The Criminalisation of Solidarity: Asylum-Seekers and Australia’s Illiberal Democracy

Beginning in 1991, Australia pioneered the use of mandatory detention of asylum-seekers with the intention of deterring them from trying to enter Australia. Small numbers of human rights lawyers, academics, professionals, church leaders, community-minded activists and ordinary citizens contested this policy by engaging in a politics of solidarity. We ask how this solidarity with asylum-seekers was expressed in Australia. The chapter shows that the contentious politics of asylum-seekers included legal activism including mounting legal challenges, staging protests and demonstrations and whistleblowing. How did the Australian state respond to those acts of solidarity? The chapter demonstrates that just as the Australian state had criminalised asylum-seekers, it displayed no compunction in moving to shrink civic space to criminalise these exercises in solidarity with asylum-seekers. Those Australians who exercised their rights, including the freedom of association, peaceful assembly and political expression, faced various serious criminal charges. Why have governments claiming to be a liberal-democracy and committed to protecting the rule of law and human rights suppressed civil society organisations and social movement activists who have acted in solidarity with asylum-seekers. This chapter draws partly on criminologists and critical legal scholars investigating the criminalisation process, including the shift to preventive crime and the criminalisation of dissent. The chapter also draws on securitisation theorists to show how the Australian state represented the problem of asylum-seekers as a national security issue rather than a problem of how to protect and promote their human rights.