Rod Quantock to launch Emirates Airlines' 'Deportation Class' today

RAC(Vic) invites you to the official launch of Emirates Airlines' 'Deportation Class.' This class entitles asylum-seekers to forced sedation, a gag, shackles and a one-way ticket to severe danger and possible death. This is a premium product, offering clients (the Australian Government) maximum secrecy and total co-operation.

A RAC member demonstrates the conditions under which asylum seekers are frequently forcibly repatriated

Time: 12.30pm, Friday 18 February 2005
Location: Emirates Airlines Melbourne, 257 Collins Street, Melbourne.
VIP Guests: Prime Minister John Howard, Emirates Area Manager for Australia Eddie Lim, an asylum-seeker (shackled and gaffer-taped) and master of ceremonies Rod Quantock.

Comedian Rod Quantock will join Refugee Action Collective (Victoria) today in launching 'Emirates Deportation Class' outside the Emirates Melbourne office as a way of highlighting the shameful complicity of Emirates and other airlines in the forcible deportation of asylum seekers to places of grave danger.

Since October 2004 the Howard Government has stepped up its campaign of forcible deportation of asylum seekers (about one person each week has been deported over this period). Often, they have been forcibly sedated and sent to countries with appalling human rights records, such as Sudan and Iran.

RAC (Vic) believes Emirates flights have been used for many of these 'removals'.

This week alone, two asylum-seekers were taken from detention centres around Australia. RAC Victoria has grave fears they may have been the most recent passengers flying Emirates Deportation Class.

Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Sharan Burrow has requested that union members in Australian airports refuse to assist with any deportations.

Refugee groups around Australia have called for a national boycott of Emirates Airlines until the airline publicly commits to no longer assisting the Federal Government with these shameful activities. On 1 February refugee supporters all around Australia picketed Emirates offices.

"We are saying to Emirates and to all other airlines: the grubby business of helping send asylum seekers back to dangerous countries has got to stop. And this campaign against you will continue and will escalate until it does," said RAC Victoria spokesperson Tim Petterson.

For more information contact: Tim Petterson, 0438 399 973