Category: Immigration

  • To solve the Syrian Crisis, we need to overcome these three obstacles.

    In the Huffington Post on 9 December, Seyed Hossein Mousavian describes the three issues that need to be addressed in order to solve the Syrian crisis. For link to this article, see below.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seyed-hossein-mousavian/syria-crisis-obstacles_b_8740514.html?ir=World?ncid=newsltushpmg00000003

  • How a photographer of refugees finds the stories that get left behind.

    ‘I feel an obligation to give something back to the people I photograph.’

    See link to stories and photos from the Huffington Post.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/alessandro-penso-interview_5672f66fe4b0648fe3028939?ir=World%253Fncid%253Dnewsltushpmg00000003

  • The Refugees and the New War.

    In the New York Review of Books, Michael Ignatieff draws a link between failure of Western policy in the Middle East, it’s failure to counter ISIS and the resulting refugee flow into Europe. He says

    ‘ISIS wants to convince the world of the world’s indifference to the suffering of Muslims; so we should demonstrate the opposite. ISIS wants to drag Syria even further into the inferno. … The US needs to use its refugee policy to help stabilise its allies in the region. … If Europe and the US show them a way out, refugees won’t take their chances by paying smugglers using rubber dinghies.’

    John Menadue.

    Michael Ignatieff is Edward R Murrow Professor of Practice at Harvard Kennedy School. He was formerly Leader of the Liberal party of Canada.  See article link below.

     

    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/refugees-and-new-war/

  • Andrew Ailes. Does Charity Begin At Home?

    Christmas comes but once a year,
    When in the northern hemisphere,
    The cold winds blow, the sun goes down,
    Now every day some children drown.
    The Christmas story’s full of hope,
    Yet life and death hang by a rope.
    It’s not the sword of Damocles,
    It’s shipwreck in the angry seas.

    The icy waves show no remorse.
    But terror is the driving force.
    Ten million people, maybe more,
    Are out there knocking at our door,
    For years we’ve boasted of our wealth,
    Yet cannot fund the nation’s health.
    We cannot house our country’s poor,
    And so we guard the nation’s shore.

    What’s Christmas if we cannot cope.
    With those who have arrived in hope?
    But what about the people here:
    The old and needy live in fear,
    The wards are full, the care homes few,
    Classrooms crowded, and thousands queue
    At shelters, hostels and the food bank?

    This question always draws a blank.

    Now terror stalks the Paris streets:
    Diners murdered in their seats.
    This carnage comes from overseas,
    But doesn’t come with refugees.
    My heart cries out for charity;
    My head thinks of reality.
    And what is worse I feel so hard,
    Should I think ‘Not in my back yard’.

    Andrew Ailes is a British foreign news veteran living in London. 

     

  • Allan Patience. Fighting Holy Wars in the Middle East

    How do we deal with Daesh? The Islamic State (ISIS) has proven to be a brutally formidable force in Syria and Iraq. As we saw recently in Paris, it has spread its vicious tentacles into Europe. It is highly probable that we’ll see it erupt in North America and very possibly again here in Australia, quite soon. It is clear that for all the blood and treasure invested in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria – heavy bombing raids, military advisors/trainers on the ground, intelligence gathering on an apocalyptic scale, all to the tune of billions of dollars – little has been won and much has been lost. Death rates and injuries (especially among civilians) are mounting every day and the refugee crisis is now counted in the millions. What is to be done?

    Tony Abbott spent much of his onerous prime ministership weighing into the conceptually confused, strategically clouded, and ultimately futile military debacle in the Middle East. Most of his interventions were designed to invoke fear and loathing, especially of Islam. In his latest (post-prime ministerial) intervention he called on Islam to reform itself. He also proposed a hierarchical theory of cultures – certain cultures, he suggests, are superior to others and Islamic cultures are apparently inferior to Western cultures. The implication is that the most advanced cultures are to be found within his beloved “Anglosphere” which includes America, Britain, and the former white settler British colonies of Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

    Daesh claims to be fighting a series of holy wars. In the process its counterfeit imams are grotesquely distorting an absolutely central component of the historical human experience – viz., that humankind possesses a deeply ingrained religious instinct that the full barrage of modernity’s scientism, rationalism and secularism has failed to obliterate. In fact modernity has a worrying record of misunderstanding and distorting the deeply experienced human drive for searching for transcendental meaning in the face of a cruel and unjust world. Modern critics of religion conventionally view that drive as irrational. Moreover, its myriad distortions (whether self-made or externally inflicted) make it particularly vulnerable to attack. Yet for all its being ridiculed down the years, it has been remarkably resilient despite all of modernity’s secular (and mostly reductive) accounts of what it means to be human.

    What do we make of Abbott’s demand that Islam reform itself? First, it shows how ignorant he is about Islam. He clearly does not understand that it is one of the most sophisticated versions of the monotheism to come out of the historical Middle East. Its sister religions are Judaism and Christianity with which it shares many theological insights, ethical principles, prophetic traditions, and historical experiences. And all three of them draw heavily from Hinduism, the central wellspring of advanced religious thought.

    Nor does Abbott show any understanding of the historical causes of the contemporary crisis in the Middle East. At the forefront of those causes are the egregious colonial adventures of Britain (the centre of his Anglosphere). The role of the British in dominating Egypt for their own purposes and disregarding Palestinian resistance to the creation of Israel, and their imperial arrogance in other zones in the region, constitute one of the most ignominious eras in all of colonial history. The world is now reaping in the Middle East what the British sowed in centuries past.

    Misunderstandings abound among Islam’s critics and enemies, especially those – like Abbott – who want us to believe that it is the fons et origo of Islamist terrorism in contemporary global politics. But this ignores (probably for ulterior purposes) the fact that central to those conflicts are the brutal machinations of tribal warlords, crime bosses, crazed firebrands, mercenaries, naïve fools, angry young men, and insurgents in the contemporary Islamic world. While imposing an Islamist gloss on what in truth are fights about who wields power, occupies territory, monopolizes resources and controls states, the combatants in these conflicts are appropriating a religious identity to which they have no legitimate theological claim. They slander Islam into the bargain. This is by no means the first time a religious tradition has been maligned by being associated with malevolent political causes. Christianity’s record in this is also appalling.

    The Koranic tradition teaches that Jihad is an intensely personal struggle with one’s conscience. It entails submitting one’s self-hood to Allah through the teachings of the Prophet. It is fundamentally about being a good human being, compassionate, tolerant and peace loving. As with the Bible, its underlying message requires a deep understanding of its central hermeneutic. And precisely like the Bible, the Koran contains some horrific passages that can be simplistically lifted out of context by malevolent commentators and used as a blanket condemnation of the entire religion. This is evidence of bad faith and appallingly third-rate scholarship. Just as we should expect people like Tony Abbott to respect Christianity’s central message of loving unconditionally – despite the Spanish Inquisition, for example, or those in the Catholic hierarchy today who would cover up for pedophile priests – so we should expect them to recognize the profound dignity of Islam, despite the evil fanaticism of fundamentalist Islamism today.

    Abbott’s assertion that some cultures are superior to others is an echo from a dead imperialist past. It belongs to the discredited “class of civilizations” thesis once spruiked by the late Samuel Huntington. Edward Said reminds us that all cultures are intertwined. They all influence and transform each other all the time. All cultures are hybrid. Islam played a major – indeed vital – historical role in curating and contributing to classical Greek philosophy and scientific theorising, ensuring that this knowledge was available to the West at the beginning of the Renaissance. There would have been no Renaissance without it. In short, historical Islam has played a major civilizing role in the evolution of the West. Abbott seems ignorant of this history. His clumsy foray into cultural studies would be risible were it not so crude.

    Dealing with Daesh means we have to sort out the religious wheat from the political chaff. It will also require a general acknowledgement that the religious instinct is an unchangeable aspect of the human condition that urgently needs far greater understanding than modernity has so far been able to offer. And it will require an educated awareness that Islam is being dangerously slandered by commentators like Tony Abbott whose own religious backyard is a foul’s own nest if ever there were one.

     

    Allan Patience is a Principal Fellow in the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.

     

  • Walkley Award for refugee advocate, Safdar Ahmed.

    All the 2015 Walkley Award Winners announced on Thursday evening came from mainstream media organisations except one, Safdar Ahmed. Safdar, who won in the ‘Artwork’ category for his documentary web-comic Villawood: Notes From An Immigration Detention Centre, is a Sydney-based artist and academic in the field of Islamic studies.

    safdar

    The work depicts the stories of asylum seekers and refugees inside Sydney’s Villawood detention centre. It includes the testimony of people from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, including men, women and teenagers. Some of those included are long-term detainees who have been detained for up to five years.

    The Walkleys presented it as a project of GetUp! The Shipping News, which is a crowdfunded initiative that has provided grants to journalists working on asylum seeker stories. Safdar posted it earlier this year in his space at the Twitter-owned Medium.org publishing platform.

    We can’t exactly boast that we have a Walkley award winner, but Pearls and Irritations featured it back in March and we are proud that Safdar gave us his blessing and permission to use it. Safdar’s aim to use art as a tool of advocacy on behalf of asylum seekers is in harmony with the purpose of this blog.

    The comic shows the disempowerment experienced by refugees in detention and the methods employed to survive and resist it. A chapter recounts the death of Ahmad Ali Jafari, a young Afghan refugee who suffered a heart attack within the centre in 2013. Forms of resistance depicted in the comic include acts of non-compliance, self-harm and one refugee’s participation in a rooftop protest.

    Safdar writes: ‘I hope this Walkley Award gives the comic more exposure, which seeks to depict some truths about mandatory detention and prompt people to question or rethink why Australia abuses refugees for politically-driven ends. I’d like to thank all the asylum seekers and refugees who participated in the project, for sharing their experiences with me. The comic is dedicated to them and to my late friend, Ahmad Ali Jafari. 

    ‘My thanks to GetUp’s The Shipping News Project, and to the 4700+ members of the public who contributed to their crowd-sourcing campaign. This award underscores the importance of alternative types of journalism, including documentary comics, in tackling important issues. Thanks also to everyone in the community art organisation Refugee Art Project, which this comic was inspired by.’

    The Walkleys judges commented: ‘Photos are not permitted within Villawood Detention Centre, so Ahmed has conveyed through his graphic novel style the conditions within the Detention Centre. By using the stories and often the artwork of the asylum seekers, Ahmed has produced a moving documentation of their plight, and a damning condemnation of Australia’s detention system.’

  • John Tulloh. Turkey’s new neighbour – DAESH (Islamic State)

    President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey must feel like a chess grand master playing several games simultaneously. He has far more neighbours and different cultures to contend with than most leaders: eight in all. They are a mixed bag across more than 2600 kms of borders – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Armenia, an Azerbaijan enclave, Georgia, Bulgaria and Greece. And across the Black Sea he has Russia. Now he has an unofficial neighbour: Daesh, also known as Islamic State. It has been active along Turkey’s frontier inside Syria and regards territory it has seized as part of its self-styled caliphate.

    It poses a dilemma for President Erdogan. He has 1.5 million refugees on his hands, mainly from Syria as a result of barbaric actions by Daesh. The EU has offered him what some see as a generous bribe to deter the refugees from heading west to Europe. He has joined the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Daesh, but is his heart really in it even though he has blamed it for killing 100 people at a peace rally in Turkey in October? His air force by all accounts prefers to attack Kurdish targets. His critics say he tolerates Daesh as being good for business and helping deal with what he sees as his real enemy, the Kurds. But for the U.S.-led coalition fighting Daesh, it is the Kurds who have done more than any other force on the ground in repelling its advances.

    David Graeber, a professor at the London School of Economics, thinks he has the answer to eliminate Daesh. Writing in the Guardian, he says:

    ‘All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) guerrillas in Iraq and Turkey. But instead the YPG-controlled territory in Syria finds itself placed under a total embargo by Turkey and the PKK forces are under continual bombardment by the Turkish air force. Not only has Erdogan done almost everything he can to cripple the forces actually fighting (Daesh); there is considerable evidence that his government has been at least tacitly aiding (Daesh) itself’. 

         That aid concerns oil which Daesh has looted from Syria and Iraq and sells on the black market. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said it enters Turkey on ‘an industrial scale’. Russia a few days ago released satellite images they claim show columns of tanker trucks loading with oil at an installation controlled by Daesh in Syria, before crossing the border into Turkey.

    Last year, a member of the Turkish parliamentary opposition, Ali Edibogluan, claimed Daesh had smuggled $800 million worth of oil into Turkey from Syria and Iraq. Now a former Iraqi MP, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, has backed up that claim, saying ‘Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the oxygen supply to (Daesh) and its operation’.

    But President Erdogan was indignant about such claims as well as a Russian one that he and his family were profiting from it. He said that, if there were proof Turkey was cooperating with Daesh, he would resign.

    He presides over a powerful country which possibly has the most strategic location of any nation in the world with its Eurasia presence. His ruling party now has a parliamentary majority which may give him the temptation to broaden his own powers. Since 2011, he has encouraged the Islamisation of Turkey which for nearly a century prided itself on its secular outlook. But he knows he cannot push his luck too far when EU membership remains a goal.

    It is a conundrum when Daesh is, according to Time, ‘a fibroid of territory enmeshed in a cat’s cradle of ethnic, tribal, religious and geopolitical strands so densely tangled as to defy solution’.

    Just as Turkey has a foot in both Europe and Asia, President Erdogan will need all his political wiles to maintain a balance between being seen to be supporting the action against Daesh while stopping its influence spilling over into Turkey and yet maintaining business as usual.

    Whatever happens, you can be certain that the restless Kurds, who make up 20% of Turkey’s population, will remain President Erdogan’s biggest concern, especially the PKK with its territorial ambitions.

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

  • Spencer Zifcak. UN Human Rights Council Weighs in on Australia

    On 21st of March 2000, an Australian delegation appeared before the UN Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) in Geneva. The Hon Philip Ruddock, then Minister for Immigration in the Howard Government, led the delegation. The meeting did not go well.

    Confronted by exceptionally well-informed and assertive questioning by the Committee’s rapporteur, the Minister became condescending and defensive. His justifications for Australian policies, particularly in relation to Australia’s indigenous peoples, fell apart.

    Their health, education and social disadvantages, he implied, were the result of lifestyle choices. Nothing could be done about mandatory sentencing and its disproportionately adverse impact on black Australians because that was the responsibility of the States. As to the position of women, Ruddock replied that ‘if you knew some of the women around me, by blood and other, you would know the empowerment of women is a very significant issue!’ This was hopeless.

    The result was that CERD responded with a highly critical evaluation of Australia’s racial discrimination record. It expressed grave concern regarding high rates of indigenous incarceration. It noted the disproportionately discriminatory effect of mandatory sentencing. It remained concerned about dramatic levels of inequality in indigenous peoples’ access to health, education and housing. It was highly critical of the Government’s failure to respond seriously to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s report on the Stolen Generations.[1]

    The Government responded by savaging the messenger. It stated that that the Committee’s report was ‘an unbalanced and a wide-ranging attack that intrudes unreasonably into Australia’s domestic affairs’. In his finest diplomatic language, then Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer said that ‘if a UN Committee wants to play politics here in Australia then it will end up with a bloody nose’.
    Things do not seem to have improved very much. Reflecting upon Australia’s shellacking before the UN Human Rights Council on November 9th this year, the current Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, described the process as ‘a farce’. So, what happened?

     

    Australia was in Geneva for the UN Human Rights Council’s second review of its human rights record, a process known as Universal Periodic Review (UPR). With the agreement of all UN member states, every country submits its human rights performance for review once every four years. Interestingly, given his somewhat dire performance previously, Mr. Ruddock was back again as a member of the Australian delegation. He was more circumspect this time.

    Over four hours, more than 100 nations took the opportunity to question and criticise many different aspects of Australia’s performance in protecting human rights. These criticisms were largely consistent with the UN High Commission for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) own analysis of Australia’s actions in responding to the reports of UN Human Rights Treaty Committees in the four years since the last UPR. The Council also benefitted from a fine background document prepared by the Human Rights Law Centre on behalf of more than 200 Australian human rights NGOs.

    The OCHCR report contained several very positive comments concerning Australia’s recent record. It warmly welcomed the Parliament’s commitment to recommend a constitutional amendment that recognized Australia’s first peoples. It praised Australia’s concerted efforts to combat people trafficking and trafficking related exploitation. It applauded the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It commended Australia’s advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty globally and new legislation that had introduced an offence of torture into the Australian Criminal Code.

    Nevertheless, the report noted that UN Treaty Bodies had recommended consistently that the Australian Government do much more to close the inequality gap between Australia’s indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. It reflected concern commonly expressed about the health disparities of children living in rural and remote areas, children in out-of-home care, children with disabilities and in particular about the gap in health status between indigenous and non-indigenous children. It expressed alarm at the levels of violence against women and the sexual abuse of children.

    Its principal reservation, however, related to Australia’s treatment of people seeking asylum. The report’s introductory paragraph on the issue read:

    The response of Australia to migrant arrivals had set a poor benchmark for its neighbours in the region. The authorities had also engaged in the ‘turn around’ and ‘push-back’ of boats in international waters. Asylum seekers were incarcerated in centres in third countries where they faced conditions that the Special Rapporteur on Torture had reported as amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment…and which also violated the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Even recognised refugees in urgent need of protection were not permitted to enter Australia which had set up relocation arrangements with countries that might be ill-prepared to offer those refugees any durable solution. Such policies should not be considered a model by any country.”

    In the review before the Human Rights Council, the vast majority of countries picked up on the same issues. Mr Dutton was right to criticise North Korea’s intervention which was hypocritical and wayward in the extreme. But one outlier in a hundred does not constitute a farcical dialogue.

    France recommended that Australia strengthen measures to eliminate discrimination against indigenous populations. The USA urged Australia to consult indigenous peoples when considering the viability of remote communities. New Zealand asked that Australia address inequalities affecting health, education, employment and income that disproportionately affect indigenous peoples and other minorities. Hungary suggested that Australia should develop, in partnership with indigenous communities, a national strategy to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

    Germany strongly condemned Australian refugee policy saying that children, families and other individuals at risk, in particular survivors of torture and trauma, should be removed from immigration detention centres. Sweden urged Australia to ensure that relevant measures should conform fully with international law and human rights, including the principle of non-refoulement and the detention of asylum seekers should only occur when absolutely necessary and for a minimal time.

    The USA told Australia to closely monitor the processing of refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention centres to ensure that their fundamental human rights are respected. Norway insisted that independent judicial review of detention and its conditions should be ensured. Iceland recommended that Australia fully incorporate its international human rights obligations in domestic law by introducing a comprehensive, judicially enforceable Human Rights Act.

    There is nothing too farcical here. In fact there was next to nothing in the criticisms made by more than half the nations of the globe that has not previously been identified as deeply problematic by Australia’s Human Rights Commission.

    There is no chance of Australia winning a seat on the UN Human Rights Council in 2018-2020 – unless we listen and act.

    ******************

    [1] Readers who wish to follow the history of Australia’s relationship with the UN Human Rights Treaty Body System may wish to have a look at my book Mr Ruddock Goes to Geneva, UNSW Press, 2003.

    Spencer Zifcak is Allen Myers Professor of Law and Director of Research at the Academy of Law, Australian Catholic University. He is Immediate Past President of Liberty, Victoria.

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi   Andaman Disaster – Regional Cooperation on Refugees

    Too often in Australia we go cap in hand to the region when we have an asylum seeker or refugee problem. When our problems pass, we lose interest in regional cooperation. No wonder the region often see us as fair-weather friends.

    But our region faces refugee problems alongside ours. As a good neighbour we should help with the common problems we face. It is in our interest to do so as well as in the interest of regional countries.

    On 13 November 2015, the Huffington Post carried a story that “Myanmar’s Rohingya could be the world’s next major refugee crisis”.  The story commented

    ‘After months of monsoon rains, it is sailing season again in the South Seas of Myanmar. Six months ago, the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority briefly garnered international attention when they were among thousands of starving refugees and migrants abandoned in the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Human Rights groups now say a new refugee crisis looms, as members of the Rohingya minority are excluded from the dramatic reforms taking place in their country. Amnesty International recently warned that thousands more people could set sail in the coming months, risking a repeat of the May crisis.’

    John Menadue.

    See below a post by Arja Keski-Nummi on the earlier Andaman disaster.

    The crisis in the Andaman Sea provides an opportunity for the Australian Government through our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as Co-chair of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking and Related Transnational Crime to give the process some teeth and credibility in the region. This is a good opportunity for us to help others just as they have helped us in the past with regard to people movements.

    Five countries that are part of the Bali Process are facing a crisis that is drawing negatively the attention of the international community on the region; unprecedented since the Indo Chinese outflows of three decades ago.

    Australia should be approaching the other Co-chair, Indonesia, to work with affected countries in examining what can be done to both tackle the people smuggling/trafficking ventures that are preying on vulnerable people in Bangladesh and Myanmar and how best to ensure the safety and security of people who have been affected by such predatory behaviour.  In its 2013 communiqué ministers “underscored the importance of addressing humanitarian and protection needs in managing irregular movement”.

    Now is the time to enliven the April 2013 communiqué of the Bali Process Ministerial meeting in which in its penultimate paragraph:

    “Ministers recognised that the root cause of irregular movements in the region were complex and multidimensional and encouraged members to continue to work with countries of origin, including through development cooperation, to address where possible underlying factors which made people vulnerable to irregular movement.” 

    This communiqué called for greater regional cooperation and work on:

    • People smuggling and trafficking. From the reporting we have seen on this latest humanitarian disaster a people smuggling venture has quickly turned into trafficking.
    • Development of a “protection-sensitive regional approach” – the aspirations of which are to have consistent assessment processes for asylum seekers, and where appropriate and possible harmonised arrangements or the establishment of regional assessment arrangements.
    • Identifying in the region the perceived increase of labour trafficking and how this might be tackled by working with civil society groups and business.
    • Working with countries to address the root causes of such movements

    All of these concerns are present in the current situation of the people on the boats in the Andaman Sea.

    We should with our Co-chair seek to convene a special high-level ad-hoc group under the Bali Process banner to pull together a practical cooperative action plan that would provide assurances to affected destination countries that the burden is not theirs alone.  This group could comprise the five affected countries, Australia as co-chair and the three international agencies UNHCR, IOM and UNODC.

    Such assistance could include:

    In Destination Countries:

    • Assistance with initial screening and identification of people with protection concerns or who are victims of trafficking. A multinational task force (comprising nationals of destination countries as well as other Bali Process countries such as Australia and new Zealand) led by UNHCR to undertake that initial screening,
    • Flying in emergency assistance for shelter and medical support with the agreement of affected countries
    • Creation of safe havens pending final determinations –where the burden of costs is shared.
    • Assistance with local integration in certain circumstances through regional social investment projects in housing, health and education services that benefit the indigenous communities as well as new arrivals.
    • Commitments to resettlement of recognised refugees over a period of time.
    • Greater support for return through assistance in innovative new labour creation projects through social investment projects and micro financing schemes.

    In Source Countries:

    For the Rohingya the solution lies with Myanmar conforming to international norms in relation to the treatment of its citizens.  While Myanmar does not recognize the citizenship of a segment of its population and actively discriminates against them through property, education, movement and marriage laws this situation will continue.  The solutions have to lie in policy changes with the Myanmar government. As Myanmar emerges out of its self-imposed isolation regional institutions such as ASEAN have the opportunity to provide a constructive environment within which Myanmar can address the policy problems of this issue.  Complementary to this an ad hoc group as proposed above could provide practical assistance to ASEAN in mapping out strategies for supporting Myanmar in improving the conditions of Rohingya in Myanmar.

    Bangladesh has been a source of labour migration for decades.   Traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of people desperate for work where there is none. Overpopulation, corruption, lack of opportunities, international demand for cheap labour all play into the hands of traffickers.  There is no easy solution to this cocktail of misery compounded by a lack of political stability in Bangladesh. While the Bangladesh Government has created a legal and administrative infrastructure to combat trafficking – “The Human Trafficking Deterrence and Suppression Act 2012” and the “National Plan of Action for Combating Human Trafficking for 2012 – 2014” and coming out of these instruments established a number of different strategies covering training, awareness and education as well as greater law enforcement measures, the problem remains overwhelming. According to the 2014 US Department of State Trafficking in Person Report, of 215 cases initiated for prosecution in 2013, a total of fourteen people were convicted of trafficking.  There are no reliable figures on how many people were trafficked in this time but conservative estimates put it in the tens of thousands. Given these most recent developments, a Bali ad-hoc group with Bangladesh as an active participant can continue a process of working with Bangladesh in strengthening the strategies it has in place and working with civil society in the country in providing protections and safe haven for people at risk of being trafficked.

    Smugglers and Traffickers – the raison d’etre of the Bali Process is to combat People Smuggling and Trafficking. Despite many countries in the region enacting laws against people smuggling and trafficking and the imposition of ever-greater penalties for smuggling and trafficking it remains one of the more lucrative and risk free ventures in the region.  Tackling this through laws and awareness campaigns while important is not enough. These loose coalitions of interest groups and syndicates are like a many-headed hydra quickly adapting and changing techniques and operations to prevailing conditions. Again the issue must be tackled at its source – in this instance most likely Bangladesh. The proposed ad hoc group could start the development of a strategy to support Bangladesh and other countries named in the US State Department TIP reports to strengthen its approaches against traffickers and recruiters and the victim of smugglers and traffickers.

    This is a global problem, which will only increase, and we cannot isolate ourselves from it. While for the time being Australia may have stopped the boats – this policy is not sustainable into the longer term. It is in our national and regional security interests to help stabilize populations and to play our part in the region. 

    Arja Keski-Nummi was formerly First Assistant Secretary in charge of refugees in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

  • John Menadue. Good schools, good teachers, good students and Gonski.

    On November 15, 2015, The Sun Herald carried a very encouraging story about St John’s Park High School in Sydney, is principal Sue French and staff, and most importantly – its students.

    Quoting Ms French, the report said

    At .. St Johns Park High School, more than 90% of students come from a non English speaking background, while more than 100 of them are refugees. Yet for the HSC last year we had five students with ATARS over 99, 15  over 90, and 146 out of 170 students received a university offer. … Ms French Said. … Surprisingly, those schools had less parent involvement than worst performing schools. … The schools early intervention by one-on-one interviews was integral to identifying children’s needs, whilst the bonus of the first four years of Gonski funding had certainly helped, Ms French said. … It’s about building resilience and their ability to express themselves, so students can take the opportunities and run with it. That has been the key.

    See link below for the full reports.

    http://cese.nsw.gov.au/publications-filter/high-value-add-schools-key-drivers-of-school-improvement

    http://cese.nsw.gov.au/publications-filter/learning-curve-8-six-effective-practices-in-high-growth-schools

  • John Tulloh. Europe: The political impact of a dead Syrian.

    Ahmed al Mohammad may have a greater impact on Europe than his evil terrorist deeds did in Paris last week. It appears he was a Syrian asylum-seeker who, according to Greek records, passed through Greece last month and made his way through the Balkans to join his cohorts in France. He satisfied whatever checks there were and was sent on his way with tens of thousands of others. We will never know what happened after then because he died in the mayhem.

    With the number of asylum-seekers pouring into Europe numbering 7000 a day, many will be wondering how many other fifth columnists like Al Mohammad are in their midst. It will ‘fuel an emerging pan-European backlash against the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many of them military-age Moslem males’, says David Kilcullen, the counter-insurgency and intelligence specialist.

    It also will be further fodder for European countries wanting to justify closing their borders or putting up razor wire or simply refusing to take in refugees. They will find willing allies in the form of the growing influence of right-wing parties which have prospered with their anti-immigration rhetoric.

    Across the Atlantic, the new Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, has called for a total suspension of the program to accept Syrian refugees.

    U.S. officials quoted by the Wall Street Journal said the Paris attacks ‘could reinforce perceptions of many Europeans that the refugee flows are bringing in terrorists. It is going to feed a backlash, it is going to feed into concerns people have over refugees’. Even the alleged leader of the attacks boasted in the Islamic State’s journal last February of having travelled through Europe unnoticed.

    A recent international Gallup poll quoted by the Washington Post said 52% of Europeans wanted immigration decreased. That was more than any other region in the world and twice as much as Australia. Understandably, this has become a matter of growing concern among the European electorate. Photos of hundreds of strangers from the Middle East and beyond snaking their way across European fields must cause alarm for their very anonymity.

    While the majority will be refugees and others will be economic opportunists, the law of averages says jihadists will have melted in among the throng. The refugees also will include young men who, failing to find the prosperity they think awaits them, will become disaffected and become easy prey for Islamic extremists just as the Brussels-based terrorists who brought carnage to Paris last week were.

    For genuine refugees, their plight has become even harder with the inevitable growing suspicion of anyone connected with Islam. The new Polish government has reneged on its predecessor’s EU promise to take in asylum-seekers. Others in East Europe are beginning to say ‘not in our back yard’. Scandinavia, a long-time welcome mat for people in distress, has seen a rise of anti-immigration electoral sentiment in all four of its countries. Even in Switzerland, which is barely affected, voters gave a bigger tick than usual to right-wing candidates.

    Europe faces a huge dilemma. Firstly, how to absorb the current wave of asylum-seekers and how to weed out potential jihadists. Secondly, whether to revoke the Schengen Agreement allowing free movement within EU members. Thirdly, how to handle the anticipated next wave of tens of thousands of asylum-seekers and refugees seeking refuge, safety and prosperity.

    A few days ago EU leaders gathered in Malta to discuss financial incentives to African countries in return for curbing the exodus of their citizens to attempt the Mediterranean crossing to Europe. The talks ended in disarray. The EU wants Turkey to do more to stop the flow through there. But Turkey in return wants more than the EU is prepared to concede. The U.S. and Russia are scrambling to set up negotiations early in the new year to reach a political settlement in Syria, the source of the majority of the refugees. Given the disparate nature of the different Syrian parties involved and the obduracy of the Assad regime, the chances of success must be remote.

    Even Islamic State is trying to help with a propaganda blitz to discourage refugees fleeing to Europe, warning of the debauched hell which awaits them. It is really concerned about the exodus of professionals who are desperately needed to help the self-styled caliphate survive.

    If anything, EU complacency has much to answer for. Its border controls have been almost non-existent. The EU partnership has amounted to little when it counts the most with many members willingly pushing refugees into other countries instead of processing them. Intelligence has been deficient. Some of its members are running for cover rather than sharing the burden of the mass movement of the greatest number of people in the EU’s history. It is as if EU members regarded it all as another member’s problem.

    For refugees, there is hope. Europe’s birth rate is shrinking dramatically. This and the flight of young people from countries with high unemployment mean immigrants are wanted like never before. According to the Guardian, Europe desperately needs more young people to run its health services, populate its rural areas and look after its elderly because, increasingly, its societies are no longer self-sustaining.

    Whatever happens, the social make-up of Europe is irrevocably changed.

    FOOTNOTE. France is no stranger to terrorism and bloodshed. Back in the early ‘60s, French settlers opposed to Algerian independence inflicted a wave of bombings, assassinations – including several attempts on President de Gaulle’s life – and even derailed a high-speed express train, killing 28. A pro-independence organisation was just as active with its bombings. When 30,000 supporters demonstrated on the streets of Paris, the police opened fire and, officially, 40 people were killed whereas estimates have put the figure as high as 200.

     

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.    

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Michael Keating. The role of government in policy renewal.

    In thanking Ross Gittins for launching ‘Freedom, Opportunity and Security’, Mike Keating explains the reasons why he and I decided to launch this series, first online and now in a book. Mike Keating’s book launch notes follow. I will also be posting Ross Gittins’ comments. John Menadue.

    Thank you Ross Gittins and thanks to you all for coming

    Why we embarked on this project

    • Concern about the poor quality of public debate on many public issues
    • The failure of political leadership to change that situation, or even be willing to try

    Instead we think there is a role for public conversation in developing and prosecuting a genuine reform agenda

    • History of past reforms is a long gestation period, with expert opinion often playing a key role in establishing the policy agenda
      • Eg tariff reform and de-regulation of financial markets
    • Too often calls for reform these days are little more than slogans – tax reform; industrial relations reform – but no content.

    Have been fortunate in attracting people who are experts in their field and who are able to support their arguments with evidence. This evidence and logic is I hope one of the strengths of this book.

    Timing of the book is also fortuitous, coinciding with advent of a new and different government

    • More open, less negative and more optimistic
    • Most importantly good ideas are not being ruled out without any consideration

    Labor needs to respond accordingly. 

    The book itself

    Not my job to summarise the book.

    • Ross has done that, and we would rather you buy it now if you want to know more – as I am sure you do

    Just a couple of observations

    • Despite apparently deep divides between our political parties, judging by the articles in this book there is considerable consensus about the policy prescriptions for moving forward
    • This consensus may just reflect the company that John and I keep
      • Don’t think so
    • Foreign policy is a good example, of how there is more consensus than I expected
      • Used to think there were more opinions in DFAT than there were senior staff members
      • But the five different authors here – all former senior member of DFAT – agree that
        • we need to focus more on the opportunities and less on the threats – should appeal to Turnbull –
        • we need to achieve a more independent balance in our foreign policy
    • Most importantly, all the authors see an important role for government in our future
      • Consistent with past Australian traditions, general presumption among all the authors that we should maintain government responsibilities, even if we think their effective achievement requires changes in the means used
      • Want better government, not less government
      • Contrast with the US

    Given that conclusion, one issue in particular seems to me to be most important and that is taxation and the Budget

    • Perhaps I am biased, but naturally I don’t think so. Taxation and the Budget encompass so many of the other issues.
    • Critical issue is that we will need to raise more tax to preserve let alone enhance our sort of society
      • Market economy is likely to deliver greater inequality unless government acts to counter-act a wider distribution of earnings
      • State Premiers all want more tax beyond the cuts that the Australian Government has imposed.
      • Considerable expert opinion, including in this book, that Budget repair will require action on the revenue side as well as on the expenditure side, but hard to raise additional revenue if expenditure is not efficient, effective and equitable.
      • Do we think we can raise the additional revenue needed without increasing the GST?
        • Removal of tax concessions may not raise as much as some seem to expect
        • ALP proposal to reduce super concession will not raise much
      • My article in this book suggests that such actions will not be sufficient, and raises the option of increasing the GST to obtain the extra revenue needed. Progressive and even realistic thinkers need to support this option if it is the best way to obtain a consensus in favour of higher taxation
        • Can protect the poor
        • Income tax scales need adjustment to offset fiscal drag

  • John Menadue. Abbott lectures London on how to ‘stop the boats’.

    Tony Abbott has been at it again, this time in London, claiming that he stopped the boats and that Europeans should follow suit. It is an oft repeated untruth that he stopped the boats. His one-liners are not supported by the facts. But the lie is deeply imbedded.

    Last month, Peter Hughes and I posted two articles on ‘Slogans vs Facts on boat arrivals’. Part 1 was entitled ‘How Tony Abbott helped to keep the door open for people-smugglers. Part 2 was entitled ‘Tony Abbott did not stop the boats’

    Let me briefly summarise a few facts from these two posts.

    First, the Coalition decision to oppose legislation in September 2011 to implement the Malaysian Arrangement gave the green light for people-smugglers to expand their business. People arriving by boat increased from 319 in September 2011 to 4,230 in July 2013. By opposing the implementation of the Malaysian Arrangement the Coalition showed that it did not want to stop the boats, but for political reasons wanted to stop Labor stopping the boats.

    Secondly, the rapid decline in people arriving by boat began in July 2013 when Kevin Rudd announced that in future no people arriving by boat would ever be settled in Australia. As a result people arriving on 47 boats fell from 4,230 in July 2013 to 355 on 7 boats in December 2013 when Tony Abbott’s Operation Sovereign Borders and boat turn-backs commenced. By the time OSB came into effect, boat arrivals had turned into a trickle. The game was almost over. Tony Abbott made a quite marginal contribution to stopping the boats. With boat arrivals down to 7 in December 2013, turn-backs were possible. They would not have been possible if they had been running at 47 a month as they were in July 2013.

    I often ponder why the untruths about boat arrivals have become so embedded and accepted in public discourse. I suggest there are three main reasons.

    First, Tony Abbott was able to effectively exploit xenophobia. He was very successful with his one liners in many areas. He did not bother to look at the facts, but successfully prosecuted a successful public relations and political campaign. Perceptions counted more than facts.

    Second, the ALP has been reluctant to argue that its hard-line policies had in effect stopped the boats. It was fearful of offending many of its traditional supporters who favoured a more generous approach to asylum seekers.

    Thirdly, under-resourced journalists didn’t bother to check the facts and they locked themselves in to uncritical acceptance of government propaganda. They now find it hard to accept that they were conned.

    The facts are clear. In September 2011 Tony Abbott’s policies gave a green light to people smugglers. The dramatic fall in boat arrivals commenced many months before Abbott’s Operation Sovereign Borders came into effect.

  • Erica Feller. Good democracy is challenged by mass migration.

    Mass migration in a globalised world might well turn out to become, not least from the perspective of democracy, one of the overarching and defining challenges of our time. Syria and the exodus of millions of Syrians to neighbouring states and beyond is currently bringing this home in the starkest of ways.

    The autonomous sovereign nation state is still the central feature of current political architecture, regardless of ethnicity, creed, religion or political philosophy. Borders classically mark it out. Political systems built around autonomy and sovereignty are increasingly becoming out of kilter with the changes wrought by globalisation.

    Where a state fails, is deeply fragile or is run by a government unable or unwilling to ensure to its citizens the basic necessities for a safe and secure future, what flows from this can no longer be contained within the borders of that state.

    Tens of millions of displaced-people in desperate situations.

    Statistics can be difficult to grasp, but the recent image of the drowned Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, was an emotional reminder that behind every number is an individual.

    When it comes to safety, security, dignity, self-worth, realized potential and decent lives, divergences between people, within states and between countries are huge.   There are some 60 million persons in displacement situations at the moment, over 17 million of them refugees. Eighty-five per cent live in developing countries, most of which suffer human rights and governance issues of their own.

    Less than one in 40 refugee situations are resolved within three years and many continue for 10 or more, with donor funds progressively drying up and millions of people left in sub-standard living conditions with no foreseeable future prospects. There are currently some 630,000 refugees in Jordan, 84% of whom live outside refugee camps. Two thirds subsist below the national poverty line, with one in six refugees living on less than $40 per person per month. Coping strategies include children dropping out of school to work or to beg, and women selling sex for survival.

    Facilitated solutions are not on the horizon for most, with local integration not available, (with some exceptions) and with resettlement to third countries a possibility for no more than one per cent of the global refugee population. Flight has to be understood as people taking control of their own futures in the face of  grave danger or the impossibility of staying where they are.

    Not all the displaced are refugees. Many leave for reasons linked to desperation and not to persecution or grave security risks. The forces fuelling departure are various. Insecurity and desperation are driving an increasing number of refugees to flee. Opportunity is enticing others to join the mass flows, with quality services, education and work possibilities in developed countries a strong incentive.

    The prognosis on the horizon for future mass movements is not good. There is a high probability that patterns of displacement will be increasingly impacted by environmental factors such as population growth, declining resources and inequality of access to them, ecological damage and climate change. Conflict looks to be a constant, increasingly acting in combination with extreme deprivation and resource issues. Many refugees come from or find themselves in countries falling into the highest risk category for civil conflict, which also happen to be ranked amongst the world’s poorest nations and where endemic and cyclical ethnic and civil strife is compounded by low cropland and fresh water availability.

    Ten Crisis Hotspots

    In January this year the International Crisis Group released an analysis of the conflicts and crises likely to beset the world in 2015, identifying in particular ten to watch. Top of the list is the situation in Syria and Iraq.

    The rise of the Islamic State was described as a “symptom of deeper problems that are not amenable to military solutions, including sectarian governments in Syria and Iraq {and} military strategies dependent on militias that radicalize local populations…” Then there is the Ukraine, which he said “may not be the world’s deadliest crisis, but it has transformed relations between Russia and the West for the worse”.   The “top 10” list also includes South Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, the DRC, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and even Venezuela which, while no war zone, is presented as a country in crisis due to falling oil prices, an unpopular Government and weakened institutions.

    What this means, among many other things, is that refugee and migrant exoduses are not solely a concern for the humanitarians. They can prove a huge burden on the economy, infrastructure, security and society of affected countries and a destabilising force for regions, and globally.

    They can also be a positive force for social change and economic advancement. It is also increasingly clear that, in our globalised, tech-savvy and interconnected world, the ability of States to forestall or halt them is seriously diminished.   Germany is confronting the probability – to its credit as a management challenge, not a disaster – of over one million people seeking sanctuary or a better life over the next twelve months.

    Democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

    One significant litmus test of the strength and resilience of the democratic system as we know it – meaning open and responsible government founded on tolerance, respect for human rights and the rule of law – is how global people movement will be managed.

    Recent developments in Australia have brought home just how much the values and processes traditionally underpinning democracy in this country are being impacted by the growing capacity of people to take their fate into their own hands and move, sometimes long distances, in large numbers and mostly irregularly, across state borders.

    Compassion and justice, international obligations and national due process requirements should frame the response in democratic societies to those who make a claim to their protection. The policies of recent Australian Governments designed to deter asylum seekers, refugees and migrants from coming by boat to lodge their protection claims are not built on such a foundation. The country whose accession brought the 1951 UN Refugee Convention into force has migration control provisions bearing directly on the treatment of refugees from which all reference to Convention arrangements has been removed.

    Australia has long and rightly prided itself on promoting and respecting internationally agreed human rights instruments. But it has put in place an arbitrary detention regime for boat people, doing some of them immeasurable physical and psychological damage. The country which has taken a strong stand internationally on fundamental civic rights like freedom of expression has put a cloak of secrecy over its contested boat policies and has even threatened legal retribution for release of information by health workers concerned about conditions in immigration detention centres.

    New thought about how democracy and government needs to be recast in Australia and beyond, to deal with the displacement in the context of globalisation is urgently called for. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum puts it well when she says: “We live in a world in which the destinies of nations are closely intertwined with respect to goods and survival itself…..any intelligent deliberation about ecology –as also about food supply and population – requires global planning, global knowledge and the recognition of a shared future”.

    Erika Feller, former Assistant High Commissioner, UNHCR; Melbourne School of Government

    This article was co-published with DemocracyRenewal

    Mass migration, conflict and democracy will be under discussion at the ‘Democracy in Transition’ conference, Melbourne, December 6-8

  • John Tulloh. Turkey at a dangerous crossroad.

    Spare a thought for Turkey as it goes to the polls on November 1. It straddles Europe and Asia, but it is not sure if it is part of either. Nor is it part of the Middle East, yet it shelters more Arab refugees than any other country there. They number two million – mainly Syrian – who are not exactly welcome. It is the south-east European bulwark for NATO, but the EU has taken fright at the idea of a secular Islamic nation of 76,000,000 people becoming a member. It shares a large border with two of the most unstable states in the world, Iraq and Syria. It is overwhelmingly Sunni and has the ambitious Shia stronghold of Iran as another neighbour. Its two-year truce with the Kurdish PKK, a terrorist organisation, has been shattered. It stood by and did nothing while Islamic State (IS) roamed unchecked on its very doorstep in Syria, causing the refugee exodus. It now has IS jihadists in its midst inasmuch they were blamed for the recent Ankara suicide bombings which claimed 105 lives. And Turkey’s president has been accused of trying to manipulate the political process in order to become a dictator.

    The election is for a new parliament. It is aimed at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reasserting his authority. He has ruled Turkey since 2003. But his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in the last election in June and now President Erdogan wants it back. He also wants more, according to his critics. One, Daniel Pipes, president of the conservative Middle East Forum, claims President Erdogan plans to establish a dictatorship, possibly hostile to Western interests, and even introduce sharia law. In the past five years under his watch, Islamic schools have proliferated and the number of students jumped from 60,000 to 1.6 million.

    Turkey has always been troubled by division: secular and religious, rich and poor and Turks (80%) and Kurds (20%). At one time, President Erdogan seemed capable of resolving those differences, according to the New York Times. ‘He sought peace with the Kurds, empowered the formerly oppressed religious masses and presided for a time over a robust economy’, it said. All that has now changed.

    ‘Turkey is so deeply polarised after 13 years of AKP. rule’, according to Soner Cagaptay, a Turkish analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He now fears it is ‘about to come apart at the seams’. The prominent Turkish novelist, Eli Shafak, was quoted in news reports as saying ‘Today, so deep is the rift between the pro-government and anti-government sides that it cannot be bridged anymore, not even in celebration or grief’.

    It will be the fourth parliamentary election in just over 18 months. The best outcome would be a coalition with the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), says former MP Suat Kiniklioglu, writing in the Huffington Post. ‘It would lessen the tension and polarisation in the country’, he says. ‘But the AKP has been used to running the country unchallenged for more than a decade and is not ready to share power’. One reason is that the CHP would want to pursue the matter of corruption allegations against President Erdogan and his son.

    The AKP’s chances have been boosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s startling promise to support Turkey’s entry into the EU and ease visa and travel restrictions for Turks. Her promise was a surprise as she has long opposed Turkey joining the EU. But Turkey’s pledge to try to stem the flow of refugees to Europe, particularly to Germany where she faces an electoral backlash, was enough to change her mind or at least for now.

    Turkey’s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, said Turkey was ‘not a concentration camp’ and would not host refugees permanently to appease the EU which has donated $4.7 billion towards their upkeep. ‘We cannot accept an understanding like “give us the money and they stay in Turkey”’, he said. A recent poll quoted by the Wall Street Journal said 70% of Turks want the Syrians to return home, not least because they are potential threat to jobs.

    The election is no threat to President Erdogan’s own position. But a majority victory for his AKP would enable him to achieve what he has long desired: to change the constitution to make his job, the presidency, the absolute ruler of Turkey and for 10 years.

    Daniel Pipes warns that ‘Whereas Ataturk and several generations of leaders wanted Turkey to be in Europe, President Erdogan brought it thunderingly back to the Middle East and to the tyranny, corruption, female subjugation and other hallmarks of a region in crisis’.

    Turkey’s powerful military, which has often intervened at times of crisis, will be watching developments with close interest.

    FOOTNOTE. Back in the 60s, I took the weekly train from Beirut to Istanbul. Although I bought only a second class ticket, I was put in an ancient first class sleeping car on the grounds that, as a Christian, I might get in the way of Islamic passengers with their daily prayers. We left Beirut at 7 o’clock on a Saturday night. The next day in Aleppo, we linked up with the weekly train from Baghdad which had a dining car. When would we arrive in Istanbul? The Turkish guard shrugged. It depended on how long it would take to get over some mountains in Anatolia without the need for back-up. The steam train panted into Istanbul several hours behind its supposed schedule. But no one was upset and everyone – Turks, Arabs and Christians – enjoyed the fellowship and hospitality of that journey. Would it be so today?

     

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. Is Malcolm Turnbull sacrificing his principles?

    The polls show most Australian voters have welcomed Malcolm Turnbull’s election as Prime Minister. I did.

    It is very early days, but I am concerned by signs that he is bowing very much to the right wing of his own party and former Abbott supporters rather than spelling out clearly his own policies that we heard about for years. He told the Parliament today ‘Can I simply say the government’s policies are unchanged’

    A strong leader imposes his views on the organization he leads and not the other way around. In the longer term, Malcolm Turnbull can’t please those who welcomed his election as a sign of change and improvement, and those who stuck stoically to Tony Abbott.

    For years in opposition and then in government Malcolm Turnbull gave us a contemporary, appealing and relevant outline about what we should be doing in our national interest. Is it still there?

    Despite early signs of a more humane approach to asylum seekers and refugees, he has re-appointed the hardline ex-policeman, Peter Dutton, as his Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. It was a ‘captain’s pick’ that he didn’t need to make. I was looking for signs of change in this area, or at least a signal that change was in prospect. It did not happen. Only last week, Peter Dutton told us that he would not be blackmailed by pregnant asylum seekers on Nauru. What courage! I don’t think that is what many in the Australian public, or even Malcolm Turnbull himself, hoped for in his Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.

    Adam Bandt asked Malcolm Turnbull in the parliament about releasing children in detention. What we got was a justification from Malcolm Turnbull on Coalition refugee policies that were ‘tough’ and even ‘harsh’.

    Climate policy has been the defining issue of Malcolm Turnbull’s political career. He lost the leadership of the Liberal Party on just this issue. He once described the Coalition’s policy of Direct Action to reduce carbon emissions as ‘fiscal recklessness on a grand scale’. He also described Direct Action as a ‘fig leaf’ when you haven’t got a policy. Now Malcolm Turnbull describes Direct Action as a ‘resounding success’.

    In 2010, Malcolm Turnbull told us that ‘to effectively combat climate change’, the nation ‘must move … to a situation where almost all or most of our energy needs to come from zero or near zero emissions sources’. Now he tells the parliament that ‘[Opposition leader, Bill Shorten] is highlighting one of the most reckless proposals the Labor Party has made. Fancy proposing without any idea of the cost of abatement, the cost of proposing that 50% of energy had to come from renewables! What if that reduction in emissions you needed could come more cost-effectively from carbon storage, by planting trees, by soil carbon, by using gas, by using clean coal, by energy efficiency.’ That is dramatic turn-round in policy by Malcolm Turnbull. Was it just political rhetoric or has he changed his mind on renewable energy?

    Barnaby Joyce maintains that in the deal with the National Party, Malcolm Turnbull agreed that water policy would be transferred to his agricultural portfolio. That suggests that the interests of farmers will be placed ahead of the ecological health of the Murray-Darling Basin. That again raises serious doubts about Malcolm Turnbull’s environmental credentials. Even that resolute climate sceptic, Tony Abbott, never put Barnaby Joyce in charge of water in the Murray Darling Basin.

    The Turnbull government has now approved the $16 b. Adani Carmichael Coal Project in Queensland. In doing this, Malcolm Turnbull told the parliament that ‘clean coal’ and ‘carbon capture’ were viable responses to fossil fuel pollution. But he told us in 2010 that ‘despite all the money put into carbon capture and storage there is still, as of today, no industrial scale coal fired power station using carbon capture and storage ‘. As far as I can understand carbon capture and storage is still a pipe dream, as it has been for decades.

    The tide of informed opinion is turning very strongly against new investments in thermal coal projects like Carmichael. The governor of the Bank of England only recently warned about the risks of investing in fossil fuel and that such investments would likely become ‘stranded assets’. In 2010 Malcolm Turnbull told us that building a future that is not reliant on fossil fuels for energy is ‘absolutely essential if we are to leave a safe planet to our children and the generations that come after them.’ Yet he has now approved the Carmichael coal mine that will be one of the largest in the world and the largest in Australia. It will increase carbon pollution dramatically and put at risk the Great Barrier Reef. We are paying a heavy price for another Malcolm Turnbull somersault.

    In his own electorate of Wentworth, Malcolm Turnbull had a strong reputation and record in support of marriage equality. But that is also changing. He has now endorsed the position held by Tony Abbott. As prime minister, he has told the parliament ‘the Coalition, our government, has decided that the resolution of this matter [marriage equality] will be determined by a vote of the people by a plebiscite to be held after the next election’. Tony Abbott must be pleased. No wonder Tony Abbott said, perhaps a little mischievously that the Turnbull Government had not changed any policies of his own government.

    In Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull described data retention laws as ‘expensive, invasive and useless’. He is now over-seeing a huge expansion in the amount of information the government can access from the public. There is no sign yet that he is likely to rescue us from the ‘digital dungeon’ he warned us about.

    Tony Abbott was determined to destroy the National Broadband Network. Malcolm Turnbull, it could be argued, helped to rescue it. But the political compromise between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull has given us a much inferior NBN. Almost all informed advice tells us that we are spending massive sums on a project which will result in this country having inadequate internet speeds. This will stifle the sort of innovative businesses which Malcolm Turnbull says the country needs. Yet he has shown no signs of building an NBN which, instead of relying upon slow and antiquated Telstra copper, connects most Australian premises to fibre. All we have had is waffle from the new minister about the government being technologically “agnostic”, whatever that means.

    It is early days yet for the Turnbull government, but the events of the last month are cause for concern. Tony Abbott and the old guard are winning consistently on policies.

    Gough Whitlam indelibly stamped his policies on the ALP long before he became Prime Minister. The reverse now looks to be in play with the Coalition stamping its policies and prejudices on Malcolm Turnbull after he became Prime Minister.

    In the end we didn’t expect much from Tony Abbott, but with Malcolm Turnbull we have much higher expectations. He has set the bar much higher for himself and our country. We were encouraged by this. But he is showing a tendency to keep running under the bar he set.

    He has given the Liberal party a lift in its political capital of about 3/4%. But has the Liberal party learned a lesson about the need for genuine change along the lines formerly advocated by Malcolm Turnbull or will the Liberal party head back to its old agenda?

    Will Malcolm Turnbull be there when we need him and help realise the high expectations we have of him. I hope so. But political compromise in the grab for power has been obviously on show in the first few weeks.

     

     

  • Good Samaritans in Greece

    We have been told in Australia that asylum-seekers are so inhuman, that they would even throw their children overboard; that they are all ‘illegals’ and akin to criminals; and that they bring disease and wads of cash.

    Fortunately, helpers in Greece have taken no notice of this characterisation of asylum seekers. See the link below of Samaritan’s Purse helping asylum seekers arriving by boat in Greece.  John Menadue

    http://video.samaritanspurse.org/the-rising-tide/

  • Misha Coleman. Open Letter to Julie Bishop on Sri Lankan war crimes.

    8 October 2015.

    Dear Ms Bishop

    Thank you for co-sponsoring the UN Human Rights Committee resolution negotiated by the Sri Lankan Government, which will hopefully provide some answers and finality to the mothers of 146,679 missing people, through the establishment of a domestic war crimes panel.  You’ll know that these Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian mothers are still looking for their children, their husbands, and they still long to re-inhabit their houses and their land.  (The resolution is essentially the response to the investigation which was undertaken by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights into atrocities committed in the final decade of a 26-year civil war, and was passed unanimously last Thursday).

    SRI LANKAN GOVERNMENT OFF THE HOOK
    Given the plethora of horror contained in the 272 page OHCHR report, the ultimate wording of resolution is understated to say the least. The Sri Lankan administration is reported to be ecstatic with the final wording: Colombo newspapers reporting last week that “Sri Lanka is happy that it is off the noose”, and the Prime Minister being quoted last week as saying that his successful negotiation of the final wording (much watered-down from the original) means that “I have kept (the former President) Rajapaksa out of the electric chair.”

    Given the closeness of the relationship between Australia and Sri Lanka, we ask you to support the ‘new’ Sirisena/ Wickremesinghe Government to move swiftly on a number of reforms, without further postponements and delays, in return for the ongoing diplomatic and financial support that Australia continues to bestow upon the Sri Lankan leadership. Immediate reforms are also crucial since the resolution adopted today has no timeframe for implementation.

    URGENT REFORMS
    Key and urgent reforms include the review and repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act which provides, amongst other things, legal ‘cover’ for torture and random detention. Another problematic piece of legislation is the Strategic Development Act, which appears to facilitate the confiscation and occupation by the Army of private land, for ”strategic’ developments such as coal-fired power stations, tourism projects and golf courses. It’s also difficult to understand the necessity and wisdom of the recently expanded Public Security Ordinance – which gives military the powers to act in a policing role, noting that there are an estimated 160 000 soldiers in the north and east now (with not much to do), representing about one soldier to every six civilians.

    DECIDING TO RETURN
    You’ll also know that a huge factor in people’s decision to return to Sri Lanka and to the north is their ability to reclaim the land they owned and inhabited – but it’s estimated that of the 67 000 acres of land occupied by the Sri Lankan military in the north, only 1000 acres has been released/returned to date.

    EXPECTATIONS?
    So what do you expect from the resolution? There is certainly an expectation by many Sri Lankans that those who are responsible for deliberate murders of civilians, deliberate bombing of hospitals and no-fire zones, and even genocide if proven, must be punished. This is an expectation that applies to LTTE cadres, the military and the political machinery. It should be noted though that around 18 000 members of the LTTE have already been punished and ‘rehabilitated’.

    And the victor’s wrath continues: frequent reports are still made that former LTTE cadre are being picked up off the streets and taken to the dreaded Terrorism Investigation Division for example. Only last week, a man who claims to have left the LTTE in 1997 was arrested by the Terrorism Investigation Division and allegedly transferred to the notorious 4th floor ‘torture department’.

    WHAT NEXT?
    If you expect Sri Lanka to move on, and recognise that the days of the LTTE are over, surely Australia can also finally release those asylum seekers from our detention centres who arrived towards the end of the civil war (2008/2009) many of whom have been in detention in Australia for more than five years, based on adverse ASIO assessments which were often largely based on information provided by the former and highly corrupt Rajapaksan Government.

    JULIE BISHOP: WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO?
    Hundreds of Sri Lankan asylum seekers still languish in legal limbo in Australia, awaiting their claims for asylum to be processed, while ongoing harassment continues towards their family members who remained behind in Sri Lanka.

    The expedient narrative that those who have fled Sri Lanka since the end of the civil war are “economic migrants”, includes those who have lost their children, lost their spouses, lost their jobs, their homes and their land-is this the definition of an economic migrant that you use during the on-water, enhanced screening process that was especially designed by the Department of Immigration for Sri Lankan asylum seekers?

    Australia has rewarded the new Sri Lankan Government with political and diplomatic support, which has resulted in the foreshadowed economic and travel sanctions against the political leadership being taken off the table, and which has helped the new Government to regain international credibility.

    Will you now reward the Sri Lankan people with your support for some genuine reform, and will you please process – fairly – the hundreds of Sri Lankans who have sought protection from you and your Government in Australia?

    Misha Coleman is the Executive Officer of the Australian Churches’ Refugee Taskforce and wrote this letter from Colombo, Sri Lanka.

    This letter was distributed to members of the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce.

     

  • Nauru and the Philippines

    Three days ago, on 6 October, I posted a story ‘Nauru and the Philippines‘. That story carried an unconfirmed report that the Australian government was negotiating with the Philippines government for the transfer of 600 asylum seekers in Nauru to the Philippines.

    Since then there have been several reports confirming the thrust of this story, even though there has been no confirmation from the Philippine or the Australian government. These reports indicate that the discussions are proceeding, but are not yet concluded. The detail of the arrangement will be very important, particularly the residential status of any asylum seekers transferred to the Philippines. See below the links to the reports in The Guardian (Daniel Hurst and Ben Doherty) and UCAnews (Michael Sainsbury). The reports have also been covered in several News Ltd publications.

    John Menadue

    http://www.ucanews.com/news/philippines-latest-asian-nation-to-stand-in-for-australia-on-refugees/74403

    http://gu.com/p/4d64j/sbl

  • John Menadue. Nauru and the Philippines!

    The Nauru government has announced that the remaining 600 asylum seekers in the island’s immigration detention centre will be processed over the next week. This comes after a delay of two years and remarkably slow processing. Why this welcome change? What is afoot?

    We know that the Australian government is engaged in bilateral negotiations with several regional countries in trying to relocate asylum seekers. In this context I have seen an unconfirmed report that the Australian government is in discussions with the Philippines government to take asylum seekers from Nauru. If this speculation is confirmed, much will depend on what is negotiated. But an improved outcome could be in prospect.

    There are several issues to be kept in mind. First, the detention centres in Manus and particularly, Nauru, are unsustainable. The government and government officials know this. Detainees particularly on Nauru are not safe and the Australian government and its contractors have failed to protect the poor souls in our detention centres. Second, an alternative must be found that safeguards the rights of detainees. Third, any change must not give people smugglers even a hint that they can get back into business. With a new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, the people smugglers will be looking very carefully for any sign that they could sell their services again to vulnerable and desperate people.

    If the speculation about the Philippines is confirmed, and depending on the package negotiated, this could be a welcome change. The Philippines is the only Refugee  Convention signatory country in our region with a reasonable track record in the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. The other signatory countries are Papua New Guinea, Nauru and Cambodia. The Philippines has an Emergency Transit Facility which was established through a Memorandum of Understanding between UNHCR and the Philippines government. The Philippines have consistently acted responsibly in relation to refugees. For example they gave local integration to all Vietnamese after the end of the Indochina program. It was the only country in the region to do so. The Philippines helped with the Oceanic Viking. They recently offered to assist with the Rohingya people.

    But there are many unanswered questions. Is permanent settlement being discussed and what has Australia agreed to? It is unlikely that the Philippines would agree to forced removal as they are a Refugee Convention signatory country.

    Importantly, if these discussions with the Philippines are afoot, we should avoid pointing a finger at the Philippines in the way that we did with an earlier proposal with Malaysia. The Malaysian government was severely criticised by many for its treatment of refugees even though we have a very blemished record ourselves.

    The important issue to keep top and centre is the plight of asylum seekers in Manus, and particularly Nauru, rather than seeking to score domestic political points.

    I will not be surprised if it is confirmed that the Australian government might be in negotiations with the Philippines government. But a lot will depend on the package. Keep tuned.

     

  • Frank Brennan. Border control gulags have had their time

    What are the chances of Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten agreeing by Christmas that it’s time to close the refugee processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island? Turnbull and Shorten already agree that the boats coming from Indonesia should be stopped. The boats are now being stopped, if need be, with turnbacks, which neither side of politics now questions.

    Now that the boats have been stopped and will remain stopped no matter who is in government, there is no reason to maintain the facilities on Nauru and Manus Island. The conditions in these facilities are not only harsh, they are cruel. These facilities no longer serve any useful purpose. They cost a fortune. They are wreaking havoc with the local community as well as with the traumatised detainees. They have outlived their intended purpose. They are gulags which rightly tarnish Australia’s reputation.

    Consider the history. When Julia Gillard failed to have her Malaysia solution implemented, she set up an expert panel chaired by Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, the respected, recently retired Chief of the Armed Forces. In August 2012, Houston’s panel told the Gillard government that ‘the conditions required for effective, lawful and safe turnbacks of irregular vessels headed for Australia with asylum seekers on board are not currently met in regard to turnbacks to Indonesia’.

    So they looked for other short-term measures. Having studied John Howard’s 2001 Pacific solution, the panel concluded that ‘in the short term, the establishment of processing facilities in Nauru as soon as practical is a necessary circuit breaker to the current surge in irregular migration to Australia’.

    When Kevin Rudd replaced Gillard in June 2013, he set about resurrecting the Pacific Solution immediately but with an added ‘nasty’: anyone found to be a refugee on Nauru or on Manus Island would be resettled anywhere except Australia.

    The situation has changed radically in the last three years. We no longer need a ‘circuit breaker’. Retired Major General Jim Molan has advised government that the conditions for effective, lawful and safe turnbacks are now met. The military have turned back boats. They have stopped the boats coming.i

    Tony Abbott as prime minister was adamant that his government was acting decently when stopping the boats and turning them back. The government is confident that the people smuggling racket in Java has been smashed. The Labor Party national conference has signed off on stopping the boats and agreeing to turnbacks if they be required.

    I concede that there is no way that Turnbull would agree to any substantive change for some months until he can be satisfied that the change of prime minister has not resulted in any renewed effort by people smugglers to regroup in Java.

    And there is no reason to think that Turnbull’s approach would deviate in the least from Abbott’s. He was after all the leader of the Opposition at the time Kevin Rudd was dealing with the Oceanic Viking incident in Indonesia. Everything Turnbull said at that time was taken from John Howard’s song sheet, completely consistent with everything later said by Abbott as prime minister.

    For example, Turnbull told parliament on 20 October 2009:

    It should not ever be controversial to state, as a matter of policy and principle, that Australians have the right to decide who comes to this country, our country, and the manner in which they come. The previous prime minister, Mr Howard, was criticised for saying that, but the fact is that that is what every Australian expects of their government.

    Under the Howard government it took a range of strong measures and years of vigilance to halt people smuggling. The Rudd government, on the other hand, has quite deliberately, and with dangerous naivety, unpicked the fabric of that suite of policies, sending an unmistakeable message to people-smugglers that our borders are open for business.

    In short, Labor has lost control of our borders.

    In May 2014, Turnbull as a minister in the Abbott cabinet did concede that Rudd’s renewed Pacific solution as enacted by Abbott was harsh, indeed very harsh. Though conceding that others thought it cruel, he did not think it so.

    When asked on BBC TV if he was comfortable with Australia’s policy of ‘outsourcing its human rights responsibilities to ill-equipped third countries’, Turnbull replied: ‘I don’t think any of us is entirely comfortable with any policies relating to border protection.’ He was insistent that Australia was acting in compliance with international law.

    He then added: ‘We have harsh measures, some would say they are cruel measures. I would not go so far as to say they are cruel. But let’s not argue about the semantics. The fact is that if you want to stop the people smuggling business you have to be very, very tough.’

    Anyone hoping a Turnbull government will be more accommodating of boat people than an Abbott government will be sadly mistaken.

    But that is not the end of the matter. Now that the Australian government with Opposition concurrence has firmly closed the entry door to Australia, there is no warrant for maintaining the chamber of horrors in the Pacific which was set up as a ‘circuit breaker’ deterrent. Turnbull needs to admit that a purposeless chamber of horrors is not just harsh; it is cruel, and it is unAustralian.

    After a few months transition, it will be time to close the facilities on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea; abandon the Cambodian shipment plan; negotiate a regional agreement for safe returns ensuring compliance with the non-refoulement obligation; and double the refugee and humanitarian component from 13,750 places to 27,000 places in the migration program, as recommended by the 2012 panel.

    The government should encourage further community participation in a refugee resettlement scheme which allows refugee communities and their supporters to increase the number of refugees resettled without taking the places of those refugees who would come anyway without community sponsorship.

    Why not increase the humanitarian program to at least 20,000 places as was espoused by both sides of politics before the 2013 election campaign? And why not provide another 7000 places for community sponsored refugees?

    Novelist Tim Winton has rightly said that there is a need for Australia to turn back, to ‘raise us back up to our best selves’. We, the voters, are sick and tired of the unnecessary meanness and nastiness. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can both secure our borders and increase our commitment to orderly resettlement of more refugees.

    We can secure our borders without the Pacific gulags and the oppressive onshore measures denying asylum seekers work rights and adequate welfare assistance. The ethical dividend of closing our borders is being able to treat anyone inside our borders decently and being able to bring asylum seekers in Nauru and Manus Island to Australia for processing and resettlement.

    If the boats could have been stopped back in 2012, there is no way that Houston’s panel would ever have recommended the Nauru/Manus Island gulag. We the voters should now demand the ethical dividend from Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten.

    This is part of Frank Brennan’s address The Ethical Challenge of Stopping the Boats Upstream, Closing the Camps Downstream and Opening Community Services to the Melaleuca Refugee Centre, Darwin, delivered on 29 September 2015.

     

  • Saudi Arabia doesn’t ‘do’ refugees.

    Saudi Arabia has shown that it is possible to accommodate three million people for the Haj. See link below. But it is unwilling to provide any sanctuary for refugees from Syria. Syrians must apply for a visa or work permit to enter Saudi Arabia. Under this visa/permit system many Syrians have entered Saudi Arabia, but it is overwhelming for the benefit of obtaining cheap labour. None of the Gulf States have a domestic policy on refugees and none are signatories to the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees.

    The experience of almost all refugees is that if they have to flee, they prefer to stay in a neighbouring country. They do this in the hope that when the political or military situation improves they can return home.

    John Menadue.

    http://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/08/mina-city-of-tents.html

  • Refugee Diary.

    It is one thing to endure the terror of barrel-bombing by the Assad regime and the barbarism of ISIS in Syria. But this is only the beginning of a harrowing trek by Syrians in their journey to safety and freedom in Germany and elsewhere. Verica Jokic, an ABC  journalist gave a compelling account on Radio National on Thursday 24 September 2015,  of the trek from Syria to safety. Her eye for the small detail brings home the plight of asylum seekers much more effectively than all the statistics. John Menadue.

    See her story on the link below:

    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/drive/on-the-ground-following-syrian-refugee-crisis/6798898

  • John Menadue. Transfield, Manus and Nauru

    Transfield and its subcontractors are profiteering from lucrative contracts to run detention centres on behalf of the Australian government on Manus and Nauru. All the indications are that there is widespread abuse and oppression particularly on Nauru. It is a disgrace.

    Present policies on Manus and Nauru are unsustainable yet Minister Dutton remains as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.

    If the government will not address the problems then shareholders and clients of Transfield have a duty to act on behalf of all people and particularly children and women that are being abused in our name.

    The evidence is clear. The Human Rights Commission has drawn attention to the abuse on Nauru, but rather than address the problem the government attacked the Commissioner.

    The Senate Committee report in September on abuses in off shore detention concluded that Transfield was “not properly accountable’ to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

    In this blog on the 8th September 2014, David Isaacs and Ian Kerridge drew attention to the brain death of Hamid Kehazaei, a 24-year-old Iranian on Manus. David Isaacs is a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Sydney and Ian Kerridge is Associate Professor in Bioethics at the University of Sydney. They said

    “What this case illustrates yet again is that the asylum seekers detained on Manus and Christmas Islands and Nauru have been excised not only from the laws that determine access to Australia, but from the care we should provide any vulnerable person for whom we are responsible. … If we care about these people and if we truly believe in the human values that ground medicine and the moral principles that ground democracy, then we need to do two things. The first is hold a truly independent enquiry into the care of people in detention and the second is to end offshore processing.”

    Commenting on the Senate Report Professor David Isaacs together with pediatrician nurse Alanna Maycock, said

    “The Regional Processing Centre in Nauru is in reality a prison camp where people live indefinitely in tents, their applications are not processed for over a year and they are kept in ignorance of when, if ever, their applications will be processed. … Will the Report make any difference? We know the government will ignore the recommendations because the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection dismissed the enquiry before the Report was published as ‘a political witch-hunt by an Opposition-dominated committee.’ … The Senate Enquiry found increasing numbers of whistle-blowers willing to tell the truth; doctors, nurses, social workers, carers and even security personnel.”

    The Guardian on 21 September this year reported as follows

    “The International Health and Medical Services quarterly health report from October – December 2014, released by the Immigration Department under freedom of information, shows that depression remains one of the most significant illnesses for people held offshore, and that mental health deteriorates sharply after several months in detention. …

    The report shows 57% of adults and 44% of children in offshore detention required the attention of a mental health nurse in the three-month reporting period. Asylum seekers also had appointments with counselors, psychiatrists and psychologists in significant numbers. Depression was the second most commonly diagnosed chronic disease diagnosed by doctors, after oral disease.

    Doctors diagnosed 22% of adults and 17% of children with a psychological condition.

    The IHMS reports that asylum seekers continue to commit acts of self-harm, attempt suicide and go on hunger strike, refusing all food and water.

    IHMS has seen some incidents of self-harm and food and fluid refusal on Nauru during this time. … Manus has also reported a number of self-harm incidents and presentations with acute psychosis which have required movement off site.”

    Transfield is preparing to sign a multi-million dollar five-year deal to continue operating the Manus and Nauru camps on behalf of the Commonwealth Government. It should be allowed to do so.

    How can Transfield in honesty tell us that it’s facing up to and remedying the widespread abuses in these offshore detention centres?

    The wealthy and self-righteous in the top-end of town will deplore a divestment campaign. But shareholders who care about the abuse of children and others in camps run by Transfield should sell their shares. Transfield can’t hide behind a corporate veil.

    Transfield is conducting a public relations campaign to justify its role in Manus and Nauru by shifting responsibility to others. It is assuring us that with regular visits to Manus and Nauru by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Red Cross and UN representatives that everything is in order. It is just not credible.

    But not only shareholders in Transfield, but Transfield’s clients should press urgently for Transfield to review its position. Its clients include Anglo-American, Glencore, Alcoa, Santos, QGC, Woodside, AusNet and Telstra.

    If Transfield and the Australian government through Minister Dutton will not act to protect children, then others are duty-bound to act to prevent abuse.

     

     

  • Tom and Rosie support the Syrian Refugees.

    Two young students from “Prouille” Dominican School at Wahroonga have raised nearly $4,500 for Syrian refugees. It started as a street stall in front of their house. It led to community support. It is a lovely story – worth reading.  See link below.  John Menadue

    https://unhcrpersonalchallenge.everydayhero.com/au/help-the-syrian-refugees-with-tom-and-rosie

  • Kenneth Roth. The European refugee crisis is on of politics not capacity.

    European leaders may differ about how to respond to the asylum-seekers and migrants surging their way, but they seem to agree they face a crisis of enormous proportions. Germany’s Angela Merkel has called it “the biggest challenge I have seen in European affairs in my time as chancellor.” Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni has warned that the migrant crisis could pose a major threat to the “soul” of Europe. But before we get carried away by such apocalyptic rhetoric, we should recognize that if there is a crisis, it is one of politics, not capacity.

    There is no shortage of drama in thousands of desperate people risking life and limb to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean in rickety boats or enduring the hazards of land journeys through the Balkans. The available numbers suggest that most of these people are refugees from deadly conflict in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Eritreans — another large group — fled a brutally repressive government. The largest group — the Syrians — fled the dreadful combination of their government’s indiscriminate attacks, including by barrel bombs and suffocating sieges, and atrocities by ISIS and other extremist groups. Only a minority of migrants arriving in Europe, these numbers suggest, were motivated solely by economic betterment.

    This “wave of people” is more like a trickle when considered against the pool that must absorb it. The European Union’s population is roughly 500 million. The latest estimate of the numbers of people using irregular means to enter Europe this year via the Mediterranean or the Balkans is approximately 340,000. In other words, the influx this year is only 0.068 percent of the EU’s population. Considering the EU’s wealth and advanced economy, it is hard to argue that Europe lacks the means to absorb these newcomers.

    This ‘wave of people’ is more like a trickle when considered against the pool that must absorb it…. The influx this year is only 0.068 percent of the EU’s population.

    To put this in perspective, the U.S., with a population of 320 million, has some 11 million undocumented immigrants. They make up about 3.5 percent of the U.S. population. The EU, by contrast, had between 1.9 and 3.8 million undocumented immigrants in 2008 (the latest available figures), or less than one percent of its population, according to a study sponsored by the European Commission. Put another way, nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population (some 41 million residents) are foreign-born — twice the proportion of non-EU foreign-born people living in Europe.

    The U.S. government is hardly exemplary in its treatment of asylum seekers, and the country has had its share of Donald Trumps who float wild ideas about expelling America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants, but polls show nearly three quarters of Americans think that undocumented immigrants who reside in the U.S. should be given a way to stay legally. Indeed, the U.S. has arguably built its economy around these migrants doing work that most Americans won’t.

    So why the European panic? As in the U.S., an influx of foreigners provides plenty of material for demagogues. Some contend the new arrivals will steal jobs or lower wages. With rapidly diminishing unemployment in the U.S., that doesn’t seem to have been true, but European unemployment remains stubbornly high. Yet many European countries also face a worsening demographic problem, with too few young workers increasingly asked to support too many pensioners. An influx of people with the proven perseverance and wit to escape war and repression back home and navigate the deadly hazards along the route to Europe would seem to provide an injection of energy and drive that Europe arguably needs.

    There are concerns about terrorism. Many of the refugees are fleeing the likes of ISIS in Syria or al-Shabab in Somalia, but no one can preclude the possibility that terrorists have secreted themselves in the flow of humanity. Yet terrorist groups have already shown themselves quite capable of sending agents to Europe — or recruiting them there — through more conventional means. Just as no refugee would brave crossing the Mediterranean or negotiating the land route through the Balkans if easier options were available, so these routes would hardly seem to be major avenues for well-financed terrorist groups. There is no evidence that any has used it.

    The biggest concern among the hawkers of crisis seems to be fears about culture. The U.S. has always been a nation of immigrants. The U.S. has many more undocumented immigrants than the EU. America’s vitality is in large part due to the energy and ideas that waves of immigrants have brought to its shores. While anti-immigrant policies occasionally flare up in the U.S. — including Chinese exclusion in the 1880s, Japanese-American internment in the 1940s, Haitian interdiction in the 1990s and detention of mothers and small children fleeing harm in Central America today — many Americans recognize that their life is enriched by diversity.

    But most European countries do not think of themselves as immigrant nations. Many Europeans fear that an influx of foreigners will undermine their comfortable cultures.Research suggests this concern is a major factor in support for populist extremist parties in many EU countries. That fear is accentuated in largely Christian Europe by the Muslim religion of most of the new arrivals. Some governments — Poland, Bulgaria, Slovakia — have expressed a strong preference for only Christian refugees.

    This disquiet has been building for decades as Europe’s population has slowly changed. Predictably, some politicians such as Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Matteo Salvini of Italy, Milos Zeman in the Czech Republic, or the UKIP party in Britain, are now using the refugee surge to accentuate these fears.

    This is a political challenge, requiring political leadership in response — not a question of capacity to absorb the recent immigrants. Some politicians have risen to the occasion. Merkel, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, among others, have spoken out against the demagogues and affirmed the European values that they jeopardize. Yet there is more to be said, and more leaders who need to say it.

    Europeans leaders should publicly recall how others responded generously during World War II, when Europeans were the ones facing persecution and even becoming refugees. After the war, European nations embraced international law requiring them to welcome any asylum-seekers who could demonstrate they fled persecution. True to that principle, Germany and Sweden have already said they would accept all Syrian refugees who arrive within their borders and not send them back to the first EU country they entered under the bloc’s problematic “Dublin” asylum rules. Other European nations should follow suit, and the EU should recognize a larger list of refugee-producing countries and revise the Dublin rules, which can trap asylum seekers in EU countries that lack capacity to protect them and compel asylum-seekers to pay smugglers to escape those countries.

    As for those not yet in Europe, it is unconscionable to use the risk of drowning at sea or mistreatment by a smuggler as a mechanism to deter further asylum-seekers. Not providing safe and legal routes empowers illegal smugglers who are making money as children drown fleeing conflict. Asylum-seekers who arrive in Greece — an EU member — should be given organized transportation to northern parts of the EU that are more capable of processing their claims under humane conditions rather than be forced to endure the risks of smuggling networks just to cross the Balkans.

    Europeans leaders should publicly recall how others responded generously during World War II, when Europeans were the ones facing persecution and even becoming refugees.

    More needs to be done to address the causes of refugee flows at the source. European and other leaders need to exert more pressure to stop the Syrian military’s barrel bombing of civilians. Because barrel bombs are used to target civilians throughout opposition-held territory, they render ineffective the usual survival strategy of moving away from the front lines and thus encourage more Syrians to flee the country altogether. These leaders need to do more for Syria’s neighbors, such as Lebanon, whose population is now a whopping 20 percent Syrian refugees — vastly greater than in any European country.

    Political leaders should not let the demagogues change the subject by fear mongering about asylum-seekers and migrants. Those moving toward Europe, though numerous, are manageable. The real question confronting Europe’s political leadership is what Europe stands for. What are the values that will guide Europe in a world whose people are not standing still? The more European leaders who answer this question by reaffirming European values — such as those enshrined in the treaty protecting refugees, the safer European culture will be, even in this period of migration and turmoil.

    Kenneth Roth is Executive Director, Human Rights Watch. The article was first published by Human Rights Watch in early September.

  • Arja Keski-Nummi and Libby Lloyd. Resettling Syrian and Iraqi Refugees: A Program for Government-Community Action

    Australia has one of the best refugee resettlement systems in the world. So said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres some years back. We have achieved this reputation not by good luck but because successive Australian governments have understood that early intervention and support in the settlement process are fundamental to long term successful integration.

    Australians have welcomed the announcement from our government that Australia will accept 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees with a focus on resettling women, children and families who have sought refuge and are in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. This means that this coming year Australia will resettle 25,750 refugees, including these 12,000 additional refugees from Iraq and Syria.

    This is a good start and similar to the figures during the height of the Indo Chinese resettlement programs in the 1980s. We have done it before we can do it again.

    Now, the hard work begins.

    As well as the extensive good will that has been extended we must put extensive thought and expertise into making this movement of people a success.

    We know that a well structured and inclusive resettlement service must harnesses the expertise of professional service providers and the goodwill of the community – this is vital to the future well being of new arrivals. It has always been so. The building blocks are the immediate support available to people on arrival – access to housing, health services particularly for people traumatised by war, access to emergency assistance for the basic needs of food, clothing and medical supplies.

    While the world is different and the way we organise settlement services for new arrivals has changed significantly since the 1980s some things never change – every person’s basic human needs for shelter, food, good health, education for their children and a better life for all, whether we are Australians or people fleeing a brutal civil war.

    The reality is that for most refugees arriving in Australia the first few years will be tough. While our settlement services are equipped to respond to those immediate needs, after the euphoria of being in a place of safety wears off, the hard rebuilding of interrupted lives begin.

    Moving to a new country is a complex and many layered process. One of the reasons Australia has been so good at immigration and delivered such good outcomes for many refugees is that we have always recognized that the migration experience does not end with a visa or entry to Australia. Its success has been in how we assist in the difficult first months and years of resettlement. Refugees need the opportunity and space to learn English early and to be assisted in understanding how to negotiate a different and sometimes culturally incomprehensible system.

    Equally important is the desire of people to have their dignity restored. Learning English, getting a job, having qualifications recognised and their children able to go to school and resume a childhood in safety are the start of that journey.

    But it is a journey with many obstacles: not recognising or understanding the linguistic and cultural cues; missteps that can be humiliating to a sense of self esteem; bad news from home; guilt at being safe; the loss of a job, or illness are just some of the many challenges to be faced and overcome.

    Almost certainly some of the people who will arrive over the coming months are professionals – doctors, lawyers, teachers, entrepreneurs, engineers, skilled tradesmen. However like generations of arrivals before them they will face a lengthy and uphill battle for recognition of previous qualifications and skills. Many will never be able to return to their chosen occupations.

    We need to learn from the past to do better in the present and into the future.

    The groundswell of community sentiment for Australia to do more has been heartening.   Many people in the Australian community have not only asked the Government to do more, they have also shown that they want to be part of the solution.

    There are currently government and community sponsored programs that we should be bringing together to look systemically at how, as a community, we can collaboratively assist and get the most effective programs running across the whole gamut of needs .

    For example, the current Community Proposal Pilot (CPP), already oversubscribed with only 500 places set aside for this program year should be expanded and made into a permanent program. While it will not be available for all and the costs are prohibitive for many it needs to be part of the mix of options available.

    The government could for example reconsider the use of the Special Assistance Category as a visa option to quickly identify people in need of resettlement. The reality is that with the chaos of war and displacement many people with strong links to Australia may not be in UNHCR camps or registered with them. For many even the ability to get to where UNHCR may be operating is an impossibility. This could be one way of identifying people and if linked for example to the current CPP as the authorised processing organisation could ensure integrity and transparency in the nomination process. Allocating a proportion of the 12,000 places to this visa category would be a start.

    Without a doubt the Humanitarian Settlement Services Providers are gearing up to expect a greater number of people to utilise their services over the coming few years. This will place added demands on already overstretched arrangements particularly for accommodation and early entry into ESL programs as well as their volunteer support programs.

    We could for example examine how underlying principles of the previous Community Refugee Settlement Scheme (CRSS) that operated so well for over 20 years could be adapted to this new inflow of refugees. When first put into place for Indo-Chinese refugees it arose precisely because communities, like today, wished to be part of the solution – to welcome refugees into our communities and assist them with the path to integration. CRSS provided direct links between families – a host family or groups of families attached to an agency and a refugee family or individual. Many of these links remain in place 30 and more years after the initial arrival of a refugee family.

    We can also learn from the way organisations have come together in the past few years to support people being released from detention. This required a large effort in finding accommodation, creating community based ESL programs for people not eligible to attend funded ESL classes, linking volunteers to assist with orientation into new communities after, in some cases, years in detention, dealing mostly with men, who had left their families behind, and who had become disoriented and damaged by the detention experience.

    These arrangements were a catalyst for imaginative and new approaches, for example harnessing the enthusiasm of retired ESL teachers in the delivery of community based ESL classes, working strategically with different housing providers for emergency and medium term housing arrangements, encouraging training providers to provide free of charge places for some to undertake basic entry level training such as in the cleaning and construction industries.

    While the circumstances may be different the needs still remain universal.

    Now is the time for government and communities to come together in a unique way to make sure that we do the best we can in assisting people to resettle away from the ravages of war. In reality governments and communities are in a symbiotic relationship – no amount of professional services funded by government can provide the span of services and support that are needed and no community based organisation can do it alone. But now we can perhaps look for increased opportunities for new groups and individuals to become more directly engaged in close assistance to these new arrivals.

    We could for example encourage businesses and unions, not traditionally active in this area to come together with service delivery agencies to be part of a strategic response. We could examine how the use of Social Investment Bonds could support a more holistic approach. Governments with business, unions and peak welfare bodies could for example agree to the creation of a Refugee Resettlement Fund – with a dollar for dollar matching scheme.

    Such a fund could for instance assist with:

    • emergency housing on arrival,
    • support for regional resettlement initiatives by funding access to programs such as ESL classes, community orientation and other services which are harder to get in regional Australia (housing in regional Australia can be more available and cheaper),
    • encourage regional communities and support groups in the resettleement of greater numbers of refugees in regional centres where housing availability and employment opportunities exist such as in centres with abbatoirs and agricultural industries
    • support trades and skills recognition (currently a prohibitively expensive process for many),
    • develop a skills matching database that would assist people in their search for jobs and matching jobseekers to employers,
    • support access to workplace training programs that assist people to become job ready quickly,
    • create small business hubs that facilitate the pathway for the creation of new enterprises. (What is most evident from previous refugee intakes is that many who will arrive in Australia were small business owners and what is clear for Australia is we need to harness that new talent pool).

    This could for example be done by the creation of a multipartite resettlement council comprising state and commonwealth government agencies together with key business, union, and advocacy and welfare/resettlement bodies. Such a body could for instance work with regional and local service providers in assisting in the design, delivery and funding of local services for people resettling in their communities.

    The challenge that now faces us is to make the path to resettlement as smooth as possible, that means building new partnerships with new players, looking more broadly at opportunities for resettlement away from the big cities and building the capacities of regional and rural communities in supporting refugees integration into their communities.

    By involving and linking new arrivals with direct assistance from their local community we additionally harness direct and positive goodwill to people who can in some cases become isolated and detached from our broader multicultural society that at this moment is teeming with good will.

    What is certain is that a one size model does not fit all. What is needed are flexible and imaginative approaches that are responsive to the unique needs of individuals and families while operating within an overall framework that seeks to assist people as quickly as possible renew their independence. That way lies success for both people coming to Australia and for Australia.

     

    Arja Keski-Nummi was formerly First Assistant Secretary of the Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2007-2010.

    Libby has worked with refugees for more than 30 years – with UNHCR in Indonesia and Iraq, with the Department of Immigration in Canberra, in the community with NGOs and on ministerial advisory councils.   Libby was made a Member of the Order of Australia through her work in international relations and with refugees in Iraq.

     

  • Bruce Kaye. Refugees in Australia and the Good Samaritan.

     

    When I was a teenager a famous preacher of the day, Dr Gordon Powell, was the minister at St Stephens Presbyterian Church Macquarie Street Sydney. I recall hearing some of his sermons and in particular a sermon from a series of sermons he preached on the “Hard Sayings of Jesus”. He remarked at the beginning of the series that the really hard sayings of Jesus were not those that were complex or oblique. Rather the hardest sayings of Jesus were those whose meaning was all too clear. The difficulty was in how to work out those sayings in everyday life.

    Similarly the Prime Minister’s statement on Thursday (10 September) that Australia will take in 12,000 extra refugees who are fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq. Christians in this country should warmly applaud this surprising but very welcome change of policy by the government.

    There are many complexities and concerns in the implications of the Prime Minister’s statement. Already there are questions about priorities in selection of refugees and whether Christians should be given some priority.   It is abundantly clear that Christians in eastern Mediterranean countries have been severely persecuted for several decades. There used to be a large Palestinian Christian community but it has been practically obliterated in the last 40 years.

    This language about the selection of refugees brought immediate reactions in the media and some declared that if this was to be the pattern then that would be the end of social unity in Australia. This kind of reaction is understandable but the government in its policy statements has not endorsed this kind of selection. Indeed the source of refugees is quite specific. They will come from those fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq. ‘Our focus will be on those most in need – the women, children and families of persecuted minorities who have sought refuge from the conflict in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey’.

    But the war in Syria is complicated   Ross Burns Australian Ambassador to Syria (1984-87) points out that the

    ‘Syrian conflict is an increasingly multi-layered scene where violence on all sides has risen to catastrophic proportions. It began as a citizens’ revolt against a brutally repressive government but has since become a multilayered civil war in which a bewildering range of Islamist forces have competed to lead the fight against an oppressive regime. All parties to the conflict have their backers outside Syria with some contributing military resupply, others turning a blind eye to movements into Syria of fighters and arms.’

    The first few years of the conflict saw fighting extend principally into Muslim majority areas of the country while many minority groups (among them Christians, Druze and Alawis) found shelter in areas under government control. Many Christians, in particular, became apologists for the regime in its efforts to project abroad its case that it was fighting the threat of ‘Islamic extremists’—a threat which was largely awakened as a result of the regime’s appetite right from the start for violence and repression as the answer to any form of dissent.

    However the most important complications in this matter are likely to arise here in Australia in the reception and settling of these refugees. This is not a straightforward matter.

    1. Not all in Australia support it or will not like some aspect of the way it works out.
    2. for good practical reasons not all can directly help.
    3. Some simply don’t want to be involved because they don’t approve of the government decision
    4. Some are fearful of the effects on their local community. The member for parliament for the seat of Dawson in Queensland, George Christensen, has expressed strong concern on the affect such an influx would have on his electorate where there is already significant unemployment.
    5. Some point to the many disadvantaged in our community already – will they be neglected? Tony Abbot said these issues will be dealt with in the way the project is handled. That will not be easy.
    6. There will be some prejudice against Muslim people and opposition to more coming – no doubt we will see religious and ethnic stereotyping as this programme goes forward.

    All of these concerns have to be confronted and dealt with both sympathetically and constructively. These concerns cannot be simply brushed aside. They must be recognised and addressed.

    How we as a society do this will be vital for the good of those who come and also for those who are the existing Australians.

    There is an underlying moral question in all this. Why should we be doing all this anyway? Ought we to not be protecting our way of life as a model to other nations?

    For us as Christians and as a Christian community there is however a simple and unavoidable challenge.

    Our Archbishop put his finger on it in his excellent article in the SMH last Thursday.

    The parable of the Good Samaritan is an incendiary critique of discrimination based on race, ethnicity and religion. Listening to the story for the first time, many would have been incensed that Jesus had used the word “good” to describe a despised Samaritan. Yet it never crosses the Samaritan’s mind in the story to ask about the religion or background of the man he finds beaten and dying on the side of the road. His response is immediate, generous and unquestioning.

    Our ability to show love and mercy and provide a warm welcome to anyone in distress, regardless of their faith, must serve as a counterpoint to the brutality of IS. Our response needs to be immediate, generous and unquestioning regardless of race, ethnicity or religion.

    Three elements collide in the story.

    1. The context of complacent religion of the lawyer. He keeps the form but lacks the moral substance.
    1. The ordered complacency of the Levite and the Priest who place observance of religious practices before the moral challenge of their faith.
    1. The indiscriminate compassion of the despised ethnically offensive half foreigner was indeed the true neighbour:
      1. Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

    Extending mercy and compassion to the stranger is clearly central to Jesus’ understanding of how to conduct our lives.

    SO WHAT TO DO IN THE PESENT CHALLENGE

    Don’t panic – this is going to be a long haul both in Syria and Iraq and in Australia

    1. We have a record in Australia of adaptation and continuity in our basic values
    2. Those values are clearly embedded in our constitution, laws, institutions and habits – but we need to be constantly strengthening them, especially when we are confronted with a challenge such as this.
    3. The meeting with faith community leaders and settlements service providers with the Prime Minister is a good start in coordinating appropriate systems for settlement.
    4. Our Anglican Church has been on the front foot in this crisis .We should run with our fellow Christians
    5. The Primate, Archbishop Freier and service organisations of our church have declared their support
    6. The Archbishop of Sydney, Glenn Davies, has made public comment and in a letter sent to all parishes given an unprecedented challenge to parishes and organisations in the diocese to be actively involved.

    So what about us and our parish?

    For the parish as a whole

    I believe the Parish Council should lead the way in developing a strategy we can all be involved in according to our circumstances.

    For each of us as a base line we could

    1. Keep informed
    2. Pray – keep our response to this consciously before God
    3. Think what you can offer directly or indirectly e.g. help someone else, or some organisation like Anglicare
    4. Support the Parish Council to keep up to the challenge for the parish as a whole
    5. Speak up for generosity with your friends. It may well be that generosity will be at a discount in public and private conversation in the months ahead.
    6. Support our political representatives so that this task stays at the forefront of their attention.

    This challenge lies clearly before us. Millions of people are refugees. Our government has laid it open for us as citizens to be involved in a national contribution. Whatever we do we cannot avoid the challenge of compassion that lies before us. We can discuss and debate the means and the details, but as Christian people we have a clear choice in this matter.

    We must choose whether we will be complacent religious or Samaritans,

    A Sermon preached at St Michael’s Anglican Church, Vaucluse. 13 September 2015 by The Revd. Dr Bruce Kaye AM. He is Adjunct Research Professor, Centre for Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt University.

     

     

     

     

    [1] Media Statement by Prime Minister 14 September 2015 http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-09-09/syrian-and-iraqi-humanitarian-crisis

     

    [2] John Menadue – Pearls and Irritations. publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog. Posted on 11/09/2015 by John Menadue

     

    [3] Article in Sydney Morning Herald, September 9, 2015. http://www.smh.com.au/comment/open-the-door-widely-to-syrian-refugees-20150909-gjij0h.html

  • Ian McAuley. Refugees and German redemption.

    Imagine if Australia were to open its doors to 240 000 refugees.

    That’s twenty times our offer to take 12 000 Syrians, or around the same number as our total annual immigration in all categories.

    It’s what Angela Merkel’s offer of 800 000 places would come to if scaled to Australia’s population.

    Although some may call Merkel’s offer a “brave decision” (a shorthand for suicidal political stupidity in the TV show Yes-Minister), it makes excellent sense on many criteria.

    One way to see it is in terms of hard-nosed economic self-interest. Germany, like most European countries, has an ageing population, leading to a high dependency ratio and an emerging shortage of labour. And a cynic may say getting in early gives Germany the opportunity to take the first pick of refugees, seeking out those who will make the highest contribution to the country’s economy.

    Germany’s economic structure is amenable to immigration, for even those without specific skills (but enthusiasm to work and learn) will likely find employment, because it has what one may call a “grown-up” economic structure – the structure of a truly country (rather than the structure of a high-income quarry).

    It has a thriving manufacturing sector (which is where so many of our migrants, including refugees, found work in the postwar years). By OECD measures, 23 percent of Germany’s GDP is in manufacturing, compared with 7 percent of Australia’s.

    And, although housing is expensive in big cities such as München and Frankfurt, German industry is widespread geographically: in small cities and even villages it is not uncommon to find a factory – usually a private (“Mittelstand”) firm – perhaps a component manufacturer for Audi or a distribution centre for DB-Shenker. German authorities have deliberately intervened in the market to keep economic activity geographically spread across the nation, to keep housing affordable and to develop a market favourable to renters – all important considerations for newcomers.

    But there is more than economic self-interest behind Merkel’s move. In some ways it is a re-assertion of German power, but in 2015, in contrast to 1937, that power is the “soft” power of leadership by example, an example so strong that it has helped move even our recalcitrant prime minister.  (Notably German armed forces are not involved in Iraq or Syria.)

    More basically, it is an act of decency by decent people living in a country still emerging from two generations of division and conflict – a conflict that started in 1914, and ended in 1990 with re-unification. A visitor to Germany is struck by the co-existence of national confidence and a spirit of atonement for the horrors of the Holocaust. It’s a confidence that does not cross the boundary into brash nationalism, and an atonement that makes a dignified matter-of-fact presentation of the Nazi era rather than a wallowing in guilt.

    It has not been easy for Germany. In 1945 the occupying forces had to drag civilians out of their self-imposed denial, forcing them to tour liberated concentration camps and to bury the dead. Until around 1970 most Germans tried to turn their backs on the war – not unlike the idea that in Australia we should reject a “black armband” view of history.  But subsequent generations of Germans have confronted the past. The images of millions of displaced people trudging across Europe in 1945 and 1946 are almost as vivid in the German mind as the image of the drowned toddler washed up on a Turkish beach.

    That’s why Merkel’s decision was not so much a “brave” decision as a response to the demand of the German people to be generous to refugees – what they call their Wilkommenskultur, as demonstrated by opinion polls. It is also notable that those countries responding to the refugee problem with razor-wire barriers are those that have still not confronted their own complicity in the murder of Jews and other ethnic groups.

    Merkel has also been helped by her country’s political culture. Her own Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) has supported her, and the Social Democrats, her government’s coalition partner, have been even more supportive.

    Theirs is an arrangement Australians, so conditioned to a savagely adversarial Westminster tradition, might find hard to understand. It’s as if we were governed by a Liberal-Labor coalition, with other parties of the far right and the far left occupying a few seats on the wings. Even when Merkel’s CDU governed in its own right up to 2013 there was a less confrontationist political culture between the main parties.

    Germany has supporters of the far right, but they have their own political parties, even including the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands. The far right has not infiltrated the CDU, and in general the mainstream parties gain no political mileage in taking extremist positions in an attempt to wedge its opponents. Although Germany lacks the multi-cultural richness that we have come to enjoy in Australia, it has not suffered the legitimisation of racism and religious intolerance that can be generated by opportunistic politicians in mainstream parties – the “dog whistle” as we know it. That would be too reminiscent of the Nazi era. Also, Merkel herself, having grown up in the old East Germany – the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR –remembers how the Honecker regime exercised its system of oppression by having the Stasi root out those supposedly disloyal citizens who were not seen to be part of “Team DDR”.

    Australians may also be surprised to learn that the term “die pazifische Lösung” (the “Pacific solution”), a description of Australia’s policy of dumping asylum-seekers offshore, has made its way into the German language. In itself that may seem to be an innocuous translation, until one realizes that it echoes the term “die ende Lösung” (the “final solution”) that has a longer history in the German language. I have seen the term (and its variant “die australische Lösung”) in German papers, and it even has its own Wikipedia entry. The word Lösung stands out – as in English there are plenty of other words that can be used to describe government policies. And, when pollsters ask Germans what they think of die pazifische Lösung, the response is one of strong moral repugnance.

    We cannot hide behind distance or token responses. Accepting a small number of Syrian refugees may be a good place for us to start, but we have a long way to go on our own path to redemption.

  • “U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis”

    Disastrous intervention by the US has been the cause of many major refugee flows including the current flows out of the Middle East. The people’s Daily published an interesting article on this subject on 7 September.  The article refers to refugees from Syria, Lybia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It could have added that one of the major refugee flows since WWII was triggered by the disastrous intervention in Vietnam.  See article from People’s Daily below.  John Menadue

     

    Xinhua Commentary: U.S. should bear blame for European refugee, humanitarian crisis

    By Hu Yao (Xinhua)    09:10, September 07, 2015

    BEIJING, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) — When millions of people around the world were taken aghast by the pictures of drowned three-year  old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi lying washed up on a Turkish beach and the massive refugee crisis engulfing Europe, they should see through the fact that the United States is mainly responsible for all the mess.

    The main sources of today’s refugees — Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan –are targets of U.S. intervention, which led to devastation,chaos, deteriorating domestic security and extensive displacements. People in those countries could no longer enjoy even basic human rights. Many of them had no choice but to flee for life, not only to neighboring countries, but to Europe.

    According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, more than 300,000 refugees and migrants have ventured to cross the Mediterranean into Europe so far this year, and over 2,600 didn’t survive the dangerous journey.

    While the European countries are accused of indifference and incapabilities to cope with the refugee crisis, the Unites States, their closest ally and the major cause of the crisis,seems not to have realized its moral obligation to help clean up the mess and work to address the root cause of the problem.

    Syria is the latest country following Iraq and Libya to become the victim of U.S.intervention in the Middle East. Having been mired in a fullblown civil war for four years due to persistent U.S.led Western intervention, the country was the largest source of refugees bound for Europe in 2013, 2014 and the first half of this year. The militants of the so-called Islamic State (IS), emerging from the Syrian oppositions which were supported by the U.S. to topple the Syrian government, have launched numerous attacks against Syrian civilians, who have become targets of kidnappings, suicide and car bombings, among others. Their lives are at peril if they hang on in their own country.

    On other fronts, although the United States has pulled out its troops from some countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be still held accountable for having destabilized these countries in the first place and then leaving them in a hopeless mess.

    As a self-styled leader of the world, it is a shame for the United States to stir up chaos,anarchism and the emergence of extremist and terrorist groups in those countries by its selfish foreign policies.

    Now as Europe struggles to cope with a daily influx of thousands of refugees, the U.S.should act immediately and do more to help solve the refugee crisis and work out long-term measures to help troubled countries and regions restore calm, stability and normal life as soon as possible.