Consultations Homepage || Meeting Notes: 30 April 2003
Preliminary consultation to launch Isma in Victoria with government, non-government and Arabic and Islamic community organisations
Hosted by the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria on Wednesday 30 April 2003
The meeting was chaired by Dr Diane Sisely, CEO of the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission, and facilitated by Dr William Jonas, Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner, and Ms Omeima Sukkarieh, Community Liaison Officer, from HREOC. It was attended by 21 invited participants.
Formally launching Isma were Dr Sisely, Dr Jonas, Ms Sukkarieh, Ms Halla Marbani representing the Australian Arabic Council and Ms Joumanah El Matrah representing the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria.
1. What are your experiences of discrimination and vilification?
Has the community experienced
discrimination and vilification?
Who is being affected? Who is worst affected?
The participants as a whole felt that the issue of discrimination and vilification against Arabs and Muslims living in Australia is a serious one which has not disappeared but continues to affect the Arabic and Muslim communities in Victoria and in fact around the world.
The majority of the group were concerned about the subtlety of racism and discrimination. For example, one participant talked of a friend’s daughter who in sending out the invites to her birthday party mentioned that she would not be inviting one of her friends because she was dating a “Lebanese boy”, and that “Leb boys” oppress women and this gave her friend’s daughter reason to be very concerned about her friend. Laws focus on obvious and explicit discrimination and that becomes very problematic.
Many in the group believed that there have been notable incidents of discrimination and harassment of families and youth by police and that police have a huge role to play in dealing with the issues of discrimination and harassment against the community.
“Police has a great role to play as role models, particularly in building trust with youth. For example, yesterday a youth was put into custody, was beaten by police and the kid refused to report it. The impact is always greater when [discrimination] comes from Police.”
Participants agreed that there needs to be recognition that the impact of physical, verbal and other racially or religiously motivated attacks are not just immediate but long lasting.
“It is not just the attack, but also the loss of opportunity to get a job, walk freely in the street, and so on, and people who stay at home and who don’t go out will not be attacked, but still there is a problem, so it needs to be addressed from different angles.”
Participants strongly believed that small businesses are also suffering. Arabic or Islamic people who own businesses, such as those who own Arabic grocery and sweet stores are afraid of being targeted, which has happened, and other small businesses are greatly affected, especially after September 11 as “people don’t go to the shop because they are afraid, and so stay in their house”.
Dr Sisely suggested that currently a different approach is required as physical attacks have decreased, however isolation of and within the community has increased, and “people therefore ignore the issue as a non-problem”.
Where is it happening?
One participant said that the nature of most attacks is that they do not belong in any institution so the perpetrators are not physically present for Police to arrest them, therefore making it almost impossible to register a formal complaint.
“Yesterday, a Muslim woman was attacked in a [public] housing unit and nothing could be done, and this makes up about three quarters of the complaints. So there are types of crimes that society can do nothing about.”
Dr Sisely responded that “It is inappropriate to expect the victim to fix the system and individually complain.” Information from the Equal Opportunity Commission and [its equivalent in other states] needs to be consistent and taken seriously at that level.
2. What is being done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
The Australian Arabic Council (AAC) for many years has been greatly interested in the media and its impact on the Arabic community. Last year, the AAC contracted someone to look at articles and the media in general, whilst at the same time recognising good journalism, and thus held the media awards. The AAC has also conducted and organised media training for people in the community, including young people, which has proved very popular and effective. The Australian Arabic Council in Victoria uses some of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC’s) education resources, including media education, which has proved to be very effective. Lawyers and organisations and departments in Australia need to research and use initiatives implemented by groups overseas such as the ADC.
Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee (AMPAC) is an organisation that does a lot of media writing in Melbourne. Journalists such as those who are Australian Muslims are given voice which is very powerful and a model which should be followed.
Government strategies and projects
One participant said that there is a general view in the community that many of the existing community and government initiatives have approached the issue with a focus on victims rather than perpetrators and that this is “off balance”. It is important to focus on who the perpetrators are to avoid preaching to the converted, including an analysis of their age groups, employment status, etc. Victorian Police in obtaining their data on this issue are attempting to do this.
“One of the errors we fall into is thinking that the ‘victim’ is the only one that needs to be dealt with. It should be a collaborative approach; a focus on the victim as well as the perpetrator.”
The police representative at the meeting added further that when trying to focus on perpetrators, identifying a common link amongst perpetrators is very difficult, however cannot be ignored, and the Police service will continue to try, whilst at the same time, he believes that there is a need to address the mainstream also. In regards to education, “education should start young” and it generally hasn’t yet been doing that.
Dr Sisely responded that there “can’t just be reliance on generational change, but also on mainstream attitudes and values”.
“The Arabic and Islamic community’s experiences are built around a history of discrimination against them and their experiences are also based on racist cultural movements. This report [that is, the planned HREOC summary of the consultations to be published early in 2004] needs to contextualise what is happening now to the community with what happened throughout history.”
In the Victorian Police Service, strategies and initiatives have been implemented to try and build trust and strengthen relations between police and young people. Such initiatives include a Spiritual Leadership Camp which took place between Muslim youth and Police. Also, a restorative justice process is being used now.
Most participants agreed that 6 month projects to address these issues were not useful and that funding should be administered for longer term projects as their outcomes and impact will be long term.
In response, Dr Sisely noted that the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission had a 6 month project where they employed a worker on a project similar to that of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board’s education project. In attempting to extend the project, the EOC trained a group of community advocates which involved skilling up people in existing organisations to further educate and carry the message to the community about their rights and the complaints process. In doing this, one of the objectives was to use resources effectively.
Dr Sisely continued that people must be mindful of unintended negative consequences, such as government body’s ignorance of Islamic or Arabic communities. For example, identifying community and/or religious leaders can therefore “unintentionally put women on the back foot”.
A DIMIA liaison officer at the meeting has been consulting broadly over the last 6 months with Arabic and Islamic communities. He is amazed at the diversity in the community and especially in the Middle East. He has been getting a sense that Christian Arabs are not as impacted as “visible Muslim Arabs”. He said that it is important for politicians to avoid focusing on one mosque or group as this, as an unintended consequence, will isolate others.
3. What more could be done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
Media
- Participants
agreed that there was a serious concern with the role the media has
played. Government and community organisations need to address how they
can bring in some influence in editorials. One suggestion made was to
bring in discrimination commissioners and editors and other influential
media personalities, such as those on HREOC’s Isma Project Reference
Group to work together on addressing the issue of discrimination and
vilification against Arab and Muslims in Australia.
- There is a need for a body, such as a body of community leaders who are well respected in the community, to monitor the media and provide influential comment on particular media reporting, as media is “not behaving responsibly”, and therefore the media’s irresponsible reporting needs to be spoken about openly and addressed.There is a need for decent research to be conducted on the specific impact the media has had on different communities of all backgrounds and nationalities.
Schools / Educational institutions
- An employee of the Victorian Department of Education stated that part of her job is to organise professional development for teachers. She recently organised a workshop with the Islamic Women’s Welfare Council of Victoria about understanding people of different backgrounds. One of the issues emerging during such workshops is that teachers need to attend workshops on how to look at the media critically, so they can then educate their students on doing the same.
Isma Objectives
The meeting proposed the following strategies for achieving some of the six objectives identified by Isma.
Promoting positive public awareness
- Advertise
in local, ethnic and mainstream newspapers about positive aspects of
Islam and the Arabic culture.
- More projects,
including HREOC’s consultations should be more inclusive and focus
more on youth. “Kids were born here and their contribution
is very significant and this should be told.”
- Educating
people within the Arabic and Muslim communities, as well as the broader
community and government departments who fund projects that not all
people recognise or identify themselves as being Arab or Muslim.
- Community
awareness begins with legislative change and policy and procedural change
within all levels and sectors of society in recognition that Arabs and
Muslims do exist and are as much a part of the community and Australia
as any other.
“The reality is that Muslims and Arabs are here and they aren’t going away, and one way of [making people aware of this] is having some king of recognition of this, such as a holiday during Ramadan or legislation that has a practical impact and outcomes. For example, including in a work policy that Muslims are allowed 2 hours free on Fridays for prayer.”
Challenging stereotypes
- Arabs and Muslims loyalty is being questioned constantly, especially when they protest against the war, etc. Therefore, there is a need to reassess and redefine what it means to be Australian.
Providing community support
- Organisations
and community leaders need to speak out more, rather than relying on
the person who has experienced discrimination to speak back to the media,
the attacker, etc.
- Need for
Arabic and Muslim communities to be more organised in their response
to issues affecting the community. In doing this it is important to
ensure and encourage greater participation and representation in government
and politics in Australia.
- An essential
part of what everyone should be doing is building on the current goodwill
that exists in the community and capitalising on this and using people
such as Christopher Kremmer and others on HREOC’s reference group
to do this. It is important to get the stories of offers of support
out into the community.
- Need for a recommendation on how support for organisations can be facilitated.
Strengthening relationships between communities
- Besides
Arabs and Muslims, it is important that other ethnic communities are
educated about their and other people’s rights and the issues
faced by the Arabic and Islamic community in Australia, so they can
gain a better understanding of what the community is going through.
This will in turn enable them to speak out against what is happening
to the Arabic and Muslim community and therefore strengthen relationships
between communities, and possibly “influence mainstream thought”.
- It is important to bring together people or other community groups who have previously experienced discrimination on a large scale in Australia to discuss the issue and experiences of what is happening to the Arabic and Islamic community and strategies in dealing with these issues. For example, Sikhs, people of Indigenous background, Italians, Vietnamese, etc. In doing this, there is also recognition that there are wider influences and impacts on people rather than focusing on Arabs or Muslims.
Informing communities about their rights
- Research
or workshops need to be conducted on why people don’t complain.
The community should then be trained and educated about their rights,
on how to complain and speak back.
“There is a need to identify why ‘victims’ don’t speak back. Is it because they don’t know how or have no experience in standing up for their rights?”
- What is lacking is an effective media and education campaign for the community in general, i.e. everybody. For example, a video where the Police Commissioner, the Premier, etc. talk about the consequences of not complaining, why it is important to complain and how people can assist a ‘victim’ of discrimination, physical or otherwise, to complain and get support, e.g. saying something like “if you see racism happening, it is important to support the ‘victim’ of racism”. The video can be used long term as an effective educational tool for schools, community organisations, health centres, etc. and can be done in a number of different languages.
Ensuring complaints are taken seriously
- Statutory bodies such as HREOC, the ADB and the Australian Press Council need to tackle the most abusive and vilifying media reporting in order for any change to have “a ripple effect” on all levels of media reporting, as there is a lack of legislative intervention in more serious incidents of discrimination and vilification.
4. Other issues and suggestions
- Discrimination
is not just prevalent in Victoria, but all over the world. Organisations
need to gather enough information about other initiatives, strategies
and projects being implemented nationally and globally in order to learn
from them and to determine best practice models.
- Consultations
such as these being conducted by HREOC need to look at how young people
are going to deal with the marginalisation they are feeling and one
effective method is using drama and humour.
- In doing these consultations, it is good to consult with community organisations as well as having individuals putting in submissions as people may be hesitant to give information through consultations in the same way they would personally. People will participate more in the consultations if they perceive there to be an influence in government policy as an outcome of this project.
