Category: Immigration

  • John Menadue. Scott Morrison at the Human Rights Commission.

    Minister Morrison, assisted by the Secretary of his department, continued his aggressive ways at the hearing on August 22.

    He said that his policies discouraged asylum seekers risking their lives at sea. He described himself as the champion of the voiceless, ‘the ones that are at the bottom of the ocean’.  He clearly wants to occupy the high moral ground.

    But was it really concern about deaths at sea which motivated his campaign against asylum seekers arriving by boat? Wikileaks reported that ‘a key Liberal strategist told the US Embassy in November 2009 that the boats issue was “fantastic” for the Coalition and ‘the more that came the better’ (SMH 10 December 2010).

    In Opposition the Coalition did not want the boats to stop. It did its best to ensure that the Labor Government did not stop the boats. That is why the Coalition sided with the Greens to block the agreement with Malaysia. The collapse of that agreement set in motion a dramatic increase in boat arrivals that ultimately led to Manus and Nauru.

    Scott Morrison’s concern for deaths at sea was not reflected in numerous comments he made in opposition to demonise asylum seekers. He told us that asylum seekers bring ‘disease’, everything from TB and hepatitis C to chlamydia and syphilis. He told 2GB that boat arrivals bring ‘wads of cash’ and large displays of jewellery. He urged his parliamentary colleagues to ‘ramp up the question to … capitalise on the anti-Muslim sentiment’. He described as a ‘government-funded junket’ Commonwealth government assistance for an 8-year old boy whose parents had been drowned off Christmas Island. He complained about the cost of holding funerals in Sydney for asylum seekers who had died off Christmas Island.

    That was not the moral high ground. But If Scott Morrison now feels a sense of moral responsibility that is to be welcomed.

    At the Human Rights Commission Scott Morrison avoided answering the question whether detention of children, or adults for that matter, deterred boat arrivals. He should have said, but didn’t, that there is no evidence that mandatory detention deters boat arrivals. We now know very clearly that what has deterred boat arrivals was not mandatory detention but government policies denying resettlement in Australia for any person who come by boat. It was the Rudd Government that started taking us down this path. That is why boat arrivals stopped and not because of mandatory detention.

    Both Scott Morrison and the Secretary of his department took exception to the President of the Commission, Gillian Triggs characterising the detention centres as prisons. The detention centres may not have armed guards, but they are worse than prisons. First, the detainees are not convicted criminals and they are not illegals. They are overwhelmingly vulnerable people seeking freedom from persecution. Over 80% of boat arrivals have been found to be genuine refugees. But not being criminals or illegals, we put them in hell-holes where many of them go out of their minds.  For innocent people the result is worse than being in prison.

    Second, we locate these detention centres in remote places with the clear intention of making it very difficult for detainees to have contact with friends, family or advisers. We are frightened that if the community hears their true story, we will show more concern and compassion. So we lock them up in remote places where we cannot hear their cries. Inmates at Long Bay are treated better than that.

    There is a major problem when the Minister for Immigration is both gaoler and guardian of children. A sensible start to winding back this appalling situation in the detention of children is for the minister to separate his roles.

    More importantly we need to quickly wind back mandatory detention for almost all asylum seekers. It punishes but does not deter. The evidence is quite clear on that. Unfortunately a succession of Immigration Ministers have pretended they are political tough guys by locking up both adults and children.

    What is more there are large savings to be achieved in winding back mandatory detention. Immigration detention costs over $3b per annum. Over $2b could be saved instead of filling the pockets of Serco, Transfield, the Salvation Army and others. The Commission of Audit pointed to the enormous differences in the costs of detention. For offshore detention it was $440,000 per head in 2013-14.; for on shore detention it was $ 239,000 and for community detention it was$ 90,000.  The most cost effective and the most humane is release into the community on bridging visas which cost $22,000 per head. In 2013-14

    Humanity and cost saving points to ending mandatory detention. Few comparable countries mistreat asylum seekers the way we do.

    Just as we now have a Royal Commission on sexual abuse I am sure that down the track we will have a Royal Commission on our treatment of asylum seekers.

  • Elizabeth Elliott. Compassion goes missing on Christmas Island

    When it comes to children in need, most Australians feel compassion.

    Most will applaud today’s announcement that ‘Boat Kids’ will be released into the community. However this decision does not go far enough. It includes only kids aged less than 10 years (excluding many vulnerable teens); only those detained on the Australian mainland (excluding kids on Nauru, Manus and Christmas Islands); and only kids who arrived before July 19th 2013. Furthermore, the number to be released includes kids already living in community detention housing.  

    Christmas Island is a remote tropical ‘paradise’ in the Indian Ocean, over 2600 km from Perth or Darwin. When I visited with the Australian Human Rights Commission in July 2014, as part of their Inquiry into Children in Detention, it was ‘home’ to 174 children, including 26 unaccompanied minors – all boys aged between 14 and 17 years.  Australia continues to detain kids, despite the United Nations Guidelines on the Detention of Refugees that ‘Children should not be placed in detention’ and that ‘Minors who are asylum-seekers should not be detained’.

    Compassion, it seems, has gone missing on Christmas Island.

    ‘Home’ for families in these immigration detention centres consists of a small metal cabin, some 3 x 3 metres squared in one of two rows of similar cabins separated by a wooden walkway. Add a bunk bed and a cot to the rooms and there remains little space for a child to learn to crawl or walk, or for exploratory play. According to the father of a 2 year old boy “the housing is dirty, sub-standard, hard to be there. The child keeps hitting his head on items in the room – the bed, the shelf – because of the lack of space.”

    Cramped conditions, a punishing climate and overcrowded living in close proximity to scores of families make for little privacy and dire health consequences. Childhood infections spread quickly. When we were there many children had a respiratory virus and there had been outbreaks of gastroenteritis. We repeatedly heard the refrain “my kids are always sick.”

    The air-conditioned environment exacerbates symptoms in the many children with asthma. Others have medical conditions requiring assessment, medical or surgical treatment on the mainland – and for some the long wait for transfer had been intolerable.  A two and a half year old with no speech, a 6 year old with deafness requiring grommets for glue ear, a child with a facial abscess needing surgical drainage, a boy with an undescended testes, a child with rotten teeth, a girl with sleep apnoea….

    Of greater concern than signs of physical ill-health, however, are the psychological symptoms we heard of from many children.

    They reflect past and ongoing trauma, including the depression and self-harm many have witnessed in their own mothers. Stress in young children was manifest by onset, in detention, of bed-wetting, nightmares and defiant behaviour. In older children we heard of refusal to eat, separation anxiety, regression of speech, development of stutter, mutism and social withdrawal. Some expressed their stress through their art. A 10 year drew his ‘family home in jail’ and a six year old drew herself behind bars, with the caption ‘I want go out’ . Crying was ubiquitous in these images.

    Conversations with teenagers, who could articulate their predicament, were particularly poignant.

    They became distressed, describing flashbacks of trauma experienced at home, during harrowing boat trips to Australia, and during their time on Manus, where some were sent as a result of incorrect age determination. According to one boy who went to Manus, ‘I saw with my own eyes one boy hung himself in a cupboard – they were taken to hospital.’ They talked of their fear of being returned to Manus when they turned 18. 

    All spoke of feelings of hopelessness, sadness and lack of a future. They talked of frequent crying, families missed, lost expectations, lack of education and feelings of guilt because they had not fulfilled their family’s hopes after more than a year in ‘Australia.’  One boy summed this up as ‘a horrible situation. I feel depressed, preoccupied with my misfortune. I have not smiled or laughed the last few months. There is nothing to make me happy or to tell my family to make them happy.’  Some talked of self-harm and some spoke of death. In the words of one 12 year old girl ’My life is really deth. I don’t know why I’m in the jail realy. I don’t kill any body.’

    Detention of children for lengthy periods is in contravention to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. This states that ‘The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.’ The UN Human Rights Committee reiterates this: ‘Asylum seekers who unlawfully enter a State party’s territory may only be detained for a brief initial period in order to document their entry, record their claims, and determine their identity.’  Most people have now been detained on Christmas Island for over a year and the anniversary of their arrival came as a bitter blow for many.  One man asked ‘Is it the Australian government’s aim to make us all go mad?’

    As victims of a policy that dictates that any arrival by boat after July 19th 2013 will never be settled in Australia, many have accepted their fate of settlement offshore. But their arbitrary detention without assessment for refugee status has left them in an intolerable limbo. One father said ‘If they won’t have us in Australia, find somewhere else for us to go. We can’t go home.’ A mother expressed her anguish, ‘The criminals, at least they know their sentence – we don’t.’ Many felt guilty for placing their children in such a predicament. As one mother said, ‘Even if I did something wrong, coming here, why ruin the life of our kids?’

    As a reflection of their increasing despair and frustration about the adverse conditions for their children, a group of young mothers with young infants resorted to self-harm.

    When we visited 10 such women – deemed at future risk – were under 24-hour surveillance by guards, not nurses. Despite this mental health crisis the centre has no resident psychiatrist. ‘I swear the physical health is not so much a problem. It is the stress and the psychological impact of the detention that is getting to us,’ said one mother of two.

    It is outrageous to keep asylum seekers in the limbo of uncertainty. It is unacceptable to keep children in detention on Christmas Island, and it is unjust to deny children optimal health care and education.  One mother said ‘one of the most important concerns for my baby is he has not received his BCG vaccine – when everyone in the world should receive it. They say ‘we don’t have it’ or ‘later’ – the story changes.’ In the words of one child, ‘I not want to sit in jail? I want to go school….in here no have school everyday. Please help me?’

    Australians might well ask ‘Where is the compassion on Christmas Island?’

    If we are to retain our international standing as a civilised society, we cannot continue to persecute children seeking asylum as a deterrent to others.

    Elizabeth Elliott AM, is the Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health, Sydney Medical School and Consultant Paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Frank Brennan SJ. We think we have a problem!

    Eureka Street has run an article by Frank Brennan which highlights the far greater problems that the US has in managing its land border with Mexico. Frank Brennan also reflects on sending refugees to Cambodia, our locking up of children in Immigration detention facilities and the holding of 157 people including over 30 children in detention on a ship in the Indian Ocean for almost a month.

    See link to the Eureka Street article below. 

    John Menadue

     

    http://eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=41857

  • John Menadue. Is there light at the end of the dark tunnel?

    In my blog of April 17 I outlined ways in which we might find a way out of the refugee quagmire. It is reposted below. 

    There is speculation that the government may announce an increase in the refugee intake to help the Christians and other minorities suffering dreadful persecution in Iraq and Syria. I hope this turns out to be the case and the beginning of a return to a more humane refugee policy.

    I could almost write Tony Abbott’s announcement. ‘Now that we have stopped the boats and put the people smugglers out of business, we can assist refugees in Iraq and Syria who are facing appalling persecution. By stopping the boats, we can increase our humanitarian intake in cooperation with UNHCR. This will be an orderly and regular program rather than allowing people smugglers to determine who comes to this country.’

    In my blog that I referred to, I suggested that the government should increase ‘regular arrivals from 13,750 to 20,000 per annum. This would be a useful start’.

    After the Howard Government’s pacific solution took effect, the refugee intake was increased from 7,642 in 2000-01, to 12,247 in 2006-07. In those same years, the settler/migrant intake was increased from 107,366 to 140,148.

    In that blog  of  April 17 I suggested  other actions that we could take which would be consistent with an ‘orderly’ refugee program – orderly departure arrangements with Afghanistan and Sri Lanka; alternate migration pathways and allowing asylum seekers on bridging visas in Australia to work.

    If Tony Abbott makes the announcement that I hope he will, it might be an opportunity to start rebuilding a bipartisan approach to refugee policy. 

    Even with the issue of boats off the political agenda, there are a lot of things that we can usefully do to protect the vulnerable and to restore our international reputation. John Menadue.

    Repost from April 17

    Is there a way we can turn this dross into gold, or if not gold, then a valuable metal? Is there a way through the present impasse that is both humane and practicable? I suggest there are some areas where we could have a broader discussion and decide what might be acceptable to the Coalition and the ALP. Surely some area of bipartisanship can be found. I suggest there are six areas which we should focus on.

    1. Action in the latter days of the Rudd Government followed by Operation Sovereign Borders has largely stopped boat arrivals. With so few ‘irregular’ arrivals, I suggest we should focus our attention on “regular arrivals” and increase the humanitarian program from 13,750 to 20,000 pa. This would be a useful start. It would demonstrate that the government is prepared to respond to asylum seekers and refugees in need provided they come through ‘regular channels’. (If today we took the same number of refugees that we took during the peak of the Indochina program and adjusted for population increase, our humanitarian/refugee intake would be about 35,000 p.a.)
      After the Howard Government’s Pacific Solution took effect, the refugee intake was increased from 7,642 in 2000/01 to 12,247 in 2006/07, the last year of the Howard Government. In those same years the settler/migrant intake was increased from 107,366 to 140,148.
      It is clear that having ‘stopped the boats’ as the Howard Government told us, they then considerably increased both the humanitarian and migrant intake. We should do the same again.
    2. Many Australians are concerned about the recent deaths and injuries on Manus and earlier on Nauru. It seems that asylum seekers where attacked by thugs within the Detention Centre on Manus. That is extraordinary and reflects on every Australian. A man has been killed in our name. We have a moral responsibility for any asylum seeker who comes to Australia and then is transferred to another country. To clarify the situation, I suggest that our moral responsibility should be strengthened by establishing a clear legal responsibility as well. We could do this by amending the Migration Act to ensure that there is ‘effective protection’ which is enforceable under Australian statute for any person that we transfer to another country. It would provide a discipline which is clearly lacking at the moment.‘Effective protection’ enforceable in Australian courts would need to be spelled out in the Migration Act to include such issues as non-refoulment, legal status when in another country, humane treatment consistent with the dignity and safety of the individual, and swift and efficient processing of claims. Surely the Coalition and the ALP could agree on ‘effective protection’ when asylum seekers are transferred to another country. The UNHCR should be asked to monitor ‘effective protection’.
    3. We need to address persecution and discrimination in source countries by negotiating Orderly Departure Arrangements with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Many asylum seekers coming to Australia come from these countries. We negotiated an ODA with Vietnam in 1983 whereby 100,000 Vietnamese came to Australia over many years instead of taking dangerous and irregular travel by land and sea. The Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan desperately need our help through an ODA.
    4. We should consider other migration pathways that would reduce pressure on people to flee their countries. The largest number of asylum seekers coming by boat before the clamp down were Iranians.  I suggest that we should look at 457 visas or other migration pathways for young people from Iran. They would be great settlers.
    5. We need to address the issue of 30,000 asylum seekers in our detention centres and in the community whose refugee status has not yet been assessed. Immigration Detention Centres are very expensive and damaging to the individual. More asylum seekers should be carefully released into the community under bridging visas whilst their claims are being assessed. Most countries do this. In 2005 the Howard Government introduced the Community Care Pilot Scheme to assist asylum seekers in the community. Its focus was on case management. This pilot scheme became the Community Assistance Support (CAS) program and has worked well for asylum seekers in the community. Unfortunately a hostile political climate has made governments wary of developing the scheme. CAS should now be expanded.
      Further, as asylum seekers are released into the community, they should have the right to work. It is important both for their dignity as well as being in the interest of the Australian taxpayer. Surely the major political parties could agree on this. We have seen how country businesses like meatworks and fruit picking have welcomed asylum seekers.
    6. The only viable long term solution to desperate people taking risks in coming to Australia is through regional processing in transit countries and particularly in Indonesia with the cooperation of the UNHCR. We must bend our backs to do that. Julie Bishop would have an interest in this as it would help generate good will in our relations with Indonesia. We also need to build better relations with UNHCR.

    Surely we can find some bipartisan common ground in these six areas. Maybe we could find ways of turning dross into gold, or at least silver.

     

  • Bob Douglas and Claire Higgins. Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders.

    Recently in The Saturday Paper Max Opray reported on the harrowing story of two 16 year-old Vietnamese asylum seekers, who have been removed from their Adelaide school without warning, and placed in closed detention in Darwin. The boys are among around 30,000 asylum seekers who are currently in Australia awaiting resolution of their protection claims. Many live without work rights, and many fear sudden re-detention or removal. Indeed, the boys’ case has led to fifteen other Adelaide teenagers in a comparable situation to go into hiding, wary of a similar fate.

    So why were the boys re-detained? Was it to deter prospective asylum seekers? To encourage those who are already here to withdraw their applications for refugee status? The only explanation for their re-detention was this notice from their official guardian, Scott Morrison: “The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection has made a decision that your residence determination is no longer in the public interest.”

    Experts in this field do not believe that the punitive treatment of the 30,000 is a worthwhile deterrence measure. During an all-day Roundtable at Parliament House on July 11, some of Australia’s most experienced policy makers and stakeholders agreed unanimously that inflicting further cruelty on those who are currently on Australian shores will not succeed in deterring the people smuggling enterprise or those who are desperate enough to attempt the journey. So these 30,000 people should be expeditiously, fairly and generously processed, using a range of migration pathways.

    Securing this level of agreement at the Roundtable was highly significant, because those present represented a diverse range of viewpoints on this issue. Participants included parliamentarians from the ALP, the Liberal party and the Greens, a former Indonesian ambassador to Australia, a strategist from Malaysia, UNHCR’s former assistant High Commissioner for Protection, former senior immigration and defence officials including former immigration minister Ian Macphee and retired Chief of the Defence Force Adm Chris Barrie, academics and representatives from the churches, refugee advocacy groups  and civil society, including Expert Panel member, Paris Aristotle.

    The Roundtable also achieved broad agreement that Australia should raise its humanitarian migration quota to at least 25,000 persons annually and peg it at a fixed percentage of the annual migrant quota. Doing so would not only ameliorate the legacy caseload of around 30,000 people who are now on our shores, but also help to decompress the refugee burdens of our regional partner countries. While these 30,000 are being assessed (and it is recognised that this cannot happen overnight) people in community detention should be able to apply to work and support themselves, and above all must be treated in a humane and dignified manner.

    The issue of humane treatment of the 30,000 was a key focus for the Roundtable, and sudden de-detention of the Vietnamese asylum seekers underscores the urgency of this question. The two boys had arrived in Australia by boat in March 2011, and after 17 months of mandatory imprisonment on Christmas Island and in other Australian facilities were eventually moved into community detention in Adelaide. They had settled in and were attending school, only to now be re-detained. Our group of experts recognised that while Australians may be nervous about unauthorised migration and want reassurance that migration intakes will be managed carefully, this does not justify the harsh or unfair treatment of those who are in our care.

    Furthermore, Roundtable participants acknowledged that Australia’s current treatment of asylum seekers can have a deleterious impact on human capital, potentially depriving the Australian economy of valuable long-term contributors. Studies have shown that refugees are a young, enthusiastic and entrepreneurial cohort, and that the Australian community will embrace them for it. The case of the two Vietnamese asylum seekers is a perfect example of this: the boys were working hard in year 10 and year 11, playing competition soccer and daring to hope that they could become permanent Australians. Their school community has launched an online petition calling for their return, and the ‘Bring Back Our Boys’ campaign has received international media coverage and more than 11,000 signatures to date.

    Roundtable participants agreed that recent policies have debased Australia’s previous excellent reputation as an international citizen and that the current policy response is ignoring the complexity of the ongoing global challenge of forced migration and the need for Australians to better contribute to the protection of a growing number of vulnerable people.

    Our group of experts understood that that there is no policy silver bullet solution to this complex issue. The best we can do as responsible members of a world community is to evolve and share with other countries in our region a plan to manage people flows in ways that are respectful to countries like Indonesia and Malaysia and can help to ameliorate their refugee problems as well as ours.

    To achieve this, our Roundtable agreed to support the development of two ongoing “track 2 Dialogues”. The first dialogue series would build a new network of influential thinkers and policy makers in key countries in our region, some of which are transit countries for refugees hoping to come to Australia and some of which are countries of origin of people being displaced or threatened. The other “Track 2 Dialogue” on which we are collectively embarked is with the Australian community. Much of this work will require long-term consultation and negotiation. In the short term, however, the answer is simple: the treatment of asylum seekers already within Australia must immediately change for the better, as the lives of 30,000 vulnerable people and the future strength of the Australian community depend on it.

     Emeritus Professor Bob Douglas AO is a Director of Australia21. Dr Claire Higgins is a Research Associate at the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales

    An edited version of this post appeared in ‘Inside Story’.

     

    The Roundtable was convened by Australia21, The Centre for Policy Development and The Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW on 11 July 2014. The background discussion paper for the Roundtable, ‘Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders: A Long-Term Asylum Policy for Australia’, can be found at www.cpd.org.au and a full report on the Roundtable will be available later this year.

     

  • John Menadue. . Come by air – no problem!

    Many newspapers this morning are full of stories about fraud and bureaucratic negligence over air arrivals. The integrity of the visa system is being called into question.

    One June 20, last year, I posted an article ‘Come by air – no problem!’ It is reposted below. This blog highlighted the widespread preoccupation with boat arrivals.

    Other major issues have been overlooked,including the 50,000 plus in our community, who having overstayed their visa have ‘disappeared’

     

    Repost: Come by air – no problem!

    There is an easy way to solve the boat people “problem”. It is simply to get as many asylum seekers as possible to come by air. It would be a win/win for everyone. There are many reasons for proposing this.

    • The politicians and the media show no interest whatsoever in the asylum seekers who come by air. (In the last 10 years, over 78% of asylum seekers have come by air, although in the last two to three years, the proportions have changed in favour of boat arrivals.) But the fact remains, we are not concerned at all about air arrivals.
    •  This would solve the political problem We could also ignore the media misinformation
    • We don’t put many air arrivals into detention as we do boat people. So this could potentially save us up to $2 billion in detention costs.
    • Asylum seekers who come by air live freely in the community, and  are allowed to work. Boat people are not. So allowing more air arrivals to work saves the taxpayer and there is no need for asylum seekers to break the law and work in the grey economy.

    There are also good business opportunities here  for Qantas and other airlines. They need to set up joint ventures or appoint good agents to help as many asylum seekers to get visas to enter Australia  by air with Qantas or others. How can this be done?

    • Most asylum seekers who come by air promise that they are coming to Australia as a visitor, student or working holiday maker. Having got into Australia they then apply for refugee status and live happily in the community until their status is resolved.
    • So entrepreneurial agents can perform a personal and national service in helping asylum seekers come by air. We know there are some very efficient “agents” in southern China. China always tops the list for the number of asylum seekers who come by air. What a boon for both airlines and agents!
    • Clive Palmer has proposed that asylum seekers should fly to Australia. He said recently ‘All that needs to happen is that the government needs to stop telling airlines and other people not to give [asylum seekers] safe transport. If they come down here by air and if they are refugees that’s one thing. If they haven’t got a legitimate claim they can go right back on the plane the next day.’

    Clive Palmer clearly sees it as a win/win for everyone. As would other people.

    • Tony Abbott would surely applaud as it is an even better solution than his Pacific Solution to control our borders.  People smugglers would be put out of business
    • The media would obviously think it was good policy because it has shown very clearly that it is only concerned about boat people. Air arrivals are quite un-newsworthy.
    • Taxpayer money would be saved and airlines could make more money.

    But to disappoint Tony Abbott and the media, I must admit that some of the above is nonsense. You probably detected my tongue in cheek a few paragraphs ago!

    • Agents would need to encourage visa applicants to make false declarations about the reason for them coming to Australia.
    • It would be unfair to persons who genuinely faced persecution and who would have no way of getting a visa.
    • Asylum seekers who come by air, although many are quite deserving, have a success rate in refugee determination of just over 40%. For boat arrivals it is over 90%.

    Put simply, our preoccupation with boat people is a dishonest and misleading ploy. It is done deliberately to incite fear. For some reason boat people are a special threat. And Tony Abbott and the media play it for all it is worth. As reported by the SMH on 10 December 2010 “a key Liberal Party strategist told the US Embassy in 2009 that the more boats that come the better”

    The important issue is the total number of asylum seekers who come to Australia and not their mode of arrival. As an island continent we should not be surprised that really desperate people try to come by sea without a visa.

    The Coalition and the media have performed dishonestly over boat people. Following in John Howard’s footsteps, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison are deliberately inciting fear about boat people, yet show no interest at all in air arrivals. Where is the consistency in this?  For the media it is partly political partisanship, as with The Australian, but for most others it is laziness.  Pictures of unkempt bearded men on boats are so much more newsworthy. It is much harder to get pictures and stories of asylum seekers dressed in suits who come by air every day and all day through our airports. And no group exhibits more laziness  on this issue than the ABC, particularly its Canberra correspondents.

    Why do we continue to beat ourselves up only about asylum seekers who come by boat but ignore those who come by air and treat the latter much more generously particularly as the have a much lower success rate in refugee determination?

    John Menadue

     

     

     

     

  • Kerry Murphy. The persecutions.

    In March 2001, the Taliban dynamited the ancient Buddha statues of Bamian because the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, claimed they were ‘idolatrous’ and idolatry is banned in Islam.  In July 2014, ISIL destroyed the ancient tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul for the same reason.[1]  This site was considered a sacred site for Jews, Christians and Muslims for centuries.  Tragically it is not just ancient cultural monuments that are being destroyed by ISIL.  Other accounts refer to smashing of statues in churches and the looting of churches.  What is especially worrying and amazing is their willingness to publicise their war crimes and not merely claim them for themselves, but boast about it.

    There have been Christian communities in the Nineveh plain of northern Iraq for possibly 1700-1800 years.  Some of the Christian communities in Syria and northern Iraq can trace their origins to the early spread of Christianity throughout the Middle East and then Roman Empire.  For nearly two millennia they have survived but ISIL is possibly the most dramatic threat they have faced.[2]

    Initially Christians in Mosul hoped they might be spared the sectarian attacks on Shia by ISIL.  Then on July 14, they noticed the Arabic letter ‘nuun’ ( ن ) for Nasriya (Christian) was daubed outside their properties.  Then ISIL gave the estimated 35,000 Christians an ultimatum to 19 July – convert, pay the jizya tax, or be killed.

    The jizya is a tax levied on non-Muslims in Sharia law.  In ISIL’s case, the jizya was clearly protection money mafia style, and its onerous level was beyond the capacity of many.  This left the Christians with no real option but to flee their homes and abandon their goods.  Some claim they were robbed by militants as they fled, an added indignity.

    ISIL also daubed the Arabic R ( ر ) for rafidah or ‘rejectors’ on the homes of Shia and minorities such as Shabaks and Yazdis and Turkman Shia.  This is a Sunni term used to denigrate those who do not follow their particular religious interpretation.

    More reports are coming out of stoning for adultery, beheading of Shia prisoners (often from the Iraqi or Syrian militaries) and even the execution of the Sunni imams in the main mosque in Mosul, who were seen to be not teaching ‘correct Islam’ and so had to be killed.  One ISIL posting bragged about the execution of ‘rafideh’ for Eid – with horrific pictures of the terrified men in trucks, then kneeling before open pits to be executed.[3]

    It was these type of extremist actions that alienated the Sunni tribes from Al Qaeda in 2007 and lead to the ‘Awakening’ movement whereby Sunni tribal leaders supported the US against Al Qaeda.  It is a disaster for Iraqis that the Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki has become so sectarian in his policies and actions that the Sunnis feel they are better protected by supporting the Salafist extremists in ISIL than their own Government.  Some Sunnis see Maliki as an ‘Iranian’ and others refer to the ‘good old days under Saddam’.

    The willingness of ISIL to publicise their war crimes – beheading prisoners, shooting prisoners kneeling before ditches and smashing religious icons and statues – is extremely worrying.  They obviously are not afraid of facing war crimes trials for their actions and probably they assumed they are immune from such prosecution may well be sadly right.

    Sadly for the Christians and other minorities of Iraq and Syria, they will not be able to return to their homes for some time, if at all.  The fact that many Palestinians still have their house keys from their homes in Israel which they fled in what they call the ‘Naqba’(catastrophe) of 1948 gives no hope to yet another group of refugees from the Middle East.

    Iraqis tell me that this focus on religion and sect is new in Iraq.  Baghdadi Christians and Muslims would celebrate each other’s religious holidays and exchange greetings and presents for Christmas and Eid.  Intermarriage between Sunni and Shia families was not uncommon, especially in Baghdad.  Now the situation has changed dramatically and sectarianism dominates.  Militias are forcing out such Sunni/Shia couples from their homes, others are being forced to separate just because their spouse is a different sect.[4]

    The labelling of communities with letters designating their status will immediately create fears in our post holocaust world.  We have seen this before.  In an inversion of this, Iraqis in Baghdad and Irbil protested in the streets holding up signs saying things like ‘I am Iraqi and I am a Nasriyan’ or others said ‘We are all Nasriyans’.  There were also protests in London and Paris with people wearing T-Shirts with just the Arabic letter on them, just as it has been seen in the graffiti daubed on homes in Mosul. On Lebanese TV a well-known TV personality wore a T-Shirt with the letter ‘nuun’ ( ن ) and said ‘We are all Nuun’. Others are putting the symbol and letter on Facebook in solidarity with the persecuted. [5]

    Hopefully such intercommunal and intercultural/religious stands will become possible again in Iraq and Syria, though I fear it will take a long time before there is much progress and the extremists are isolated and disempowered.

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who practices in immigration and refugee law.

  • Lisa Petheram. Listening to young people’s voices on Refugee and Asylum Seeker Policy

    “They are playing with our lives…every year I get older
    …I want to start a family but I can’t    ”.

    What are young people in Australia thinking about refugee and asylum seeker policy?
    Two youth roundtables recently held by Australia21 have given some insight into the ways that young Australians think about these issues, and their visions for the future. The youth roundtables were held as part of a broader project Australia21 has been undertaking in collaboration with other groups – Asylum Seeker Policy: A fair, just and effective approach. As part of this project, a collection of short essays and a discussion paper on the options have been compiled. Also, on the 11th of July, Australia21 co-hosted an expert roundtable on this topic at Parliament House, with the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Law (UNSW) and the Centre for Policy Development.

    The first youth roundtable was held in Canberra with support from the Crawford School at ANU, with 38 young people aged 18-30 from the public. The second youth roundtable was held with Settlement Services International (SSI) in Sydney with 35 young people of the same age group, specifically of refugee and asylum seeker background. In both workshops a rich picture diagramming approach was used—to understand participants preferred futures around refugee and asylum seeker policy. Discussions from both roundtables were remarkably wide- ranging and insightful and had much overlap in content and opinion, despite participants being from very different experiential and cultural backgrounds. Conversations reflected a strong desire for change in policy and practice in Australia, and a sense of disillusionment and disappointment about public perceptions and treatment of refugee and asylum seekers.

    At the Sydney roundtable, the overarching message was that the refugee journey is long and difficult. “I thought when I got to Australia the hard part was over, but now I have to start again from nothing. It is hard in a different way. I can’t seem to get a start anywhere and it is hard to have hope until I can.” After arriving in the settlement country most people need a range of personally targeted supports to settle successfully, particularly in communities where refugee status carries stigma. Some of the current policy settings seem designed to frustrate that journey rather than support it, and to waste human potential. People appeared to be resilient and energetic but sorely tried.

    Participants commonly expressed strong frustration at the inhumane ways refugee and asylum seekers are treated through restrictive policies, as well as the way they are often stigmatized in the media and by the general public. “We are not animals, we are human”. There was a strong yearning to be treated and to live like others. It was suggested there needs to be strong, empathetic leadership and programs to address stigma and encourage community engagement. “I want to live in an Australia where the Prime Minister has been a detainee and knows what it’s like”. Another participant used a picture of birds being fed, to communicate her hope that if Tony Abbott fed the birds he may develop empathy. One said he would say to the Government “Please make decisions like you are deciding about someone from your own family

    There was much disappointment about new policies that create more uncertainty and fear.  Many were frustrated by being unable to plan or make any goals and being in “limbo land”, especially around study, work and family. “I don’t have anything good to tell myself in in the mirror in the morning. I want to build my life in Australia, but I can’t…How can I ever ask anyone for their daughter’s hand in marriage?”. In particular the inability to work while being processed is excruciating for many of the participants. They talked of having much passion, experience and qualifications and wanting to contribute in Australia by working, but losing resilience and hope. There was also frustration by those that were allowed to work, where time and energy put into gaining qualifications and experience were not recognized “I want to share my skills with Australia”

    At the Canberra roundtable sadness and anger was expressed about the treatment of refugee and asylum seekers. There was much concern particularly around mental health of people in detention and in communities. It was emphasised that policy makers and public should be strongly encouraged to reframe their current ways of thinking about refugee and asylum seekers, and be more open, sincere and unprejudiced in their discourse on the topic. Calls were also made for ‘grown up’ and progressive leadership, and for Australia as a nation to be more cognizant of equality under the law, and our moral and international obligations.

    It was argued that refugee and asylum seekers are often dehumanised in these debates; they are generally not seen by the general public and policy makers as ‘real people’, but as statistics, or criminals who should be behind bars. It was suggested that greater attention needs to be placed on more appropriate and creative solutions to domestic processing, especially in terms of the location and speed of processing. In an ideal future, Christmas Island and Nauru would be closed, and the money saved could be directed towards supporting communities to be involved in the processing and resettlement of refugee and asylum seekers. There were also strong calls for policy modification to ensure that people can have opportunities to contribute more fully to society (e.g. allowing people working rights while being processed).

    Young people have been engaged by Australia21 as part of this project as it is believed they can offer fresh thinking and innovative solutions that are valuable contributions to the policy making process. The outcome from the youth roundtables was reported on at the expert roundtable by a youth representative and will also be incorporated into a full report that will be released later in 2014.

    For more information about Australia21’s project on refugee and asylum seekers and youth engagement, please see www.australia21.org.au

  • Mike Steketee. Mandatory detention punishes but it does not deter.

    “It has not been easy for organised world opinion in the United Nations or elsewhere to act directly in respect of some of the dreadful events which have driven so many people from their own homes and their own fatherland but at least we can in the most practical fashion show our sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves who have been the innocent victims of conflicts and upheavals of which in our own land we have been happy enough to know nothing” – Robert Menzies, Prime Minister, broadcast for the opening of World Refugee Year, September, 1959.

    Even some of the strongest supporters of the Liberal party and its policy of turning back the boats   cannot feel comfortable about many of the actions being taken in the name of securing our sovereign borders.

    They do not fit easily with the small “l” liberal philosophy that was an important part of the big “l” Liberal party that Menzies founded – beliefs that have been muted but not eradicated under successive conservative Liberal prime ministers in John Howard and Tony Abbott.

    In waging war against people smugglers, we are punishing their clients, who have turned to us for help – help that we have offered through our membership of the Refugee Convention. The armoury directed at deterring asylum seekers from coming by boat, implemented by Labor and Liberal governments, is astonishing in its extent and ferocity.

    Most of it achieves nothing other than degrading and in some cases ultimately destroying people’s lives. It is all the more pointless now that the one deterrent that has been effective – turning around the boats – has been implemented. As explored further later, a group of Australian experts on refugee policy believe there is a better way, even working within the present political constraints.

    We should do all we can to discourage people from taking dangerous sea journeys but we should also ensure there are alternatives for genuine refugees. The gold standard was achieved under the Fraser government.

    Deaths at sea have always been a feature of refugee flows. A document prepared for the Australian Cabinet in 1979 estimated that between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of those fleeing in the wake of the Vietnam War drowned.

    Then, as now, people driven by sheer desperation continued to get on boats. Then, as now, government action stopped the boats. Then, unlike now, people were given an alternative: Australia joined the US, China and Canada to reach an agreement under which each country took substantial numbers of Vietnamese and Vietnam agreed to stop pushing people out of the country. Australian officials, together with those from other countries, processed people in camps in Malaysia and other South-east Asian countries and flew the successful applicants to Australia.

    Without the same sense of crisis and with refugees fleeing from many different countries, it has been impossible to replicate such an arrangement. Instead, successive Australian governments have chosen other options, all  specifically rejected by the Fraser cabinet, like turning back boats – which then Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock told Cabinet, prophetically as it turned out, “would be courting international pariah status” – offshore processing, Australian detention centres and temporary protection visas.

    Turning back boats is the one policy that has unambiguously achieved its objective of stemming the flow of boat people. But it comes with costs. For some, the danger at sea has been replaced by the risk of forced return to the country from which they fled – like the 41 asylum seekers Australia sent back to Sri Lanka, a country which, assurances of a peaceful nation to the contrary, continues to persecute Tamils, including through torture and sexual violence, according to the US State Department, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty International, among others. There is the farcical saga of the 157 asylum seekers kept on a floating Australian prison on the high seas to ensure there is no blemish on Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s record of stopping the boats. There is the damage to the relationship with Indonesia, including the likely long-term consequences for co-operation on refugee issues.

    Stopping the boats may solve a political problem in Australia but it does so by dumping the issue into other country’s laps. People smugglers will look for other countries to which to send their clients. Genuine refugees who are deterred from fleeing by Australia’s tough policy run the risk of persecution and worse.

    The other policies of deterrence in Australia have not worked. The two big flows of boat people – between 1999 and 2001 and between 2009 and 2012 – occurred after the introduction of mandatory detention as a blanket policy in 1994.

    Not only has it failed to stop asylum seekers coming by boat but it has inflicted untold damage on their lives. The evidence is consistent and unambiguous, most recently from the Human Rights Commission’s visit to Christmas Island – that people left in limbo, with no guarantee of an end point,   despair over their future and can bear the mental health scars for the rest of their lives. The effects on children, 983 who remained in detention centres at the end of May, are particularly rapid and severe.

    At least most of the people who made it to Australia by boat before the gates slammed shut are now either living in the community on bridging visas or in community detention. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison wants to implement a form of temporary protection visas for those found to be refugees.  With no commitment that the visas will be renewed or that they will not be sent back, it is another form of enforced limbo, leading to the same spiral of despair and mental illness. Most of them have been denied the right to work, creating yet another source of despair. Jane McAdam, professor in international refugee law at the University of NSW, describes it to The Drum as “creating a broken future citizenry”.

    Legislation introduced last month by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison sets up yet more hurdles for asylum seekers. One measure lifts the threshold for people at risk of torture applying for so called complementary protection (an alternative to refugee status) to 50 per cent. “In reality it means that if even an asylum seeker has a 49 per cent chance of being tortured, Australia will still send them home,” says McAdam.

    She was one of 35 experts from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, together with federal MPs who met a fortnight ago to look at future policy. The details of their discussions are confidential until a report is released later this year but a discussion paper http://cpd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Final-Policy-Paper-Beyond-Operation-Sovereign-Borders-03.06.14.pdf that was fed into the process points to a better way forward.

    It suggests detention should be kept to an absolute minimum, given the harm it causes. Asylum seekers should be given firm timelines for processing their claims, even though it might take three years to make decisions, given the large numbers involved. In the meantime, they should have work rights and health and welfare safety nets. If those found to be refugees are granted only temporary protection initially, there should be a defined process leading to permanent residence. Those not found to be refugees should receive reintegration help when returned to their countries.

    Because of the harsh condition in Nauru and ManusIsland, claims there should be processed within a year. As well, asylum seekers should be allowed some freedom of movement outside the detention centres. Better co-operation with other countries in the region should include more funding to help other governments support asylum seekers.

    These and other proposals would be steps towards restoring our standing as a nation to which many Australians, including Liberals, aspire – one that was among the first under the Menzies government to adopt the Refugee Convention and that Menzies described in the same broadcast in 1959: “It is a good thing that Australia should have earned a reputation for a sensitive understanding of the problems of people in other lands; that we should not come to be regarded as people who are detached from the miseries of the world.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. Suffer the little children to come unto me…

    Well, not so if they are Palestinian children or asylum seeker children in our detention centres.

    At last counting there were 1,230 Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of 3,000 or more air and artillery strikes. 56 Israelis have died. Close to 1,000 of those Palestinians killed were civilians, including children. Only three Israeli civilians died. Just imagine the outcry of the Israeli lobby if those figures were reversed and 1000 Israelis had been killed… Clearly the Israel lobby and many others don’t regard Palestinian civilians and children of equal value to their own.

    In her article ‘Grief grips Gaza’ in the SMH on August 2, Ruth Pollard tells the searing story of the carnage in Gaza. For link to story, see below.

    http://www.smh.com.au/world/grief-grips-gaza-20140801-3czlw.html

    The Israelis and their apologists around the world, including President Obama and Prime Minister Abbott, say that Israel has a right to defend itself. That is true, but it is only a very small part of the truth. They refuse to honestly admit that the core of the problem in Palestine is that land was stolen by Israel from the Palestinians in 1967. There will be no peace without justice. There will be no justice until Israel withdraws from the land it has stolen from the Palestinian people.

    But whilst this political impasse continues with the support of the Israeli lobby, the people of Palestine are suffering an appalling fate.

    Closer to home we have also had a searing account of the treatment of children in our detention centres. The Human Rights President, Professor Gillian Triggs has told us of the misery and trauma of children in our detention centres. She has been vividly supported by Elizabeth Elliott who is Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Sydney and Consultant Paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Sydney. She accompanied Professor Triggs to Christmas Island. Professor Elliott has described the mental and physical symptoms of disease of children in detention where they are beyond health and hope. She has spoken of escalating rates of mental ill health. The distress was expressed as overwhelming sadness and hopelessness and manifest most dramatically by the high prevalence of self-harm in young mothers and psychological symptoms in their children.

    Professor Elliott described how the children expressed their mood through drawings. These drawings were bleak and about guns, barbed wire and tears.

    By way of contrast, my wife and I visited the Archibald Prize exhibition last week which featured the ‘Young Archies’ – portraits by 5 to 15 year olds. These beautiful portraits were in such contrast to what Professor Elliott has shown us by children on Christmas Island. The Young Archies of the same age as the asylum seekers drew beautiful portraits of people they loved and who loved them – mainly family. The contrast between the two lots of drawings highlighted very graphically the trauma we are inflicting on children in our care. And to think that Scott Morrison is the legal guardian of these children in detention!

    There is not just institutional violence against children in the Catholic Church and other institutions. It is happening now in our detention centres, this very day.

    For God’s sake, for the children’s sake and for our own sake, stop this inhumanity both in Gaza and in our own detention centres. The tears of the children will not wash away our guilt. At the very least we should stop wringing our hands and do something about it.

  • Refugee success

    In recent years we have been getting a diet designed to diminish, denigrate and demonise asylum-seekers and refugees.

    We have lost a sense of proportion and the enormous contribution which refugees have made to this country.

    I have set out below links to information and articles which describe the remarkable way in which we have accepted refugees in the past and the way that they have helped build Australia. It is a thrilling story. These links are provided courtesy of the Refugee Council of Australia. Some of the information may be a few years old but the stories are current. John Menadue

     

    http://refugeecouncil.org.au/r/rpt/2010-Contributions.pdf 

    http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/strive/they-came-they-conquered-20130419-2i4wf.html   

    http://www.21stcenturynews.com.au/refugees-great-australian-entrepreneurs/

     

  • Malaysia, Manus, Nauru and offshore processing.

    I have not always held the view that asylum seekers who come to Australia could be transferred and processed in another country. I changed my mind on that partly because of the rapid increase in boat arrivals after the Agreement with Malaysia fell over in 2011. The large number of boat arrivals was reducing public support for a generous and humane refugee program.

    I came to the view that what was important is that asylum seekers are treated with humanity and that the process is fair and efficient. The issue of where that processing occurs, on shore or offshore is a secondary issue.

    For the present we have comprehensively lost the argument of opposition to offshore processing of boat arrivals

    I also supported the proposed Malaysian Agreement for two other reasons. First, I saw it as part of an important building block in regional cooperation. Secondly, the UNHCR was prepared to work with us in the proposed arrangement with Malaysia. The UNHCR does not support the transfers to Manus (PNG) and Nauru and the processing in those countries.

    Unfortunately the agreement with Malaysia was made impossible by the combined support of the Greens and the Coalition in the Senate to block amendments to the Migration Act. The action of the Coalition and the Greens in the Senate was supported by refugee advocates across Australia. .

    The collapse of the Malaysian Agreement was the turning point. We have been on a slippery slide ever since. Boat arrivals quadrupled as a result of the High Court decision and the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement. In the second half of 2013 asylum seekers arriving by boat were running at a rate of over 40,000 per annum. We may wish it otherwise but no Australian Government can keep intact a generous humanitarian refugee program with boat arrivals at over 40.000 pa. At the peak of the Indo China outflow the largest number of people arriving by boat was 1423 people in 1977/78. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement it was almost thirty times higher.

    My own view is that the Fraser Government could not have sustained our generous acceptance of Indo Chinese refugees if boat arrivals had been anywhere near the rate the Rudd government faced in mid-2013. To think otherwise is kidding ourselves. I was Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs for some of the time involved

    The failure of the Malaysian Agreement triggered Manus and Nauru.

    The UNHCR has a long history of support for the transfer of asylum seekers in appropriate circumstances. Late last year the UNHCR issued a ‘Guidance Note on Bilateral and Multilateral Transfer Arrangements of Asylum Seekers’. It set out clear conditions, including important issues of non-refoulment and protection of the rights and the safety of asylum seekers in the country to which they were to be transferred.

    In the Melbourne Age on 13 December last year, Arja Keski-Nummi and I outlined a system of ‘effective protection’ that should govern any transfers of asylum seekers in our region. We set down several important criteria.

    • All countries should commit to the principle of non-refoulment.
    • Provide asylum seekers with a legal status and access to work and education.
    • Work to help not only displaced people but also host communities.
    • Increase our refugee intake from our region.
    • Work with partners in the region in association with UNHCR to create an atmosphere of safety and trust.

    Clearly few of the conditions have been met in the arrangements with PNG and Nauru. Importantly, the UNHCR will not cooperate in our arrangements with either country.

    We need to think again about total opposition to transfers and regional processing. That opposition has led us into a tragic cull de sac

    A way to minimize the damage to asylum seekers and our own credibility is to now press for such things as

    • Increasing the annual “regular” refugee intake to 25,000 from its present 13,750.
    • Negotiate Orderly Departure Agreements with Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. The governments in those countries are likely to welcome the departure of some of their opponents. In 1983 we negotiated an ODA with Vietnam under which 100,000 Vietnamese came to Australia without risky journeys.
    • Develop alternate migration pathways e.g. 457 visas for Iranians. There is often a blurred line between refugees and persons fleeing for economic reasons.
    • Wind back mandatory detention which is cruel and expensive.It punishes but does not deter as we have seen time and time again. Stopping boat arrivals in recent months is not because of mandatory detention. It is not because of Operation Sovereign Borders. It is because of government policy that no boat arrivals will ever be settled in Australia. That is the deterrent.
    • Allow asylum seekers in the community to work

    We may indulge ourselves with tears and criticism over what has happened but we need to apply ourselves where improvement is possible to help people in great need. It will require political pragmatism and compromise.

  • Creating a Long-Term Framework for Asylum Seeker Policy

    Last Friday 11 July 2014, I attended a roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra to discuss possible actions that could be taken to find a way out of the present divisive and harsh treatment of asylum seekers. The media release following that roundtable is reproduced below. The roundtable drew on  discussion paper ‘Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders’, prepared by Peter Hughes and Arja Keski-Nummi. That discussion paper can be found by clicking on my website at the top of this page. The paper is described on the website as ‘Final Policy Paper – Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders’.  John Menadue.

    High-level Roundtable held at Parliament House, Canberra

    A diverse group of 35 high-level policymakers and experts, including a former Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, a strategist from Malaysia, and parliamentarians from three of the four major parties, met all day Friday 11 July to discuss a long-term framework for Australia’s asylum seeker policy.

    Jointly organised by Australia21, the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW, and the Centre for Policy Development, the roundtable was conducted under the Chatham House Rule.

    Members of the Steering Committee, Bob Douglas, Jane McAdam and Travers McLeod, said today:

    “This roundtable marked the start of a new conversation about a complex policy area that has been a political hot potato for too long. It aims to be a contribution which is helpful to all sides of the political spectrum and which reflects Australian values.”

    Participants recognised there is no panacea in this debate, and that a focus on politics over policy is unhelpful. They noted that forced migration is a global phenomenon, not something that Australia can control on its own, nor is asylum seeker policy one that should be viewed in isolation from other aspects of national and foreign policy. The ultimate goal was to consider how Australia could facilitate a sustainable immigration policy that balances protection, safety, transparency and prosperity.

    Discussion paper released today

    The roundtable drew on a discussion paper ‘Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders: A Long-Term Asylum Policy for Australia’ prepared by two former senior Immigration Department officials, Peter Hughes and Arja Keski-Nummi, working with the Centre for Policy Development. Released today, the paper suggests pathways to better policy responses for the future. Drawing on lessons from the past, it examines the evidence, including the rate of irregular maritime arrivals and the regional implications of refugee flows, including the way refugee policy has evolved in Australia since asylum seekers first began arriving by boat in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

    Common ground at the roundtable

    Contributions at the roundtable were frank, respectful and constructive. Fresh positions were adopted. Although the participants in this first roundtable did not seek to reach consensus on a new policy, some important areas of common ground did emerge:

    • While emphasising that Australia must respect its international legal obligations, the roundtable also recognised that the community wants reassurance that Australia retains control over who becomes Australian citizens and under what circumstances.
    • Participants stressed the importance of implementing fair, transparent and efficient refugee status determination procedures, wherever processing takes place. They supported raising Australia’s humanitarian intake, perhaps set as a percentage of our annual migration intake.

    Media  Release – 13 July 2014

    • Participants expressed concern at the militarisation of current approaches, and emphasised the need to build regional protection capacity and foster bilateral partnerships built on trust and respect.
    • There was support for extending the rights available to asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of their protection claims, including the right to work, and for phasing out mandatory detention.
    • Participants recommended measures to expedite the processing of particular cohorts of claimants, and encouraged new community initiatives, especially in regional Australia, that bring Australians into direct contact with refugees and use their skills to help rehabilitate depressed areas.
    • The participants are committed to creating a ‘second track’ dialogue that will engage the community, policymakers, experts and politicians in rethinking our approach.
    • Finally, it was noted that any new approach must use language carefully, recognising the humanity of those in search of protection.

    A full report on this project will be released later in 2014.

    Attendees

    Paris Aristotle AM,  Adam Bandt MP, Paul Barratt AO, Admiral Chris Barrie AC, Father Frank Brennan SJ AO, Julian Burnside AO QC, The Hon Fred Chaney AO, Dr Joyce Chia, Noel Clement, Dr David Corlett, Senator Sam Dastyari, Professor Bob Douglas AO, Erika Feller, Ellen Hansen, Dr Claire Higgins, Peter Hughes, Associate Professor Mary Anne Kenny, Arja Keski-Nummi, Dr Anne Kilcullen, David Lang, Ben Lewis, Libby Lloyd AM, The Hon Ian Macphee AO, Professor Robert Manne, Professor Jane McAdam, Dr Travers McLeod, John Menadue AO, Right Reverend Professor Stephen Pickard, Reverend Elenie Poulos, Paul Power, Ambassador Wiryono Sastro Handoyo, Jo Szwarc, Angus Taylor MP, Oliver White and Steven Wong.

    Media contacts             

    Bob Douglas
     Australia 21
     Tel: 0409 233 138, email: bobdouglas@netspeed.com.au

     Professor Jane McAdam
    Andrew & Renata Kaldor
    Centre for International Refugee Law
    Tel (02) 9385 2250, email j.mcadam@unsw.edu.au

    Travers McLeod
    Centre for Policy Development
    Tel: 0487 302 927; email: travers.mcleod@cpd.org.au

    About the organisers 

    Australia21 is a non-partisan, non-profit, registered research organisation which seeks to develop and promote new frameworks for understanding and acting on complex questions that are important to Australia’s future.

    The Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW is the world’s first academic research centre dedicated to the study of international refugee law and policy.

    The Centre for Policy Development is an independent and non-partisan think tank which develops and promotes policy proposals to help Australia thrive and lead in a fast-changing global environment over the long-term.

  • Tony Smith. Singing out for asylum seekers.

    Recent poll results that show rising support for the Abbott Government’s approach to border security are disturbing even if not entirely surprising. Asylum seekers have been detained offshore, out of general sight and conveniently out of mind for those Australians who prefer not to think about the issue, and the Labor Opposition has consistently failed to offer any decent alternative. Given that refugee advocates have had the better of the Government on details of truth and on virtually every moral and economic argument, they might well be wondering what they must do to convince Australians that our approach to asylum seekers is shameful and urgently in need of change.

    While advocates must maintain the arguments and keep pressure on government to tell the truth about what is happening in our proxy prisons, other approaches also have the potential to appeal to the popular imagination. Writers, visual artists, dancers and musicians are all playing important roles in the campaign to make Australian policy more just, humane and positive. The CD Reclaim Your Voice: Stopping the Punishment of Asylum Seekers deserves recognition as an important addition to this campaign. The album of 18 very strong and moving tracks was assembled and produced by Andy Busuttil, whose musical skill is matched by his compassion towards asylum seekers.

    There are clear messages in these 18 tracks, each of which demands attention for its sincerity and power. For example, Blindmans Holiday sings the late Alistair Hulett’s ‘Behind Barbed Wire’ which presents internment as a measure of our own fears and a mutual constraint: it is we who ‘retire behind barbed wire’. Just as Hulett’s song is now a classic, the prolific Shortis and Simpson point out that their ‘Detainee’ was written twelve years ago but there is no sign that our understanding and compassion have increased during the twenty-first century.

    Spike Flynn’s beautiful ‘Further On Down the Line’ speaks of the hope that refugees must hold in order to survive. The down side is that it reminds us that we are effectively their only hope. The Bridge Project – including Andy Busuttil – tell the tragic tale of a man from Lebanon who witnessed the drowning of his eight children and pregnant wife between Indonesia and Christmas Island. In ‘Fruit of the Earth’ Andy recites the poem of Hossein Babahmaadi who was forcibly returned to Iran after enduring the ‘hell hole’ of Manus Island for three months. Kavisha Mazzella’s mother escaped Rangoon when it was bombed by the invading Japanese military. ‘May I Be A Raft’ is her Bodhissatvas-inspired prayer for asylum seekers.

    In ‘The Journey’ Christina Mimmochi sings of the ‘nameless, faceless refugee’ asking for our assistance. She laments the way that the news seems to be always the same, with a list of the ways that we disappoint them and eventually ourselves. She asks simply whether Australia will play its part in relieving the distress of some fraction of the millions cast adrift by the failure of politicians or whether we have lost our national heart. Here we sit ‘girt by sea’ and dare to judge people who have never known the peace and prosperity we enjoy by the accident of where we were born.

    Contributors to Reclaim Your Voice use a wide variety of musical sub-genres. As well as Ben Iota’s hip-hop and Getano Ban’s reggae ‘Stop Da Boats’ there are pieces that would be fine additions to blues, folk or rock albums. There is also wide variety in instrumentation thanks to Andy Busuttil’s skilful mixing and the donation of time and skills by session musicians.  He can be contacted at.. andy@bluemountainsound.com.au  All proceeds from the sale of the album go to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. www.asrc.org.au

    If there is a most commonly occurring term it is ‘humanity’. The songs and verse appeal to the listener to respond to asylum seekers with a greater sense of our shared humanity. In dealing with this issue, refugee advocates know we are not alone but sometimes knowing is not enough. Reclaim Your Voice operates on an emotional level, helping us to feel we are in excellent company. The warmth and strength on offer in Reclaim Your Voice should open the hearts of many of those people who have closed their minds. While the contributors to this excellent album speak from their hearts, Reclaim Your Voice is not a despairing cry but a hopeful demand for action.

     

    Tony Smith is a former academic, regular contributor to Eureka Street, Australian Review of Public Affairs and Australian Quarterly. He is now a keen “folkie”

  • Elenie Poulos. Morrison’s Vision of the ‘National Interest’ Does Us No Good.

    The parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible (Luke, chapter 10) has become common place and almost clichéd in Christian conversations about the current Australian Government’s increasingly cold-hearted and abusive responses to asylum seekers. Christian conversations in the public space about this issue matter because the Minister for Immigration has made much of his Christian faith over the years (his first speech to the Parliament is worth a read). The Samaritan, of course, stopped to help a Jewish man (a traditional enemy) who was robbed, beaten and left by the side of the road to die. Two Jewish priests had already crossed the road to avoid the beaten man. We can confidently assume that the priests crossed the road because they deemed it not in their interest to stop and help. It was a foreigner, an outsider, who provided the care that was needed.

    Last week, the Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, in a flagrant move to circumvent the rule of law, announced that he would personally be assessing every request for permanent protection by an asylum seeker or refugee and make his decision against ‘a national interest test’. This test is set negatively, that is, the conditions describe what will not be deemed in the national interest. Those conditions include not doing anything that would: send a signal to people smugglers that they can still advertise potentially good results from the use of their services; negatively affect our relationships with our partners in the region; undermine the confidence we all have in the Government’s resolve to force ‘an orderly’ system into being and protect our borders; or been seen to reward people who don’t follow the rules.

    It is disheartening to say the least, that in the context of our humanitarian program and our obligations under the Refugees Convention to protect people regardless of their mode of arrival, there is nothing positively framed in this ‘national interest’ test.

    I’ve been working as a refugee advocate on behalf of the Uniting Church in Australia for over 12 years. In terms of public policy reform, it has been consistently frustrating and all too often demoralising. I have watched the progressive demonisation of asylum seekers who come by boat by both the Liberal and Labor parties for the purpose of base political gain and seen how the political rhetoric of ‘illegals’, ‘queue jumpers’ and border security have hardened the hearts of so many Australians. The militarisation of our response to what is a humanitarian problem has proved incredibly popular. It is unlikely that this latest move will raise a ripple among most voters. It must be said, however, that this explication of the ‘national interest’ is profoundly impoverished at best and at worst morally bankrupt.

    I don’t agree with, but I understand the classic neoliberal economic ideology that underpins the Abbott’s Government’s approach to every area of public policy. I do not understand what continues to drive Mr Morrison to increasingly creatively cruel responses to asylum seekers who come by boat; and I do not understand how the tests for permanent protection he is now relying on can possibly be in the national interest.

    It is not in the national interest to create a society in which people’s hearts are so hardened to the needs of those (relatively few by global standards) who come to us seeking care and protection. A robust, fair, efficient and transparent refugee status determination system, open to independent and judicial review, would identify those who do not have these needs. An approach which recognised the reality of the situations from which people are fleeing could inspire the growth of an outward-looking nation, making seriously hard-working and positive contributions to the development of peace in our world. Surely that would be in the national interest!

    It is not in the national interest for a country’s citizens to be supportive of policies deliberately designed to punish and break people. These policies are causing life-long harm to vulnerable, powerless people. There are too many ways for asylum seekers fleeing torture and persecution to die, including the tragedy of dying on a leaky boat but this Government can no longer claim that it is primarily concerned about saving people. Sending Tamil asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka without proper consideration of their protection claim risks their lives in just as real ways as people smugglers do. For asylum seekers kept captive in our detention centres and especially the horrendously harsh prison camps of Manus Island and Nauru, the slow, agonising torture they are suffering will, for many of them, affect the rest of their lives. And we have already seen the violent death of one man and the critical and permanent injuries done to others as a direct result of the abusive conditions of entirely unsuitable locations. Surely it would be in the national interest to be a society which responded with generosity and hospitality to those who knock on our door, especially the needy uninvited.

    It is not in the national interest for Australia to be regarded in the region as a bully who can buy its way out of the international and moral responsibilities it has, shifting what is a small ‘problem’ for us, onto the poorest, most insecure countries around us. Australia’s international relationships have already been damaged. What would be in Australia’s national interest would be to start turning this around with a show of good faith such as dramatically increasing (not reducing) our refugee resettlement intake from the region and working cooperatively with other countries to find long-term durable solutions that focus on protection and uphold people’s human rights rather than abusing them.

    It is also not in the national interest for such secrecy on the part of a democratically elected Government about how it’s implementing its policies. It is in the national interest for our governments to be open, transparent and accountable to the people they are elected to serve.

    Quite some time ago, I stopped expecting that our asylum seeker policies couldn’t get any worse but with the potential deliberate refoulement of Tamil asylum seekers and this new definition of the national interest surely we must be close to hitting rock bottom. 

    Elenie Poulos is the National Director of Uniting Justice Australia, the national policy and advocacy unit of the Uniting Church. She is an ordained minister of the Uniting Church.

  • Elaine Pearson. The civil war may have ended, but not the persecution.

    What’s happening to boatloads of Tamil asylum seekers on the Indian Ocean? Allegations that Australian authorities have intercepted at least two Tamil boats and handed them over to the Sri Lankan navy after only brief telephone interviews are extremely troubling. Until now, the Australian government has neither confirmed nor denied these allegations – giving the now long-tired excuse of secrecy around all operational matters concerning border security. 

    If Tamils are being handed over to the Sri Lankan armed forces, then the Australian government may well end up with blood on its hands. Sri Lanka has a long and well known record of repression and abuses by its security forces. The UN has implicated the Sri Lankan armed forces in war crimes during the 27-year conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Human Rights Watch has also documented the Sri Lankan authorities’ use of torture and rape against people suspected of links to the LTTE after the conflict, including those returned as failed asylum seekers from countries such as Australia.

    Given such evidence of torture of returnees, it was always peculiar that Australia used the Orwellian “enhanced screening” procedure for Sri Lankans arriving by boat – essentially a fast-tracked deportation procedure after a cursory interview.  Now, it appears such interviews may be occurring by teleconference from the boats. This practice, without access to due process and access to lawyers, is unlawful in light of Australia’s obligations under international law.

    The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) maintains that identification and processing of asylum seekers is “most appropriately carried out on dry land.” The agency notes that shipboard processing often fails to meet procedural standards for determining refugee status, including the failure to provide adequate access to interpreters, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of interviews, access to counsel, and lack of appeal. In addition to these considerations, people who have been interdicted often are dehydrated, exhausted, traumatized, and fearful of authorities; they are usually in no condition to articulate refugee claims.

    If Australia is transferring asylum seekers into the hands of the Sri Lankan navy without adequately reviewing their claim this amounts to refoulement – sending someone back to a country where their life or freedom may be threatened or where they would face a real risk of torture or other ill-treatment.

    Australia may want to protect its borders, but it should not risk being complicit in torture by sending Tamil asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka without a proper process to assess the legitimacy of their claims. Australian authorities need to come clean about what is happening at sea and give asylum seekers all the rights they are entitled to under international law.

    Elaine Pearson is the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Australia.

  • Kerry Murphy. The four questions quiz for refugees.

    When Malaysian Flight MH370 disappeared, the Australian Government made a major contribution towards the international search operation.  Almost daily there were announcements by Prime Minister Abbott and other Ministers about new information they were checking and hopes of finding the plane.  Media accompanied the air force on the search and the Australian contribution was a genuine effort as part of an international search mission. 

    What a contrast when a boat or two of Sri Lankan Tamils arrives seeking our protection. Minister Morrison refuses to even acknowledge there is a boat or two.  The refuses to comment on ‘on water matters’.  Then we hear there is a possibility the asylum seekers will be returned to Sri Lanka, after they are asked four questions, three of which are about identity.

    Under international refugee law, the worst possible thing you can do is to return someone to a country where they could be persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.  That is called the non-refoulement obligation.  The fact that only one question is asked about why they came to Australia, and done in circumstances not conducive to seeking information but ticking a box so we can send them home, is a serious indictment of how Australia adheres to its international obligations.

    We do not know exactly what happened, because it is all too secret.  However some information has come out.  The Labor party have unclean hands on this because they were using a similar process for ‘enhanced screening’ of Sri Lankans in late 2012.

    Many Sri Lankans were returned to Sri Lanka under Labor without a careful and thorough investigation of their case.  There is no way you could simply write off someone just because they give a poor answer to the final of four questions.  This is about our international obligations, not some pub trivia quiz knockout.

    UNHCR has criticised the ‘return oriented environment’ on Manus Island and this process shows the same focus on sending people home and stopping the boats, regardless of the seriousness of the claims.   If someone manages to raise strong protection claims, what happens then?  Are they taken to Manus, Nauru?  Who decides they have raised strong enough claims and what criteria are used?  Is there some checking process to ensure no mistakes are made?

    The four question quiz seems totally inadequate for assessing someone’s claims for protection, and there are no apparent safeguards.  If someone seeks legal advice or help, what happens?  It is all too secret to tell us.

    The Prime Minister then comes out and tells us how good Sri Lanka is now since the end of the brutal 30 year conflict:

    ”But I want to make this observation, Sri Lanka is not everyone’s idea of the ideal society but it is at peace . . . a horrific civil war has ended. I believe that there has been a lot of progress when it comes to human rights and the rule of law in Sri Lanka.”

    Sorry Prime Minister but that is not the correct legal test.   It seems DFAT are not aware it is so calm either. The Smart Traveller website warns against travel to Sri Lanka and says:

    • We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Sri Lanka at this time because of the unpredictable security environment.
    • Security forces maintain a visible presence throughout the country. Military and police checkpoints are present along some roads and road closures can occur without warning.
    • You should avoid all demonstrations and large public gatherings as they may turn violent or be a target for politically-motivated attacks. Police have used tear gas in response to protests.
    • In the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, which includes Mannar, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, Kilinochichi and Jaffna Districts, post-conflict security force activity is ongoing.[2]

    There are reports from Human Rights agencies and UNHCR about serious human rights concerns in the troubled island of Sri Lanka.  These include reports of arbitrary arrest, assault and torture.  It is progress from being shot straight away maybe, but still far from a human rights paradise.

    Australia has shown it is generous when it comes to helping with disasters such as the tsunami in Indonesia, helping find MH370, and many others.  Sadly, when it comes to people arriving by boat seeking our protection we have a major blind spot. Tragically, a country that does have a reasonable record in helping refugees and respecting human rights is trashing its reputation for a three word slogan.

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who practices in immigration and refugee law.

     

  • Kerry Murphy. More punishment for asylum seekers and refugees.

    “As a young boat people refugee, I arrived here 36 years ago with nothing but an invisible suitcase filled with dreams, [with] a dream to live in a peaceful, safe and free country and to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.” said the new Governor of South Australia Hue Van Le OAM.  He arrived on a boat in Darwin back in 1978, a ‘boat person’ from Vietnam, or an ‘íllegal’ as Scott Morrison would prefer. Mr Le and his family were accepted as refugees and granted permanent residence. The announcement was made public, appropriately just after refugee week.

    On World Refugee day (20 June) the High Court held that the limit on granting permanent visas for refugees in Australia announced by Minister Morrison on 4 March was invalid.  The Court held it conflicted with an obligation in the Migration Act to decide protection visa cases within 90 days, a provision inserted under the Howard Government in 2005.   At the time, the Howard Government stated ‘that decisions on protection visa applications should be made in a timely and efficient manner so as to provide greater transparency and certainty for protection visa applicants.’

    It seems this objective to provide ‘greater transparency and certainty’ is no longer the view of the Coalition in Government.  Now the focus is on punishment with a policy that resembles a ‘fundamentalist belief’ rather than a properly articulated and balanced system.  The obsession with people on boats is remarkable and has driven the Coalition especially under Morrison.  It seems that there is nothing that people arriving by boat could do that would improve their image with the Government apart from taking money and going home to face the persecution they fear.

    The recent changes announced yet again to our refugee process illustrate the obsession in punishment and deterrence rather than a fair system that seeks to ensure our international obligations and human rights are respected.  The innocuously named Migration Amendment (Protection and Other Measures) Bill 2014 is not all bad, but you have to look hard amongst the 38 pages of Bill and 73 pages of explanatory memorandum to find anything positive.

    There are a number of key issues of concern and space restricts the ability to provide a full commentary so it may be better to focus on the major points.  Refugee determination is a complex process of fact finding but this Bill tries to simplify the process to enable more refusals, not to make it easier for refugees.  On 31 March the Minister announced that money provided like legal aid to assist applicants prepare their cases would be cut off for all arriving by boat, and also cut off entirely for those in the review process.  This Bill has several measures which make competent representation more important for applicants who do not speak English, and may be traumatised by experiences in their home country, or even the boat journey to Australia

    It proposes a requirement that an applicant ‘specify all particulars of their claim and supporting evidence to Immigration and if they raise new claims or provide new evidence to the Review Tribunal, there is a rebuttable presumption against their credibility.  Commonly it can take some time to get a full story from an asylum seeker and the short time to prepare and present cases in detention takes many dangerous short cuts. The system we have is inquisitorial or investigative, not adversarial however this proposal makes the process more likely an adversarial one, especially for unrepresented or poorly represented applicants flailing their way through the complexity of Australian refugee law.

    Another change is a requirement to refuse a case where a person has no identity documents or has destroyed them.  It is common for people to have few identity documents but the detail they can provide about themselves, their family and where they lived helps satisfy decision makers as to identity.  Some people have even been asked to get identity documents from their Government, despite their cases still being on review or appeal, or their limited funding to pay rent and food in the community could be removed.  This again shows the ‘return oriented environment’ referred to by UNHCR when discussing Manus detention centre that is a theme of this government.

    A third major change is the change in the threshold for protection under Complementary Protection (CP).   CP covers our non return obligations under the Convention Against Torture and ICCPR.  The current threshold test is the same as the Refugee test- a real chance.  This test was explained in a US Supreme Court case as like the ancient Roman punishment of decimation – killing one in ten.  If you are in the group of ten and you know one will be killed, you have a well-founded fear, and there is a real chance you could be the one.  Unlike a probability test, which is better than 50% which is the test the Government wants. Making the test a probability one increases the risk of someone facing serious harm or persecution and is at odds with similar laws in a number of countries including the UK and New Zealand. It makes protection less likely and the risk of the refugee suffering harm on return more likely.

    It is expected there will be more changes to reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) despite the overwhelming social and psychological evidence against TPVs.  TPVs are another obsession of this Minister.  Sadly for refugees, the future is bleak and vilification and demonization continues.  Maybe there is some hope with the appointment of Mr Le as Governor for as he says,  “This appointment, however, says much more about our society than about me. It sends a powerful message affirming our inclusive and egalitarian society.”

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who specialises in Immigration and Refugee law.

     

  • Xenophobia and strange behaviour over boats.

    UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres criticises Australia’s ‘strange’ obsession with boats

    Excerpts from his address and answers to questions at UNHCR  NGO  consultations, Geneva, 17 June, 2014.  

    I think it is .. important to underline that, especially from the perspective now of refugee protection, we are facing also the development in several parts of the world of manifestations of xenophobia and similar other problems – Islamophobia, racism – that are particularly worrying. If you analyse the result of the last European elections, you have seen that xenophobic parties made remarkable increases in the number of votes. And even from the point of view of, for instance, borders, we see, in several situations in the world, borders being closed. We see it in Egypt. We see it in Bulgaria. We see it in Australia. We see it in many other parts of the world – and manifestations of xenophobia at the same time targeting refugees in communities in very dramatic circumstances. The plight of Somalis for instance in many countries, including in African countries, is a very dramatic demonstration of this dimension…..

    We will not fail to provide our colleagues the financial and other aspects of the capacity to go on monitoring when allowed the situation in Nauru but also in Papua New Guinea and eventually, if that will be the case, in Cambodia. This is something that we have been very worried about. The findings that were presented about Nauru clearly underline that Nauru is not a place where adequate protection can be granted. This is quite obvious. We insist that this is the responsibility of the country that receives the people and that this should be an Australian responsibility. The fact that Cambodia has signed the Convention doesn’t mean that Cambodia is an adequate space for meaningful protection for people in need. Our position has always been, as you know, very reluctant in relation to those agreements, very reserved in relation to them. Of course, we can do our best to support people in the circumstances where we might be able to operate. But that doesn’t mean that we are in agreement with this kind of extra processing of refugees without giving the guarantees that those found to be in need of protection will be accepted in countries, or be resettled to countries, where that protection can be effectively granted, which, of course, is not the case with Nauru and eventually will not be the case with Cambodia…

    The problem is when we discuss boats and there, of course, we enter into a very, very, very dramatic thing. I think it is a kind of collective sociological and psychological question. (Australia)  receives, I think, 180,000 migrants in a year. If you come to Australia in a different way, it’s fine but if they come in a boat it is like something strange happens to their minds. That problem I know that we have and it is a serious one. But if there is anything that we can help, we will do it.

     

    Mr Guterres’ address and his responses to questions can be viewed at http://new.livestream.com/4am/unhcr

    These extracts were supplied courtesy of the Refugee Council of Australia.

  • The disastrous outcome on climate change and the Greens’ culpability

    As a result of the Clive Palmer intervention, we are now unlikely to have any carbon reduction policy in place. In a few weeks’ time it is likely the Senate will vote down the Carbon Tax, its successor an Emissions Trading Scheme and Direct Action.

    The party that is chiefly responsible for this fiasco is the Greens. The same is true of its holier-than-thou approach on asylum seekers, but I will leave that for another day.

    I set out my views on the enormous damage that the Greens have done in my post of September 2 last year ‘Holier than thou … but with disastrous results’. That blog is reposted below. As Gough Whitlam put it in a different context ‘Only the impotent are pure’. The Greens have been giving us policy purity in truckloads, but on a sensible policy on climate change they have given us ‘a big fat nothing’.

    That quote is from an article today by Phillip Coorey in the AFR, page 55. The article is headed ‘Green opportunism leaves carbon policy at zero’.

    Coorey writes

    ‘The only mainstream party never to have taken a risk, never to have put any skin in the game and never to have lost a vote [over climate change] is the Greens. Throughout the entire eight year saga they have chained themselves to the altar of policy purity and watched others suffer for their ideals. The result is a big fat nothing. … Because they believed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme introduced by Rudd to be inadequate, they voted it down twice. The second time was the day after Abbott knocked off Turnbull. Liberal senators Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce realising the need to establish a foothold for carbon pricing, crossed the floor to vote with Labor. The Greens helped the Coalition kill it. … Even when Labor was dying last year and Abbott was at the gate of the lodge, vowing the carbon tax would be the first policy put against the wall and shot, the Greens attacked Rudd for cowardice when he announced … that if he was elected the fixed price would move to a much lower European linked floating price on July 1 2014, one year earlier than scheduled.

    As I mentioned in my blog of September 2 last year, the defeat of Rudd’s CPRS brought on an acrimonious and divisive debate and a denial of the science of climate change. As a result public support for a carbon tax on an Emissions Trading Scheme has plunged from 75% in 2007 to less than 40%. The Greens cannot wash their hands of this debacle. They triggered it in the Senate.

    Whether on climate change or asylum seekers, Australia is paying a heavy price for the Greens’ policy purity. They have played into Tony Abbott’s hands.

    But for the Greens an ETS would have been done and dusted five years ago.

  • Repost. Holier than thou … but with disastrous results. John Menadue

    The posturing of the Greens on the two big issues of this election, asylum seekers and climate change has given us two appalling policy outcomes. They sided with Tony Abbott in the Senate on both critical issues to defeat improved policy. The country is now paying a very heavy price. The perfect became the enemy of the good.

    The Malaysian Agreement was not ideal and needed improvement but it was an important building block towards a regional arrangement. In opposing   the processing of asylum claims in Malaysia the Greens were unremitting in their bashing of Malaysia. The collapse of the Malaysian arrangement gave oxygen to people smugglers in persuading desperate people to take dangerous sea voyages. The evidence is clear. When the High Court rejected the Malaysian Agreement in August 2011 irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. By May2012 they had increased to 1200.They have been rising rapidly ever since, reaching  over 14,000 in the six months to June 30 this year The rot set in with the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement. We have been in a downward policy spiral ever since…. Nauru, Manus, PNG, TPV’s, turn backs at sea and even buying clapped out vessels in Indonesia. The madness continues. The Greens cannot wash their hands of the havoc they have wrought. The Government attempted to amend the Migration Act to correct the problems identified by the High Court but the Greens colluded with Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison to block the amending legislation.

    Yet that Malaysian Agreement was actively supported by the UNHCR. The Director of UNHCR in Australia told the Australian Parliament on 30 September 2011 that

    “Many persons of concern to UNHCR stand to benefit from the programme (with Malaysia) by having their status regularised. It could mean all refugees in Malaysia would, in addition to their registration and ID documents from UNHCR, be registered with the government’s immigration data base and thus protected from arbitrary arrest and detention. It would also mean that all refugees in Malaysia would have the right to work on a par with legal migrants in the country. This would also entitle them to the same insurance and health schemes as documented for legal migrant workers.”

    This agreement could have been quite historic, a first between a refugee convention signatory country and a non-signatory country in our region. For Malaysia, this agreement was also quite remarkable progress. This is in a country that has a burden of much larger numbers of refugees than we have. But because the agreement with Malaysia was not enshrined in law it was discounted by the High Court. What that means is that if it wasn’t enshrined in law we could not trust the Malaysian government. What an awful outcome for refugees and our relations with the Malaysian government.

    It is true that the numbers of boat arrivals who seek asylum in Australia are miniscule in world terms. . But we have a political problem with boats that is exploited by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. The Greens abetted the coalition in the name of policy purity. Then the Labor government joined the rush to the bottom.

    The Greens must also accept major responsibility for the decline in public support for effective action on climate change. They opposed in the Senate the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme of the first Rudd Government. Belatedly the Greens then supported the Gillard Government’s legislation including the carbon tax which is much inferior to the CPRS. In the intervening years we have seen acrimonious and divisive debate and a denial of the science on climate change. As a result, public support for a carbon tax or Emissions Trading Scheme has plunged from 75% in 2007 to less than 40% today. The Greens cannot wash their hands of this debacle. They triggered it in the Senate.

    Whether on climate change or on asylum seekers, Australia is paying a very heavy price for the Greens’ policy purity. Asylum seekers are paying an even heavier price.

  • Michael Kelly SJ. The banality of evil

    Denial has many faces. Some of them are necessary. If any of us entertained what might befall us each day and the harm we could come to, we would never get out of bed. But denial also has corrosive and destructive effect if we deny the facts of our experience or refuse to be honest in questioning our own behavior.

    Watching Scott Morrison behaving like an outdated school master in telling asylum seekers what their fate is to be, as reported with the original video in the The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/morrison-asylum-seekers-should-go-home-or-face-very-very-long-detention is about as complete an example of one human being bullying and brutalizing others as you need to see.

    But what makes it even worse is the abject failure of the Minister to realize that this is not just Australia’s problem but one shared with many countries in the Asian region which needs a regional solution – something in the Australian Government’s power develop.

    Witnessing such inhumanity is not a pretty sight. It’s not so much that such behavior is the work of some calculating monster. Scott Morrison is just following Government orders and telling Australia’s armed forces and immigration officials to do the same.

    The dehumanization involved in such behavior echoes what exercised Hannah Arendt said http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt when she witnessed first hand the Jerusalem trial the Nazi mass murder, Adolf Eichmann

    A Jewish escapee herself from a Nazi camp in France, Arendt earned the opprobrium of Jews around the world for her assessment of Eichmann http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

    She thought that the common understanding of Eichmann had missed the most important fact. What upset most of her critics was her claim that anti-Semitism was not the primary motivation for his villainy.

    After observing Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, she formed the view that the man was a simple mediocrity, a bureaucrat with nothing more than ambition to progress through the Nazi hierarchy to motivate him and a complete absence of any sense of personal responsibility for the heinous acts that filled his days.

    Arendt came to believe that ideologically based interpretations of his behavior and motivation greatly exaggerated his significance and capacity and missed the most obvious fact about Eichmann: he was simply a nobody who became somebody through being part of something which just happened to be the SS murder machine.

    Far from being the monster he was made out to be, Eichmann was an instance of what Arendt called “the banality of evil.”

    His condition is something that extends well beyond the obvious infamy of Adolf Hitler and the determination of Heinrich Himmler to provide the “final solution” to the “problem” of the Jews.

    She explained the conclusion she came to about Eichmann’s banality in terms that she learnt from her professor, lover and mentor, Martin Heidegger, who described human beings as human beings if they can connect head and heart in searching thought.

    The absence of that connection is the abject inability to connect human passion and reflective thought in consciousness. The self-conscious and objective evaluation of actions according to a standard of good and bad, right and wrong defines the difference between humans and animals.

    Eichmann failed the test because, as he repeatedly said, he was “just following orders” and accepted no personal responsibility for the moral quality of the orders. In other words, Eichmann was not smart or even very efficient. He was just a bureaucratic automaton.

    Minister Morrison is getting and giving orders. He is following his orders that come from Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Cabinet. The Coalition endorses them and the Labor Party has complied with them. The military and Departmental officers are implementing a set of orders that consign 30,000 people to life destroying experiences that are justified by being “policy”.

    It’s the banality of it all that fails to raise objections from enough Australians to see the policy and the orders changed. We know what Hannah Arendt would say. But spare a thought for Harold Macmillan a British Prime Minister in the 1950s and ‘60s who observed in the 1930s that when the Establishment is of one voice about anything, you can bet they’re wrong.

  • Patty Fawkner SGS. Permissible victims.

    Permissible victims are defined as those whose life and dignity is violated with very little notice, outrage or public protest.

    Only once have I been ‘bumped off’ a plane. It was in the USA on a 6am domestic flight.

    I recall the sequence of emotions: surprise, dismay then anger as I became acquainted first-hand with the airline practice of over-booking planes to guarantee full flights. The airline officials were regretful – professionally so – for any inconvenience that I might subsequently experience.

    A minor incident with no long-lasting consequence. However, it was a sobering experience to be treated as a commodity. I was simply a ‘permissible victim’ of the airline’s policy and business plan to maximise profit.

    More broadly, permissible victims are defined as those whose life and dignity is violated with very little notice, outrage or public protest. They are the expendables, a by-product of a ‘whatever-it-takes’ mentality that enables others to achieve their goals.

    Think permissible victim and think sexual abuse victim, John Ellis, eclipsed by the Church’s concern for reputation and material assets. Think permissible victims and think asylum seekers who attempt to come to Australia by boat. “Stopping the boats” may be a worthy goal, but spare a thought for those who pay the price for this policy and are now housed in harsh, remote off-shore detention facilities for an indefinite duration.

    Permissible victims are those who lack leverage and influence, those whose potential for being forgotten and discounted is great. More often than not they are the voiceless, the faceless, the weak and the poor – in a word, those least able to defend themselves.

    One definition of a prophet is one who stands in solidarity with permissible victims. The Old Testament prophets railed against the ruthless pragmatism of a society, similar to ours, which creates ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and their ilk, including the wonderfully named Obadiah and Habakkuk, weren’t liturgical police; their message wasn’t “you’ve forgotten the rituals of the temple” or “you’re not reading the Scriptures”. Their consistent message was “You are creating permissible victims by forgetting the poor”. God doesn’t want sackcloth and ashes, holy days and sacrifices, good as these things are, says Isaiah. No, God wants us to free captives, break bonds, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked.

    This is the prophetic message, manifesto and mission of Jesus, the prophet of the Reign of God. José Pagola’s Jesus an Historical Approximation a book as refreshing as it is illuminating in exploring the pre-Easter Jesus, portrays Jesus as an itinerant preacher and healer who stands in solidarity with the permissible victims of his day. Jesus’ healings and exorcisms are signs that the reign of God had come to the most alienated sectors of society.

    Pagola says that Jesus’ behaviour was strange and provocative on two counts: he flouted the establishment’s prevailing social and religious codes of conduct, and he befriended undesirables. Jesus was shockingly inclusive, surrounding himself with society’s dregs including tax collectors and prostitutes. He fraternised with Middle Eastern ‘bogans’ and beggars, the socially marginalised and sinners. He interacted with women in culturally inappropriate ways and, my goodness, accepted them among his disciples.

    There was nothing haphazard about the way Jesus did these things, Pagola claims. Jesus was intentionally saying that God’s reign is open to everyone, with no one excluded or marginalised. God’s schema does not allow for any permissible victim. Each person is precious in God’s sight.

    Jesus’ modus operandi was extremely threatening to the priestly aristocracy. With the support of Roman officialdom they conspired to eliminate him. “It is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed,” observes ruthless Caiaphas (John 11:50). Jesus becomes the scapegoat, the permissible victim. Pragmatism reigns supreme.

    It’s all too easy to create permissible victims. We do it constantly and by diverse means.

    1. We create them when we adopt a differing scale or different criteria in assessing who is worthy of human dignity, security, access to resources and who is not. We may muse, as some commentators have done, that it’s “regrettable” that four-year-olds in Pakistan may have to die in US air strikes so that American four-year-olds do not become victims of terrorism. In the ‘war on terror’ the Pakistani four-year-olds simply become that most ugly of euphemisms, ‘collateral damage’.

    Foreigners who fly to Australia, overstay their visa and then seek asylum are deemed, by some odd Down Under logic, more worthy than those who board the proverbial leaky boat in an attempt to reach our shores.

    2. Permissible victims are less likely to be ‘one of us’ and more likely to be ‘one of them’. Would our country’s shameful indifference to the loss of life of the Siev X, which sank in international waters just south of Java on October 19, 2001, killing 146 children, 142 women and 65 men Middle Eastern asylum seekers, been as great had those on board been carrying British passports? I think not.

    3. Stereotyping and labelling creates permissible victims. Once we ascribe a person with our label of choice – “bleeding heart”, “ultra-conservative”, “red-neck” – it is easy to dismiss them and ignore their contribution. Apart from being evidence of sloppy thinking, stereotyping and labelling, it causes us to close ourselves to the unique mystery of the other. We fail to acknowledge their full personhood.

    4. Bad religion and bad nationalism create permissible victims. We build straw gods to justify political action. For decades Scripture was used to justify the apartheid regime in South Africa (for example, Romans 13:1-7). We readily recognise the false god of the Islamist suicide bomber and we see it on ‘our side’ as well. George W. Bush said that God guided his decision to bomb Afghanistan and that “God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq”. Such a god and not the God of Jesus Christ, justifies the creation and extermination of permissible victims.

    5. We create permissible victims when we make ourselves the centre of our universe. We greedily take for ourselves the greater bulk of the earth’s resources. We ravage the earth with hardly a thought for other species who share our planet home. We scapegoat, we wage war, we allow torture, and we turn a blind eye to the desperation and needs of others. We have done this in Syria and Manus Island.

    From the lofty realms of my moral high horse, I readily point the finger at those who create permissible victims. Yet honesty demands that I acknowledge how seamlessly I slip into the practice. I have betrayed and victimised as many people who have betrayed and victimised me. I have labelled others as often as they have labelled me. My contempt for others is the corollary of my self-righteousness.

    My practice can be subtle and sophisticated. It is de rigueur for me ‘to have a go’ at this person, to make that group the butt of my jokes, to rail against the treatment of this group, but not care a slither about that group, to dismiss what someone has got to say even before they’ve said it.

    What to do?

    I can try and be more mindful of the reality of permissible victims. I can choose to stand in solidarity with one particular victimised group. Rather than skimming and scanning I can commit to the careful reading of news reports for this group. I can be grateful that God’s ways are not my ways and pray for a deeper sense of kinship and empathy with others.

    I can also hope that the next time I’m metaphorically ‘bumped off’, I can try and redirect my anger away from my own self-pity and spare a thought for the real permissible victims in my world.

    I can but hope and try.

    Good Samaritan Sister, Patty Fawkner is an adult educator, writer and facilitator. Patty is interested in exploring what wisdom the Christian tradition has for contemporary issues. She has an abiding interest in questions of justice and spirituality. Her formal tertiary qualifications are in arts, education, theology and spirituality.

    This article was first published in The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters. www.goodsams.org.au


     

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  • All at sea again.

    Lt Gen Angus Campbell, the Commander of Operation Sovereign Borders is at it again highlighting the policy and political achievements of the Coalition government on asylum seekers rather than sticking to his last, and ensuring that Australian naval vessels don’t stray into Indonesian waters.

    Gen. Campbell says that as a government employee, he doesn’t comment on government policy. But apparently he has no constraint about commenting when it suits him. He declines to comment when there are embarrassing political questions. He then says they are ‘on water’ matters.

    On Tuesday this week at a speech to the Royal United Services Institute of NSW  he made two political points as reported by the Guardian.

    The first was that Australia was among the top three nations resettling refugees, according to the UNHCR. That is technically correct, but it is quite misleading. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

    There is a UNHCR resettlement program which resettled 88,578 refugees in 2012. We were ranked third behind the US and Canada in this program. This is a useful program but it is quite minor when set against the total refugee problem. In 2012 there were 15.4 million refugees in the world. There were another 28.8 million displaced persons. The numbers would have increased since then particularly with the disasters in Syria and Iraq.

    Of the 15.4 million refugees in 2012, the top five hosting countries were Pakistan 1.638 million people, Iran 868,000, Germany 590,000, Kenya 565,000 and Syria 477,000. Australia ranked number 49 in the world in hosting 30,000 refugees. Taking into account our population, we had a world ranking of 62 and on a wealth/GDP basis, we were ranked 87. That is all a long way from the third ranking that Gen. Campbell tells us about. His claim just does not bear close examination when we consider the total problem.

    The second thing that Gen. Campbell said to the Royal United Services Institute was that the policy that he was implementing in OSB had saved lives. He estimated that without OSB, up to 180 more people might have been drowned.

    Is he really suggesting that the purpose of OSB is to stop drownings? It may be a consequence but it is not the objective of OSB. The objective of OSB as Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison cannot help telling us is to ‘stop the boats’. It is not to stop drownings. Gen. Campbell’s public relations gloss is designed to hide immoral and cruel policies. If it was about saving lives at sea, the government would be nominating him for a human rights award.

    The Director General of UNHCR, Antonio Guterres, has recently spoken of our ‘strange’ phobia about boat arrivals when we ignore the 8,000 plus asylum seekers who come by air each year and, in world terms, the few asylum seekers that come to Australia. As with refugees, Australia ranks well down the list in the number of asylum seekers coming to our shores and seeking protection. That is one of the benefits of our remoteness. In 2012 the five top countries receiving asylum seekers were Turkey 325,000, Jordan 136,000, Lebanon 135,000, South Sudan 101,000 and France 98,000. Australia ranked number 20 with less than 30,000 asylum seekers coming to our shore either by boat or by plane. In relation to our population our world ranking was down at 29 and in relation to our wealth/GDP we ranked 52 in the world.

    We are nowhere near as generous as Gen. Campbell suggests in trying to justify the immoral policies which Australia is pursuing and which he is helping to implement.

  • Those Feisty Iranians

    Amongst our asylum seeker population Iranians feature very prominently. And it is not just because of Reza Barati, an Iranian asylum-seeker who was murdered at Manus Island on our watch.

    A feature of the Iranian asylum seekers, apart from their number, is that they have a reputation of being quite “pushy”. As past and current Immigration officers tell me ‘they are always in our face’. I am afraid that this view of Iranians does not help in the way they are treated. But the same qualities make them good settlers – determined and highly motivated. I wish more of our migrants were like that.

    The number of Iranian asylum seekers in Australia stands out. If we look at the figures before the Manus/Nauru ‘solution’ and Operation Sovereign Borders, we see that in the June quarter 2012, Iranian asylum seekers represented only about 10% of boat arrivals. Within a year they had risen to about 40% of boat arrivals. The actual numbers told the same story – up from 352 in June quarter 2012 to an estimated 3,600 in the June quarter 2013. Later data is not available.

    After appeal processes, over 80% of Iranians are usually found to be genuine refugees.

    There are still a lot of Iranians in detention. At the end of May this year, there were 4,016 people in Immigration Detention Facilities. 27% were from Iran, almost double the percentage for the second largest group, Vietnamese at 15%. Of the 1,081 Iranians in Immigration Detention Facilities, 255 were children. In addition to those in Immigration Detention Facilities, at the end of May this year there were another 2,955 people in the community under Residence Determination. The largest group again were Iranians with 841, or 28%.

    In addition to the large number of Iranian asylum seekers arriving, there is another reason why many remain in detention. In many cases the Iranian government will not accept returnees to Iran that have claimed refugee status in another country,been refused and are subject to deportation.

    There is obviously great pressure on Iranians to leave their country and for a variety of reasons. As I pointed out in my blog of July 28 last year

    ‘The population of Iran is increasing very rapidly. It has been referred to as a population time-bomb. The population is young (with over 60% of the population under 30). The middle class is also growing rapidly. It is well-educated. Iranians have a lot of “get up and go”. My observation is that they make very good migrants. They are determined people and perhaps for that reason they get up the nose of Immigration officials.

    They are also repressed by the mullahs but probably more importantly the sanctions imposed by the West are biting hard. Not surprisingly with population and economic pressures at home, they want to leave Iran. It must be possible to open a different migration pathway for eligible Iranians through some type of skilled migration program, perhaps a 457 visa or sponsored migration. Surely we have Australian companies that would be supportive. Iran is an important market for Australian wheat.’

    Unfortunately the migration application process is difficult and lengthy in Iran and elsewhere. As a result Iranians often decide to risk all and flee and hope that countries such as Australia will give them a new chance in life.

    In the last decade Australia has received almost 1.5 million migrants because of their skills, family connections or other special eligibility.

    We would be doing ourselves a service as well as helping young well-educated and entrepreneurial Iranians if we opened more migration opportunities for them and discourage them from making hazardous and dangerous voyages.

    Former and current Immigration officials do express quite different views about Iranian asylum seekers. The first is that they are demanding. The second is that ‘they won’t cop any shit’.  I must confess that I admire those qualities in people-being prepared to push back.

    Many Iranians would make excellent settlers in this country, even if they do not meet our refugee criteria. We need to consider alternate migration pathways for young people in Iran who are under pressure.

    Amongst our asylum seeker population Iranians feature very prominently. And it is not just because of Reza Barati, an Iranian asylum-seeker who was murdered at Manus Island on our watch.

    A feature of the Iranian asylum seekers, apart from their number, is that they have a reputation of being quite “pushy”. As past and current Immigration officers tell me ‘they are always in our face’. I am afraid that this view of Iranians does not help in the way they are treated. But the same qualities make them good settlers – determined and highly motivated. I wish more of our migrants were like that.

    The number of Iranian asylum seekers in Australia stands out. If we look at the figures before the Manus/Nauru ‘solution’ and Operation Sovereign Borders, we see that in the June quarter 2012, Iranian asylum seekers represented only about 10% of boat arrivals. Within a year they had risen to about 40% of boat arrivals. The actual numbers told the same story – up from 352 in June quarter 2012 to an estimated 3,600 in the June quarter 2013. Later data is not available.

    After appeal processes, over 80% of Iranians are usually found to be genuine refugees.

    There are still a lot of Iranians in detention. At the end of May this year, there were 4,016 people in Immigration Detention Facilities. 27% were from Iran, almost double the percentage for the second largest group, Vietnamese at 15%. Of the 1,081 Iranians in Immigration Detention Facilities, 255 were children. In addition to those in Immigration Detention Facilities, at the end of May this year there were another 2,955 people in the community under Residence Determination. The largest group again were Iranians with 841, or 28%.

    In addition to the large number of Iranian asylum seekers arriving, there is another reason why many remain in detention. In many cases the Iranian government will not accept returnees to Iran that have claimed refugee status in another country.

    There is obviously great pressure on Iranians to leave their country and for a variety of reasons. As I pointed out in my blog of July 28 last year

    ‘The population of Iran is increasing very rapidly. It has been referred to as a population time-bomb. The population is young (with over 60% of the population under 30). The middle class is also growing rapidly. It is well-educated. Iranians have a lot of “get up and go”. My observation is that they make very good migrants. They are determined people and perhaps for that reason they get up the nose of Immigration officials.

    They are also repressed by the mullahs but probably more importantly the sanctions imposed by the West are biting hard. Not surprisingly with population and economic pressures at home, they want to leave Iran. It must be possible to open a different migration pathway for eligible Iranians through some type of skilled migration program, perhaps a 457 visa or sponsored migration. Surely we have Australian companies that would be supportive. Iran is an important market for Australian wheat.’

    Unfortunately the migration application process is difficult and lengthy in Iran and elsewhere. As a result Iranians often decide to risk all and flee and hope that countries such as Australia will give them a new chance in life.

    In the last decade Australia has received almost 1.5 million migrants because of their skills, family connections or other special eligibility.

    We would be doing ourselves a service as well as helping young well-educated and entrepreneurial Iranians if we opened more migration opportunities for them and discourage them from making hazardous and dangerous voyages.

    Former and current Immigration officials do express quite different views about Iranian asylum seekers. The first is that they are demanding. The second is that ‘they won’t cop any shit’.  I must confess that I admire those qualities in people-being prepared to push back.

    Many Iranians would make excellent settlers in this country, even if they do not meet our refugee criteria. We need to consider alternate migration pathways for young people in Iran who are under pressure.

  • Emily Howie. Australia’s dangerously close relationship with Sri Lanka..

    In March 2014 the United Nations Human Rights Council established an historic and long-awaited international investigation into war crimes and human rights abuses committed during the final phases of Sri Lanka’s civil war. The resolution is widely regarded as an important step towards reconciliation and peace. In addition to establishing a mechanism for examining past violations, including the deaths of 40,000 to 70,000 civilians, the resolution establish critical monitoring of the serious ongoing human rights situation in Sri Lanka.

    Whilst the UK Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the resolution as a “victory for the people of Sri Lanka,” the Australian government stunned many observers with its vocal opposition to the resolution.

    Australia is not a member of the Council so it could not vote on the resolution. Nonetheless, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, said she was “not convinced that the resolution’s call for a separate, internationally-led investigation, without the co-operation of the Sri Lankan Government, is the best way forward at this time.” She said that the resolution did not properly acknowledge the economic growth and progress in Sri Lanka or the brutality of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

    Bishop’s comments put Australia directly at odds with some of its closest allies – the United States, UK and Canada – who supported the resolution.  Surprisingly, her comments aligned Australia with countries known for their obstructionist approach to the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council.  You could have been forgiven for thinking she was accidentally reading from the notes of the Russian, Chinese or Iranian foreign minister.

    Australia’s opposition to the Human Rights Council’s investigation aiming to achieve justice and reconciliation in Sri Lanka is counterproductive, short-sighted and extremely disappointing.

    Sadly, this position is consistent with Australia’s deteriorating approach to human rights in its foreign affairs with Sri Lanka. The Australian government claims that “engagement” with Sri Lanka, not “isolation,” is the best way forward.

    However, in reality Australia is now so closely engaged with, and dependent on, Sri Lanka to conduct border control, that Australia is increasingly unwilling to criticise Sri Lanka on any account, even when it comes to some of the most serious human rights abuses in our region.  The close relationship puts Australia at risk of violating its international human rights obligation of non-refoulement.

    A dangerously close relationship

    To understand Australia’s unprincipled position on Sri Lankan war crimes it is necessary to consider domestic Australian immigration policy.

    In the last two years over 8000 Sri Lankan people have arrived irregularly in Australia by boat and Sri Lankan authorities claim to have blocked a further 4500 people attempting to leave. These arrivals were just some of the record number of boat arrivals to Australia during that time.

    The Australian Government’s obsession with ‘stopping the boats’ and its reliance on Sri Lanka to help block people from leaving their country is the root cause of Australia’s position on accountability for Sri Lankan war crimes.

    This is nothing new. In September 2013, Australia elected a new, conservative government led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, however the previous Labor government formalised Australia’s close ties with Sri Lanka years earlier.

    Since 2009 Australia has forged a dangerously close relationship with the Sri Lankan military and police as part of Australia’s measures to prevent asylum seekers from arriving on Australian shores.

    In March 2014 the Human Rights Law Centre published a report, Can’t flee, can’t stay: Australia’s interception and return of Sri Lankan asylum seekers, detailing the way in which Australia encourages, facilitates and resources Sri Lanka to block its people from leaving the country as a part of Australian border control and anti-people smuggling operations.

    Australian Federal Police officers currently work inside Sri Lanka with their Sri Lankan police counterparts to prevent boat departures. Sri Lankan police had no “illegal migration” surveillance capacity at all until Australia established it for them in 2009.

    Australia also provides around $2 million dollars in material support to the Sri Lankan navy each year.  Recently Australia provided two patrol boats to the Sri Lankan navy to assist with on-water surveillance and interception.  Australia also shares intelligence with Sri Lankan security forces to aid the interceptions.

    Mr Abbott now describes Australia as having “the closest possible cooperation” with Sri Lanka.

    Australia’s efforts at ‘stopping boats’ are jeopardising the ability of Sri Lankans at risk of persecution to gain access to safety and asylum. The most recent data on Sri Lankan boat arrivals to Australia indicates that between 50% and 90% of Sri Lankans who flee are found to be refugees.

    Australia’s support for the Sri Lankan security forces’ interceptions increases the likelihood that Sri Lankan people fleeing persecution are exposed to torture and mistreatment. Australia is well aware of the serious human rights situation in Sri Lankan and the brutal track record of its partners. The Sri Lankan Navy is part of the military now being investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009. The Sri Lanka Police have a long and well-documented track record of torture and mistreatment in custody, including the rape of men and women.

    Refoulement

    These risks are compounded by Australia’s domestic policy of forcibly returning Sri Lankan boat arrivals in Australia without properly assessing their refugee status or monitoring their safety on return.

    Australia has forcibly returned over 1100 Sri Lankans who arrived in Australia since October 2012.

    Australia’s Immigration Minister has made it clear that his preference is for Australia to return all Sri Lankans arriving by boat.

    This means that despite evidence that the majority of Sri Lankans arriving by boat are genuine refugees, Australia bases its treatment of Sri Lankans on the politically expedient assumption that they are economic migrants.

    Australia uses a so-called ‘enhanced screening process’ for Sri Lankans that arrive by boat. Enhanced screening is a truncated assessment process in which detainees have no access to a lawyer and no independent review of the decision is available. It is a flimsy short-cut and a grossly inadequate way to handle what are potentially life and death decisions. Sri Lankans have a legal right to have their protection claims heard properly – instead Australia subjects them to a less rigorous process and thereby exposes them to harm on return.

    Australia claims that no returnees have been harmed upon return to Sri Lanka, however there is no monitoring of returnees sufficient to allow Australia to make that assessment.

    The Human Rights Law Centre obtained documents through freedom of information that show one instance where the Australian High Commission in Colombo received a complaint that a returnee had been “severely tortured.” In that case the Australian Federal Police officer based in Colombo declined an invitation from the Sri Lankan police to meet with the complainant to assess his well-being.

    This kind of monitoring is woefully inadequate considering the gravity of the complaints made. It also raises questions about the Australian government’s assertions that nobody has been harmed on return.

    Other Commonwealth nations

    Australia is not a member of the Human Rights Council, although it is a candidate for membership in 2018. It is difficult to know what position Australia would have taken if it had been required to vote on the Sri Lanka resolution.

    There was not a unitary position among Council members from the Commonwealth: Botswana and UK voted for the resolution; Kenya, Maldives and Pakistan voted against the resolution, and Namibia, South Africa and India abstained from voting. Abstentions were critical in the result as the vote was 25 in favour, 12 opposed and 12 abstained.

    Abstention may have saved Australia’s relationship with its border security partner, but the new Australian government would have failed to live up to its own human rights standards.  The government’s foreign policy, at least on paper, includes taking a robust and principled approach to human rights abuses in the Asia Pacific region. Denying access to justice to victims of some of the region’s worst war crimes can hardly be consistent with that.

    Emily Howie is the director of advocacy and research at the Human Rights Law Centre. You can follow her on Twitter @emilyhowie.

     

  • John Tulloh. Misery accomplished in Iraq as disintegration threatens.

    Perhaps dictators have their place after all. Saddam Hussein presided over Iraq for 24 years. While he was cruel and vainglorious, he generally succeeded in ensuring Iraqis stayed in line and kept the peace. He was toppled in 2003 when the U.S., with the support of Australia and other allies, invaded the country with the aim of introducing democracy and an altogether more acceptable way of life. Today his country is unravelling with astonishing speed as a small Islamic extremist group takes control of large areas with impunity. Iraq could be even on the verge of disintegration.

    Since the 2003 invasion, by the most conservative estimate, half a million people have lost their lives. They have been killed as the result of fighting throughout the country, religious violence, executions, lawlessness, random bombings and widespread other terrorism. Hundreds of thousands of people have been uprooted and forced to flee for their lives to seek refuge elsewhere in Iraq or other countries.

    President George W.Bush called the initial bombing of Baghdad a ‘shock and awe’ campaign and within six weeks proudly declared ‘mission accomplished’. Given the results 11 years on, it has proved to be as shocking and awesome on any scale of political and humanitarian disasters.

    It is all the more so when you consider the calamity now facing the Iraqi government with the fall of its second largest city, Mosul, to Islamic insurgents, who are said to be heading in the direction of Baghdad. Now Kirkuk in the north has been taken over by the Kurds who might see this as an opportunity to establish their long-desired independent homeland.

    It is a catastrophic setback for a weakened regime still trying to establish itself. That a movement – the Islamic State in Iraq in Syria (ISIS) – of said to be less than 10,000 fighters could take over a city of more than 1,500,000 people and intimidate the security forces there to shed their uniforms and flee is the humiliating reality of the state of Iraq today.

    ISIS declared it had come to ‘liberate’ Mosul. It hoisted its flag over the city. It was no colourful, reassuring victorious pennant. It was a sinister flag in the grim black and white style of the piratical skull and crossbones. Little wonder when reports said that half a million Mosul residents had fled the city. They had good reason.

    As relatively small as it is, ISIS already controls other parts of Iraq and reports says it has enforced its rule with a reign of terror, including assassinations, beheadings and amputations. It is so extreme that even its former partner. al-Qaeda, severed ties. It is reported to have attracted the interest of hundreds of foreign fighters eager to support its ambitions.

    It is a force which started in Iraq as part of al-Qaeda before splintering. It then moved into Syria during the uprising against the Damascus regime. It had no interest in working with other rebel groups in overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, but simply wanted to establish an Islamic state there. Now, with ISIS back in Iraq in a big way, it wants to eliminate the border with Syria altogether to form one state, hence its name.

    It is an unwelcome crisis for President Barack Obama whose cautious, tip-toeing foreign policy has been heavily criticised. After initial threats to take action in Syria, he decided that the tragedy there could somehow take care of itself without US involvement. But after what has transpired in the past 11 years in Iraq since the initial shock and awe and now a terrorist body of potential mass destruction and misery roaming the desert landscape, does the U.S. have any moral obligation to rescue what it created?

    Washington certainly wouldn’t want to revisit its military occupation which cost its own forces 4500 lives. Iraq has a weak and almost helpless government. Its parliament cannot even raise a quorum at a time of grave emergency. It faces rising tensions between the dominant Shiites in Baghdad and the Sunnis whom ISIS supports. Its troops seemingly have no will to do their duty. Mosul and Kirkuk, both important commercial hubs, are lost for now. And the billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on training and equipping the Iraqi military have proved a dubious investment.

    But what can the U.S. and its Western partners do? President Obama says the U.S. is considering all options short of sending in ground troops. That probably will be limited to what the U.S. can do from the air. Tony Abbott, ever eager to please, is not ruling out Australian involvement.

    So while the policy-makers wonder what to do next, spare a thought for the innocent victims of this upheaval who so often are forgotten. The estimated 500,000 Iraqis who’ve fled Mosul join four million other Iraqi refugees around the world, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. UNHCR says nine million Syrians have had to flee their homes since the uprising three years ago. About 2.5 million of them – more than the population of Brisbane – are sheltering in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and even Iraq. Their future is even more uncertain now.

    The Iraqi and Syrian borders were drawn up by Britain and France after World War One and the collapse of the Ottoman empire. Who knows, nearly 100 years on, current events may force cartographers to have to change their atlases with new borders.

    A poetic postscript: Mosul, famed for its muslin fabric, is on the Tigris River on the opposite bank from the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. Once upon a time, every Australian schoolchild learned John Masefield’s poem ‘Cargoes’. Its first verse was:

    Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,

    Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,

    With a cargo of ivory,

    And apes and peacocks,

    Sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet white wine.

    If only a tiny semblance of that charming scenario were so today.

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

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Frank Brennan SJ. Why I am not just “getting over” the boats stopping.

    Some people keep saying, “The people have spoken.  The Abbott government is right.  The boats have stopped.  So just get over it.”  I am getting a little weary of this populist refrain.  I am quite prepared to accept that the majority of Australians want the boats stopped.  Then arise the questions: how can this be done ethically? How can it be done respecting the rule of law and the sovereignty of parliament and the separation of powers?  Even the second question should be of concern to all citizens, and not just lawyers.

    The historical perspective is important. The High Court struck down the Malaysia solution. Both sides of Parliament agreed that they did not want the High Court scrutinising this sort of deal again.  So it was agreed that the scrutiny would be applied ‘with a light touch’ by both houses of parliament being able to disallow any future arrangement.  At no time did anyone suggest that it be done by the Executive with no scrutiny other than the three year ballot box which is not the rule of law but populist rule of the mob.

    Both houses waved through the resurrected Pacific solution.  A year later, Kevin Rudd then decided that he could use the existing designations for Nauru and PNG as temporary offshore processing countries as the basis for a completely new arrangement for permanent offshore resettlement countries – an arrangement which has never been scrutinised by Parliament.  Imagine if Sarah Hanson Young had stood up in the Senate back in 2012 and opposed the designation on the basis that it opened the door to permanent relocation of refugees to Nauru and PNG.  Many senators and commentators would have told her to stop being so shrill and to stop following her wild imagination and that she should get back to the matter at hand.  Presumably the government thought that the High Court was locked out.  I am still not certain about that.  And time will tell no doubt when a challenge is ultimately brought.

    But meanwhile we have an arrangement designed and put in place by the Executive without parliamentary approval and without the opportunity for parliamentary disallowance.  This is a serious democratic deficit particularly when community leaders including all our bishops (and the Pope!) are questioning the morality of what is in place.

    There is an added public policy reason for seeking the parliamentary review.  The boats have now stopped.  The Abbott government is confident that the smuggling racket is smashed and that the Indonesians are now basically on side.  So the boats will remain stopped whether or not there is any one left on Nauru or Manus Island.  So what ethical or political imperative is there for keeping people locked up in such inhumane circumstances?  When the inevitable royal commission on all this is ultimately convened, we would all save the taxpayers many millions in compensation if we could terminate the gulags as quickly as possible.  If we were serious about looking after those people, we would have sent in our own military rather than contracting the matter out to inexperienced, profit seeking corporations and the well motivated Salvos.  It is imperative that our Senators on the cross benches take a long hard look at this once they are all in place next month, for the good of the detainees, and for the good of our democracy.

     

  • Persecution of Tamils.

    Last weekend Tamil asylum seeker Leo Seemanpillai committed suicide in Geelong. His colleagues are bereft as a result. They believe that he feared deportation back to Sri Lanka and would suffer persecution. Tamil refugee advocate Aran Mylvaganam said ‘the particular area where Leo is from you are automatically branded as a Tamil Tiger sympathasiser if you get deported back to Sri Lanka and Leo had genuine fears of being tortured by the Sri Lankan army and possibly even getting killed … if he was sent back to Sri Lanka’.

    The Human Rights Law Centre released a report last month in which it expressed serious concerns first about the actions of the Sri Lankan government, supported by Australia, to stop Tamils fleeing from Sri Lanka. The second concern was that Australia’s ‘enhanced screening processes’ was denying Sri Lankans access to proper refugee status determination. The report by the Human Rights Law Centre can be found at this link:

    http://hrlc.org.au/report-launch-australias-cooperation-with-sri-lanka-to-intercept-asylum-seekers-is-in-urgent-need-of-rethink/

    John Menadue

  • Mark Isaacs. The Salvos on Nauru.

    Judging the Salvation Army’s role in Nauru is difficult. Their job was to provide humanitarian support to asylum seekers in a detention centre that was established to deter desperate people from seeking protection by subjecting them to cruel conditions. The contradictory nature of the Salvation Army’s position meant they were damned by the government if they assisted the asylum seekers, and damned by their staff if they didn’t. Despite this the employees of the Salvation Army, my colleagues, showed utmost care for the asylum seekers we worked with and implemented a wide range of programs that alleviated some of the mental pressure placed upon these people This justified the need for a humanitarian organisation to act as a service provider within detention centres.

    Having said that, my introduction to Nauru highlights several issues in the Salvation Army’s implementation of their contract in Nauru that were not confined to my initial experiences, but rather became consistent, systemic failures.

    I was hired by the Salvation Army in September 2012 to work in the Nauru Regional Processing Centre as a support worker, or ‘mission worker’. The camp had been established just two weeks prior.  The Salvation Army were desperately hiring people to fly out to Nauru on four week contracts. Accounts from members of the Salvation Army suggest that the organisation wasn’t expecting the camp to be opened so quickly, that they thought they had more time to prepare.

    I was hired without a job interview and without training of any kind. I was given no concept of what work I was about to become involved in. There was no job description or mission brief provided to staff in these early days. There was no idea of what the Salvation Army hoped to achieve by accepting the contract to run the centre. There were no clear directives to the staff in how we could meet these mysterious goals of the mission that one would assume the Salvation Army had discussed before accepting the contract. There was no education provided on the type of men we would be working with; where they came from, their cultural sensitivities, the types of stories we might hear, or why they were coming to Australia. I was given no guidance on how to work with traumatised refugees, or mentally ill clients who could be, and some proved to be, suicidal. The only advice given was to ‘go out and help the men’. My experiences were not isolated. In fact, in the first deployments, the most common characteristic of the Salvation Army support workers was an inexperience in working with asylum seekers and refugees.

    The Salvation Army have since responded to these claims by stating that the role of a support worker was to ‘fulfil unskilled duties in support of the provision of basic needs for transferees’ and that ‘support worker roles typically do not require individuals to have particular skills or experience’. The Salvos also refute my claim that I wasn’t interviewed prior to being offered a position in Nauru, suggesting that a phone interview was conducted before deploying me. I would assert that this brief phone conversation was not a sufficient format through which to assess my skills for a role as important as a support worker for asylum seekers. Having said that, the role I was taking did not require me to have ‘particular skills or experience’.

    I believe that, although the Salvation Army’s motives were admirable in accepting the brief to assist some of the world’s most desperate people, the inexperience of their managing staff in working in the refugee sector was detrimental to the well-being of the men they were contracted to care for and the workers they employed to enact this task. The statement mentioned above, provided almost eighteen months after my initial deployment, either demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the needs of asylum seekers in a place such as Nauru, or an equally complete disregard for the workers’ and the asylum seekers’ welfare.

    I believe that from day one there emerged a trend of the government pressuring the Salvation Army into submission. It was a commonly accepted view amongst my colleagues that the government would argue points of contention by threatening to ‘tear up the contract’, and the Salvation Army management would toe the line. Often this was at the expense of the asylum seekers well-being and that of Salvation Army staff. Greg Lake, former head of the Department of Immigration in Nauru, states that the Salvos were contracted by the government as the lead agency in the Processing Centre. The ramifications of the Salvos inability to assume the lead agency role meant that the humanitarian care for the men suffered.

    I can support all my claims with a number of examples, but in this blog I have only space for one.

    It took the Salvation Army over a month to hire their first professional case managers whose role it was to monitor the men’s well-being, a responsibility that we were led to believe was one of the Salvation Army’s contractual obligations. Prior to this Wilson Security assumed the responsibility of welfare services. The first two Salvo case managers were expected to establish case management practices in a camp that housed over two hundred men, the numbers increasing weekly. The impracticality of my colleague’s workload became apparent when one of her clients became involved in a prolonged hunger strike. The Department of Immigration demanded a file be presented on the client, a file that did not exist. Rather than support my colleague, Salvation Army management demanded she write a case file retrospectively.

    I believe the Salvos did not do enough to defend the human rights of the asylum seekers, and that this was a disservice, not only to the men imprisoned in Nauru, but to the Australian public who could rightly assume that the presence of a humanitarian organisation in Nauru would mean that human rights would be upheld and if those human rights were being abused, then the Salvos would voice their concerns.

    In summation, I believe that although the original motives of the Salvation Army were admirable, the implementation of the ‘Nauru mission’ suffered due to inexperience, poor preparation, and the Salvation Army’s inability to defend the asylum seekers’ human rights and handle government pressure. This resulted in a far more oppressive atmosphere for inmates that could have been avoided. Furthermore, the lack of respect shown to their own employees has left many embittered against the organisation and the experience of working in Nauru.

    Having recently been employed as a case manager for an asylum seeker settlement service in Sydney, I see how organisations can work in this intricate political space of advocating for clients while still being contracted by the government, reinforcing my belief that the role of humanitarian support in these camps is essential to the asylum seekers’ welfare.

    Mark Isaacs also wrote a guest blog which was posted on March 28 – ‘Deterring boat arrivals’.

     

    Mark Isaacs is the author of ‘The Undesirables: Inside Nauru’

     

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