauru Government which – given its current fiscal woes and recent economic bankruptcy – relies on the continuing funding of the camp as a source of revenue and employment, has threatened to suspend maritime convention (the Law of the Sea) and forcibly seize the boats. They have also threatened to imprison the Flotilla crews as undocumented boat arrivals. This has not deterred the crews, who nevertheless require ongoing support and communication.
Regular updates are available at flotilla2004.com, as are crew b-logs, instructions on sending text messages to the crews, and detailed background reports.
The Australian Government, for its part, has adopted the pose of detached benevolence – an echo of its previous, farcical contention that it was not legally liable for the treatment and internment of those in the camps because they were outside Australian jurisdiction. Facing with an upcoming election, and as the Flotilla boats were cheered off from eastern coastal cities, the Government announced that under half of those detained on Nauru would be granted visas, and recently granted a visa to the remaining detainee, Aladdin Sisalem, on Manus Island. www.freealaddin.com
These shifts follow a determined hunger strike last year on Nauru, after which the Government promised that it would review its rejection of the applications for asylum by those imprisoned on Nauru. www.noborder.org/press/display.php?id=3 The Government has, nevertheless, insisted that its camps in the Pacific will remain, at a cost of around $300, 000 per month.
Previously, the Government had refused to grant visas to those taken hostage from the MV Tampa and forcibly transported to Nauru. At the time, the Government insisted that ‘not one of those would set foot on Australian soil.’ It is abundantly clear that the definition of who is a refugee and who is not (or: who is subject to the regime of the camps in order to classify people along this axis) is defined by what the Australian Government imagines to be politically advantageous at any given time.
Those released from Nauru and PNG have expressed concern for the fate and safety of those who remain interned there. The voyage continues until the camps are closed.
Angela Mitropoulos Melbourne, June 3, 2004.
The Flotillas of Hope Sailing Crew
Keith Davies, Skipper of One Off, pointing to the sticker from Rainbow Power who donated a solar power inverter to the project.
Australian Democrats Leader Andrew Bartlett called on the Nauru government to issue visas to human right advocates who plan to arrive on the island.
The NSW Refugee Action Coalition’s “Flotilla of Hope” is due to arrive on the island carrying teddy bears for children detained on the tiny Pacific nation.
The activists aboard the two yachts – the Eureka and the One Off – planned their arrival to coincide with World Refugee Day, following a 4000km journey from Australia.
Senator Bartlett said the crew have been refused visas.
He said the Flotilla of Hope was a “peaceful protest and should be given visas”.
A spokeswoman for the small Pacific nation said on Sunday it was unlikely the human rights advocates will be allowed onshore.
“At this point it would seem that the president [of Nauru] has not given his permission for visas to be granted,” she said.
“I believe that the boats will be met at sea.
“A peaceful exchange will take place allowing the members of the two boats of the Flotilla to offer their greetings, and hand over the gifts for the children in the camps.”
But a spokesman and a crew member of the two Australian yachts, Stavros Georgopoulos, said the flotilla wanted to make their presence felt on land.
“We’ve got piles and piles of toys and gifts to give to the refugees and personal messages from people from Australia to give to the refugees,” he told ABC Radio.
“There’s a lot of people counting on us to deliver the messages.
“We haven’t travelled 4,000 kilometres just to be fobbed off.”
Back in Easter 2002, a group of concerned people from the Hunter region of NSW, Australia, appalled by the Australian Government’s attitude and policy on asylum seekers, joined the actions of the Festival of Freedoms in the South Australian desert. This became Hope Caravan. Along the way, the ‘O’ in Hope transformed from an organisation to an organism.
In 2003, Hope Caravan went to the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia. Many strong bonds and friendships were formed with some of those people initiating the Flotillas of Hope project, which in association with Hope Caravan, sails to Nauru this month to arrive on the tiny impoverished Pacific island of Nauru.
This diverse group of people include a research scientist, an award winning film maker, teachers of maritime studies and multicultural education, a shipwright as well as a soccer coach from the Brisbane based, Tigers Refugee team.
Nauru
Nauru is the smallest republic in the world with a population of only 12,000. It not only faces an environmental catastrophe but also economic bankruptcy.
The exploitation of Nauru’s rich source of phosphate began in the early 1900s. After World War l, the Australian, British and New Zealand governments took over the original mining company that had been previously German owned. It was called the British Phosphate Company. As demands grew for fertiliser, so did their profits. However, only 2% of the revenue went to the Nauru people. At the time of Nauru’s independence in 1968, mining had destroyed over one-third of the tiny island. In 1991, Nauru took the Australian Government to the International Court of Justice for the exploitation of its economy and environment. In 1993, Australia settled out-of-court for $57 million with an additional $2.5 million per annum for the next 20 years. By the late 1990’s, the money had all but dried up.
During the Australian federal election in 2001, the Howard government seized the opportunity to pressure Nauru into taking asylum seekers from the shores of Australia in return for many millions of dollars. These refugees were removed by the Australian military in violation of the International Refugee Convention. This was the beginning of “The Pacific Solution”. Many of these people were initially rescued by the now infamous Tampa, a Norwegian Freighter off the Western Australian coast. In denying the Tampa refugees access to the Australian mainland, and their rights under Australian law, Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, said, “whilst this is a humanitarian decent country, we are not a soft touch and we are not a nation whose sovereign rights in relation to who comes here are going to be trampled on”.
Nauru continues to deny entry to all lawyers, journalists and representatives of human rights groups as well as independent doctors and psychiatrists from assessing the health of the refugees.
Nauru has since been called Australia’s Guantanamo Bay.
These refugees merely sought to flee life-threatening persecution and repression, economic deprivation and poverty and to bring themselves and their families to a safe and secure environment. This must be surely the most basic right of any individual, yet in seeking to exercise it, they have come face to face with the Australian army.
In the last week, three Australian lawyers were ordered off Nauru before they had a chance to appear in a court case challenging the legality of the island’s detention centre for asylum seekers. Their visas were revoked by Nauru’s Minister for Justice, Russell Kun. On April 27, he appointed his uncle, former Finance Minister and paralegal “pleader”, Reuben Kun, to present the detainees’ case.
Manus Island
There are approximately 21 million refugees worldwide, yet there is only one who is on a remote island in solitary confinement. The Australian government pays $23,000 per day to detain Aladdin Sisalem, a 25 year old man who has suffered persecution most of his life. The son of a Palestinian refugee (his father) and an Egyptian mother, Aladdin was born in Kuwait. Persecuted in his home country, he began a perilous journey in search of a country that would accept him, travelling via West Papua, Papua New Guinea, finally arriving in the Torres Straight Islands, where he was seized by the Australian Police before being taken to Thursday Island. When he asked Australian authorities for asylum, he was removed and taken to a detention centre set up by the Australian Government on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Even if he wanted to return, Kuwait will not take Aladdin back after his period of absence. Egypt does not want him. Israel does not consider his “right of return” as a Palestinian.
It is noted that the 1948 Universal Declaration Human Rights, Article 14, states “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. Ongoing, indefinite suffering by asylum seekers both here and on the offshore detention centres is a clear indication that these basic human rights are being violated.
On 15th May, Flotillas of Hope departs Sydney Harbour, sailing up the east coast of Australia, converging in Brisbane, before departing for Nauru on 23rd May. The boats should arrive at Nauru on 20th June (World Refugee Day) with their “Cargo of Hope” which will include toys, educational, recreational items and a generator for the country’s hospital.
The voyage of this Flotilla recalls the old law of the sea – which obliges us to give assistance to anyone in peril, without regard for flags – and seeks to open a multitude of flows toward a new world for which maps are yet to be created.
Therefore, the Flotilla will use a diversity of tactics: boats converging to Australia’s north in mid-2004 crewed by autonomous affinity groups; media streams and online protests; radio waves and OpenFlow events.
Flotilla of Hope
ZNet | Asia by Lynda Smith May 10, 2004
Back in Easter 2002, a group of concerned people from the Hunter region of NSW, Australia, appalled by the Australian Government’s attitude and policy on asylum seekers, joined the actions of the Festival of Freedoms in the South Australian desert. This became Hope Caravan. Along the way, the ‘O’ in Hope transformed from an organisation to an organism.
In 2003, Hope Caravan went to the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia. Many strong bonds and friendships were formed with some of those people initiating the Flotillas of Hope project, which in association with Hope Caravan, sails to Nauru this month to arrive on the tiny impoverished Pacific island of Nauru.
This diverse group of people include a research scientist, an award winning film maker, teachers of maritime studies and multicultural education, a shipwright as well as a soccer coach from the Brisbane based, Tigers Refugee team.
Nauru
Nauru is the smallest republic in the world with a population of only 12,000. It not only faces an environmental catastrophe but also economic bankruptcy.
The exploitation of Nauru’s rich source of phosphate began in the early 1900s. After World War l, the Australian, British and New Zealand governments took over the original mining company that had been previously German owned. It was called the British Phosphate Company. As demands grew for fertiliser, so did their profits. However, only 2% of the revenue went to the Nauru people. At the time of Nauru’s independence in 1968, mining had destroyed over one-third of the tiny island. In 1991, Nauru took the Australian Government to the International Court of Justice for the exploitation of its economy and environment. In 1993, Australia settled out-of-court for $57 million with an additional $2.5 million per annum for the next 20 years. By the late 1990’s, the money had all but dried up.
During the Australian federal election in 2001, the Howard government seized the opportunity to pressure Nauru into taking asylum seekers from the shores of Australia in return for many millions of dollars. These refugees were removed by the Australian military in violation of the International Refugee Convention. This was the beginning of “The Pacific Solution”. Many of these people were initially rescued by the now infamous Tampa, a Norwegian Freighter off the Western Australian coast. In denying the Tampa refugees access to the Australian mainland, and their rights under Australian law, Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, said, “whilst this is a humanitarian decent country, we are not a soft touch and we are not a nation whose sovereign rights in relation to who comes here are going to be trampled on”.
Nauru continues to deny entry to all lawyers, journalists and representatives of human rights groups as well as independent doctors and psychiatrists from assessing the health of the refugees.
Nauru has since been called Australia’s Guantanamo Bay.
These refugees merely sought to flee life-threatening persecution and repression, economic deprivation and poverty and to bring themselves and their families to a safe and secure environment. This must be surely the most basic right of any individual, yet in seeking to exercise it, they have come face to face with the Australian army.
In the last week, three Australian lawyers were ordered off Nauru before they had a chance to appear in a court case challenging the legality of the island’s detention centre for asylum seekers. Their visas were revoked by Nauru’s Minister for Justice, Russell Kun. On April 27, he appointed his uncle, former Finance Minister and paralegal “pleader”, Reuben Kun, to present the detainees’ case.
Manus Island
There are approximately 21 million refugees worldwide, yet there is only one who is on a remote island in solitary confinement. The Australian government pays $23,000 per day to detain Aladdin Sisalem, a 25 year old man who has suffered persecution most of his life. The son of a Palestinian refugee (his father) and an Egyptian mother, Aladdin was born in Kuwait. Persecuted in his home country, he began a perilous journey in search of a country that would accept him, travelling via West Papua, Papua New Guinea, finally arriving in the Torres Straight Islands, where he was seized by the Australian Police before being taken to Thursday Island. When he asked Australian authorities for asylum, he was removed and taken to a detention centre set up by the Australian Government on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Even if he wanted to return, Kuwait will not take Aladdin back after his period of absence. Egypt does not want him. Israel does not consider his “right of return” as a Palestinian.
It is noted that the 1948 Universal Declaration Human Rights, Article 14, states “everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution”. Ongoing, indefinite suffering by asylum seekers both here and on the offshore detention centres is a clear indication that these basic human rights are being violated.
On 15th May, Flotillas of Hope departs Sydney Harbour, sailing up the east coast of Australia, converging in Brisbane, before departing for Nauru on 23rd May. The boats should arrive at Nauru on 20th June (World Refugee Day) with their “Cargo of Hope” which will include toys, educational, recreational items and a generator for the country’s hospital.
The voyage of this Flotilla recalls the old law of the sea – which obliges us to give assistance to anyone in peril, without regard for flags – and seeks to open a multitude of flows toward a new world for which maps are yet to be created.
Therefore, the Flotilla will use a diversity of tactics: boats converging to Australia’s north in mid-2004 crewed by autonomous affinity groups; media streams and online protests; radio waves and OpenFlow events.
Human rights activists on mission of mercy to Nauru
Sydney Morning Herald By Sarah Price May 9, 2004 The Sun-Herald
Human rights activists are embarking on a 4000-kilometre trip to Nauru to draw attention to the “innocent” asylum seekers on the island republic.
“We’re going to give them hope and highlight the plight of these innocent people,” crew member Stavros Georgopoulos said.
The nine activists who will be sailing in two boats, the Eureka and the One Off, under the banner Flotillas of Hope, will go armed with teddy bears and toys for the detained children and an electricity generator for a hospital on the island “as a gesture of goodwill from ordinary Australian people to the Nauruans”.
But Mr Georgopoulos is unsure of whether they will even be able to land on Nauru to deliver their gifts to the asylum seekers.
Their applications for tourist visas have been knocked back and he is doubtful they will be able to get on to the island.
But that is not going to stop them trying and Mr Georgopoulos says they will be “Australian citizens who will be illegal boat people” in Nauru.
The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs said last week that 260 people were still being held in the processing centre on Nauru, 74 of whom are children.
A spokeswoman said the department was currently examining the files of the Afghan asylum seekers at the facility against the updated country information from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and decisions were expected to be handed down shortly.
Decisions on the applications from the other asylum seekers were also pending, she said.
A spokeswoman for the Nauru government, Helen Bogdan, said the activists would be likely to be turned away from the island just like anyone would be turned away from any country if they did not have the appropriate visas.
Ms Bogdan also said she would caution anyone travelling to Nauru in a small boat because it was isolated and surrounded by a dangerous reef.
The activists will leave Sydney on May 15 and hope to reach Nauru on June 20, which is World Refugee Day.
The trip follows others Mr Georgopoulos has made to the Woomera detention centre at Easter in 2002 and the Baxter detention centre in 2003 to visit detainees.
“One of the reasons we went to these particular camps is because they are isolated in the desert, they didn’t get very many visitors,” he said.
Mr Georgopoulos said the Federal Government’s Pacific solution was keeping the issue of asylum seekers “out of sight and out of mind”.
“We’re going to make sure we bring it in sight and in mind,” he said.
“It’s a problem, a big problem from a human rights angle.”
One of the crew members, a British man, is flying out from England to take part in the trip.
Mr Georgopoulos said the crew member, Timothy Perkins, found out about Flotillas of Hope on the internet.
The activists have raised $20,000 to help fund the trip and to buy the gifts for the asylum seekers.
Refugee advocates are planning to sail to Nauru to highlight the plight of asylum seekers.
Supporter Stavros Georgopoulos today said the plan, dubbed Flotillas of Hope, would be similar to Easter protests held over the last few years at South Australia’s Baxter and Woomera detention centres, but promised it would be peaceful.
“We’re not going there to liberate them (detainees) and break them out – that’s stupid, where would we go?” Mr Georgopoulos said.
“We’re just going there to be with them. Just this action itself is radical enough. “Instead of going to the desert, we’re going to the ocean.”
Mr Georgopoulos said since raising the Flotilla of Hope idea two weeks ago, at least 35 refugee advocates had confirmed they would sail to Nauru and he was now in the process of securing boats.
Interest had also been shown by supporters in the US, England and New Zealand, he said. “Personally, I would love to see 353 boats, with each boat symbolising one of the deaths on the SIEV X (which sank during its voyage to Australia in October 2001),” Mr Georgopoulos said.
“We want to give hope to the refugees at Nauru and shame (Prime Minister John) Howard by putting the spotlight on the issue and showing that these island prisoners do exist.
“My deeper, deeper vision is to raise enough money to buy a boat so, just like there’s the Greenpeace Warrior, we could have the Hope Warrior sailing around permanently.”
Mr Georgopoulos said the trip to Nauru was planned for June or August next year and would take two months, including one week on the island. Last Easter at Baxter 32 protesters were arrested during clashes with police.
The previous year at the now-mothballed Woomera centre, 50 detainees escaped en masse, aided by protesters who tore down perimeter fences.
Act Elemental, Jim Allen, Anarchist Action, Tobias Andreasson, Jack Aschmann, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Atlantis Ecological Community, Australian Education Union, Julie Bailey, Wolfgang Bauer, John Bell, Andrew Blanckensee, boat-people.org, Nigel Boettiger, Bonny Pirates, Cyndi Boste, M.Christine Boulan-Smit, Boundless Plains to Share, Peter Bouquet, Ruth Boydell, Reverend Dr Brian Brown, Dave Brown, Alison Buchanan, Sue Christopherson, Deepchild, The Australian Democrats, DJ Dreadful, Pat Drummond, Drummond family @ MacMasters, Ecumenical Social Justice Group, Allan El-Khad, Elissa Elvidge, Eowynne Feeny-Scott, John Foley, Bettina Frankham, Peter C Friis, Lee Frost, Stavros Georgopoulos, Hasan Ghulam, Girruwaa Yarrundanginya Dance Group, Great Lakes RAR, Anne Goddard, Grandmaster Monk, Greens Queensland, Greens NSW, Marty Greig, Caroline Greville, Kim Grierson, Sandra Griffin, Rachel Hannan, Matt Hamon, Duncan Harty, Daniel Harvey, Jennifer Harwood, Craig Hendry, Bishop Roger Herft, Hinkler Burnett Greens, Hemp Embassy, Nonie Hodgson, HOPE Caravan, Annie Hughes, Bernadette Jameson, James Jarvis, Tony Kevin, Saeed Khan, Kill your tv, Peter Kingston, Helena Kitely, Vivien Langford, Mary La Rosa, Ezra Lee, Joanna Leigh, Le Minibus, Last-First Networks, Launceston Peace Action Network, Lebanese Muslims Association, Lesbian & Gay Solidarity, A & J Lloyd, Sarah Love, Lily Ma, Euan Macloud, Mahesh, Neil Mallard, Bishop Michael Mallone, Jennene Marum, Beth Mackenzie, Cherie McCosker, Reg Mombazza, Marty Morrison, Daniel Moss, Muel, Peter Murphy, Muslim Women’s National Network, National Tertiary Education Union NSW, Nauru Wire, Newcastle Action for Refugee Rights, Newcastle City Council, Newcastle Greens, Newcastle Uni Students’ Assoc, Nimbin Museum, No One Is Illegal, NSW Teachers’ Federation, Octapod, Michael Organ MP, Pacific Connections, Jane Paterson, Peace Boat, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Power Box Productions, Project Missing Link/Fri, Project SafeCom Inc, Queensland Peace Network, Chris Raab, Random Crew, Reclaim the Streets Syd, Refugee Action Coalition Sydney, Refugee Action Collective Victoria, Refugee Action Collective Qld, Refugee Rights Action Network, Lillian Reilly, Resistance, Liesel Rickerby, Dr & Mrs Romney Newman, Lisa Rosenberg, David Ross, Gillian Ross, Arif Ruhani, Rural Australians for Refugees, Barry Rutherford, Salarium, S-A-V-E Australia Inc, Martin Sharp, Roslyn Sharp, Search Foundation, Lynda Smith, Socialist Alliance, Danielle Storey, Rachael Stacy, Starhawk, Tierranostra, John Tomlinson, Treason, TPV Legal Centre, Paul Troyano, Paul Tully, Maureen Turner, Saif Uddin, Uniting Church Adelaide, Anousha Victoire, Denise Vietch, Voices from the Vacant Lot, Volunteers for Tawo, Jody Warren, Ronald Webb, Nick Wood, xborder, Young Christian Workers.
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Thank you for visiting Journeys and Star Gazing. Here there's stories of my various journeys, some inner but mostly outer; photos, song lyrics, poems, astrological readings and interpretations, I Ching speculations, quotes from people I admire and some cool graphics. There are reflections and archival material on various human rights campaigns I have been involved in over the years. With these, some have a "Star Gazing" interpretive filter.
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Flotillas of Hope
Thank you for visiting Journeys and Star Gazing. Here there's stories of my various journeys, some inner but mostly outer; photos, song lyrics, poems, astrological readings and interpretations, I Ching speculations, quotes from people I admire and some cool graphics. There are reflections and archival material on various human rights campaigns I have been involved in over the years. With these, some have a "Star Gazing" interpretive filter. 
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