A few years ago I went to a workshop where we were invited to participate in a guided imagination exercise in which we imagined ourselves inside a bubble floating through time seeing what our lives would be like in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. I engaged in that exercise this week, not imagining my own life in 5, 10, 20 years but imagining what life would be like for the 1296 people held in immigration detention on Nauru or Manus Island. The answer it would seem is that their lives will be exactly the same as they are now, for our government has absolutely no credible plan to resolve their situation.
The Guardian newspaper has released documents in the past two weeks that remind us again just how appalling conditions are in the detention centres. Those being held in these appalling conditions have committed no crime. They are rather, the innocent victims of governments that have committed horrendous crimes against them. The international convention to which we are a signatory permits them to seek asylum in Australia or any other country for that matter. Yet here they are locked up in conditions that we wouldn’t accept for prisons in our own country and with no idea when they might be released. And they have no idea because the government has no idea.
It’s not simply ineptitude on the part of the federal government. New Zealand offered to take 150 of the detainees but their offer was rejected because our government deemed it unacceptable to send these refugees to a place where they would be treated well. On the government’s logic this might mean that other refugees would be encouraged to take the journey to Australia. So it seems the only answer the government has for the release of those in offshore detention is to send them to places where their rights will be abused, where they will find themselves marginalised and living in extreme difficulty. Places like Cambodia. That’s it. That’s our government’s plan.
The government claims that this is the price we have to pay to prevent people drowning at sea. That’s a lie. What they should really say this is the price we have to pay in order to be free of increased flows of asylum seekers to our shores. It’s easy to prevent deaths at sea if you accept that will mean more people will want to find refuge in Australia. People only get on leaky boats because they have no other option. So we can give them an option. Assess their claims and then fly them to Australia. And while we’re in the process work towards a regional framework so that there is a sharing of the burden. Sure, it would be demanding and would almost certainly see many more people coming to our shores, but that’s the price you have to pay to be a morally courageous member of the international community.
Most Australians I know are decent people but we cannot hide behind that to somehow pretend that the policy we have on offshore detention is decent. It is not. It is a flagrant abuse of human beings that transgresses everything liberal democracies stand for. I just wonder how long it will be before we have either forgotten those in offshore detention or are so scandalised by it that we demand change. Because one thing is for sure. The current mob in power have absolutely no plan to resolve this outrage. It’s up to us to ensure that in 10 years time things don’t remain as they are.
Australia’s bipartisan refugee policy is cynical cowardice… it buys cheap votes thought the lie that detention is a deterrence. It does not save any lives while abusing & killing the innocents it locks up, it simply says, ‘go die elsewhere’ away from the eyes of voters, just like our secretive gulags.
Seeking asylum is legal; indefinite detention is not. Our immigration detention centres (& boat turn-backs) are cruel, illegal, expensive & unnecessary. There are legal, effective, affordable & compassionate alternatives.
Good comment Rodney, the key part is the buying votes part. It is such good political currency that even those who want to make change are unable to at the moment. A sad state of affairs when it is lives being played with.
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RT @scottjhiggins: Moral cowardice, moral courage and 1296 human beings in offshore detention: https://t.co/ANz8VTiPRt
RT @scottjhiggins: Moral cowardice, moral courage and 1296 human beings in offshore detention: https://t.co/ANz8VTiPRt
This piece is great and so heartbreakingly true. If we’re suggesting a forward plan to prevent worse treatment in years to come it relates to policy and planning for regional solutions and I would like to understand what the major issue is. Is it conflict/poor relationship with Indonesia? UNHCR broken relationship with Australia. I’m not completely understanding the deeper issues with regional settlement.
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Spot on Scott. I once again enclose my review of CHASING ASYLUM doco. that takes a comprehensive look of the horrors of Manus and Nauru.
AUSTRALIA’S AUSCHWITZ: NAURU AND MANUS ISLAND Andris Heks
Is the above title exaggerated? Maybe not, after viewing CHASING ASYLUM, from Academy Award winner Australian documentary maker, Eva Orner. It is a must see for Howard, Turnbull, Abbott, Dutton, Morrison, J. Bishop and Rudd, every one of whom refused to be interviewed for this documentary. It is a film the Australian government does not want you to see.
Just a small sample of facts from the film, secretly shot on locations:
Running the Manus detention centre cost $1.2 billion, that is $500.000 per refugee.
What do the refugees get for this money? Indefinite detention combined with futurelessness where the gradual psychological disintegration of inmates begins after six weeks there. Australia is the only country in the world that keeps children in mandatory detention. The Manus Island riot of 2014 was started by locals on the Island attacking the refugees. During the riot some refugees shouted: ‘Manus is Guantanamo Bay.’
If you think, you live in democracy in Australia, think again:
The Australian government refuses to disclose to the population what it does with refugee boats approaching Australia. It refuses the public to learn about the conditions in the offshore detention centres. The government legislated that anyone working at the detention centres who reveals information to the public about conditions there are punishable with imprisonment. It gives misinformation about the nature of the boats people.
(Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton recently stated that most refugees were illiterate and innumerate. The ABC fact check indicated that over 75% of them completed secondary education and 25% were tertiary graduate professionals.
He also claimed that the refugees take away jobs from Australians and that they are a Social Security burden. In fact, according to the Immigration Department’s own report, refugees tend to be employed in jobs left vacant by Australians and their long term economic, let alone cultural contribution to Australia is very positive).
Criminals in Australia receive a given length prison term. Yet boats people, who are neither illegal nor criminal, are detained indefinitely and therefore are treated worse than criminals.
I worked in Long Bay Jail as a Probation and Parole Officer. But the living conditions of even maximum security criminals there look like four star hotels in comparison to the conditions of asylum seeking refugees shown on these islands. These people are first traumatized by life threatening conditions in their own countries which they try to escape by traumatic boat trips as refugees. But the way in which they are re-traumatized in Australia’s offshore detention centres completely dehumanizes them and tends to damage them for life.
The Australian government can get away with its Gestapo like treatment of boats people by keeping the Australian public in the dark about the appalling conditions in detention centres and depicting the inmates as potential threats to the people of our country.
In fact, in 2011-12, asylum seekers living in the Australian community on bridging visas were about 45 times less likely to be charged with a crime than members of the general public. (amnesty.org.au/refugees). (See also a whole list of refugee facts on this website and win-win solutions for refugees as well as Australia.)
This film is a great antidote against our ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude towards detained asylum seekers. Seeing their faces and their conditions can only prick our conscience and make us feel ashamed to be Australians.
Be sure to see this film. It will make you think about what the government is up to in our name.
a.heks@hotmail.com