CANBERRA: The opening of the Australian parliament here on Tuesday has been overshadowed by thousands protesting against the government’s hardline policy on asylum seekers, and claims that the government used its spy agency to monitor phone calls of its critics.

On the sprawling lawns in front of Parliament House, 5,000 people gathered at lunchtime Tuesday to voice their opposition to the policy on asylum seekers of the government of Prime Minister John Howard.

“The problems in Afghanistan are not only due to the Taliban,” Riz Wakil, a refugee who fled Afghanistan in October 1999 told the rally.

“The new ruling group (the interim government) ‘ also has a poor history. In 1995 some (members who were with the opposition Northern Alliance) were responsible murder of thousands of civilians, most of them women and children in western Kabul,” Wakil said. “These are the men who are now ministers of the new government in Afghanistan.”

Last month, Minister for Immigration Phillip Ruddock proposed that asylum seekers from Afghanistan should return since the Taliban government had already fallen in November.

The strongest critic of the government’s policy inside Parliament, Greens Senator Bob Brown, got a rousing reception at the rally.

He said, “This morning, our national leaders prayed to God ‘that the congregation pray — and I quote — ‘for those for whom each new days is threatening, the persecuted and rejected, refugees and all displaced persons’.”

“Let me say to the Prime Minister, “do not ask God to do what you are empowered to do yourself,” Brown told the rally.

In the last month, opposition to Howard’s hardline policy has mushroomed with a multitude of new groups emerging.

A group of artists, Australians Against Racism, has produced a television advertisement supporting refugees. Another group, Spare Rooms for Refugees, offers free accommodation for refugees and a support service for those in detention.

Rural Australians for Refugees, which began three months with three people in a lounge room now boasts 20 independent groups around the country urging the closure of the detention centres for asylum seekers.

While many of the groups are small, their political momentum is unmistakable. On Monday, three members of the Government spoke out at the first meeting of the parliamentary Liberal Party against the position adopted by Howard.

Growing dissent within the ranks of the Opposition Labour Party has forced it to announce its opposition to the imprisonment of children in detention centres and support for the closure of the Woomera detention centre, where detainees went on hunger strike recently.

A coalition of church and refugee support groups have also described conditions in the centre, where the mainly Afghan asylum seekers are staying while their appeals are being evaluated, as akin to those of a “concentration camp”.

The government faces problems on other fronts too. On Tuesday, a Sydney newspaper revealed that the Australian government used the spy agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, to monitor phone calls and provide transcripts of the conversations to the government to assist it at the height of the controversy over the use of troops to board a Norwegian container ship last year.

Under Australian law, the Defence Signals Directorate is only supposed to pass on information from phone and other electronic surveillance if it is a matter of national security. —Dawn/InterPress Service.