Masses rally on Palm Sunday for Justice4Refugees walk

Hundreds of people came out in Perth to rally for Refugees in walk for justice.Palm Sunday is a christian commemoration that in recent decades is being used as a day to advocate for social justice causes and over the last couple of years has resulted in some of the largest refugee rights protests in Australia.Here are some Photos and a Video from the Perth rally.https://youtu.be/ClXi2zRI73o People from a whole range of diverse groups and backgrounds came together to demand freedom for refugees. Including the Uniting Church, Carad, Amnesty, Refugee Rights Action Network, Unions WA,The Greens and Socialist Alliance amongst others.The rally stated off at St George's Cathedral. Where people gathered with a whole range of signs including holding up giant letters saying "freedom". The crowd listened to a range of speakers:Michelle Bui from the the Refugee Rights Action Network gave an inspiring speech about the need for everyone to find a way to get active in the campaign after giving a moving summation of what life is like in the detention system.Tim Winton an acclaimed author spoke of how fear, racism and the inhumanity of detaining refugees has become the common sense of our time and we must opposed this and create a new common sense of compassion.Rev Steve Francis from the Uniting Church emphasized that there is an alternative to detention, one of compassion where Australia opens its arms and helps people who desperately need it.Janet Holmes a Court in speaking about Australia's international obligations called out Prime Minister Abbott for his comments about getting sick of being lectured to about human rights - she pointed out that asylum seekers are sick of spending years in detention centers where their human rights are violated every day.The National Tertiary Education Union is often present at refugee rights protests, regularly pointing out how refugees are used as scapegoats and detained in remote detention centers costing upwards of 700 million a year whilst education funding is under attack from the government.The rally engaged in a whole range of chants and songs, including:"close the camps, close the camps, let alllll of the people free, you come and end the detention with me, end the detention, end the detention, end the detention of refugees""we all want to welcome refugees, welcome refugees, welcome refugees""brick by brick, detention centres have got to fall”"No crime to seek asylum, free the refugees""Budget cuts don't come on boats, they come to power on racist votes"These two photos are of sculptures of the word "freedom" in different languages. They are part of a set created by artist Simon Gilby in several of the languages of asylum seekers in detention. They have become a regular feature at rallies and convergences to detention centres.The hands each have an id number on them, to symbolize how asylum seekers in detention are stripped of their name and given an id number that becomes their identity.Palm Sunday is based on Jesus' arrival into Jerusalem where one of the things people did to welcome him was scattering palms down in front of him. As a commemoration based on welcoming other people, it is a pertinent day in Australia for the church community to be calling for the Australian government to welcome refugees.Palm Sunday has now become one of the largest refugee rights actions in Australia, with around 15-20 thousand rallying in Melbourne shows the building public sentiment to end mandatory detention and free the refugees.Also here is video I was involved in making in the lead up to the event that goes into why the rally is important and what it is.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YziuyXIs1-4And a video of Michelle Bui's speechhttps://youtu.be/Z_2X1n0mUKk