Category: Immigration

  • Walter Hamilton. Postcard from Poland and Auschwitz

    Poland this month is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its rebirth as a democratic state. It is also marking 10 years since it became a member of the European Union. The country thus provides an interesting vantage point from which to observe Europe’s schizophrenic politics.

    To the west––notably in the UK, France and Germany––so-called Eurosceptic parties took the spoils in recent elections for the Strasbourg Parliament (with every intention, too, of being spoilers); to the east, meanwhile, Ukraine is struggling to attach as much of itself as Vladimir Putin will allow to the EU locomotive. It is the Disenchanted versus the New Believers. While voters in the west have flocked to rightwing parties opposed to sharing their baguette with new arrivals, in the east, where they’re still biting on black bread (to extend the metaphor), and where stateless Africans are scarce, most believe the opportunities flowing from European unity far outweigh the costs.

    Today’s Poland is where Ukraine hopes to be in a decade or two––which is why Kiev is willing to give almost anything––including, tragically, a measure of its people’s blood––to grab on to the EU. Poland, they tell me, is the only country in Europe to have experienced 20 years of uninterrupted growth. Able for the time being to use its own (undervalued) currency, it is experiencing a tourism boom, while the many new manufacturing and distribution plants of international firms erected on the periphery of major cities attest to an investment surge.

    That’s not to say Poland’s EU journey has been all smooth sailing. One might describe the general appearance of the country as one of ‘receding decay’. The downtown precincts of cities like Poznan and Wroclaw are sophisticated, smartly dressed and thriving; the suburbs tend to be graffiti-scarred and grey. The new rich want more, while many others on meagre wages need to work long hours to stay afloat. In a Warsaw supermarket, a woman of 70+ years who served me at the checkout at 8am was still there when I went back 11 hours later. Our host in Warsaw, a retired teacher, also in her 70s and still working part time, bemoaned the 13% national unemployment rate and the much higher joblessness (26%) among the young. As we drove out of the capital she pointed out abandoned industrial plant (Soviet-era and obsolete), which she blamed on the EU experience. And where was the livestock that every family farm once proudly displayed? Disappeared under mass-produced food imports. But if I detected nostalgia for the past, she quickly corrected me: ‘Communism was awful through and through; nobody, except perhaps some party boss, wants to go back to that’. Food queues are no more, inflation is zero and, even if unacceptably high, current unemployment is below the long-term trend, and falling.

    Poland, historically a gateway between East and West, now emphatically faces west. When President Obama was in Warsaw recently, the Polish government repeated its request for NATO to establish new bases on its territory. Sensibly, Obama refused to be drawn.

    If Polish history teaches us one thing, it is that all frontiers lie: they lie to those who believe they can secure the homeland, and they represent lies to those who wish to change them. Heading north out of Krakow, our driver Michael pointed out two buildings on either side of the road ahead. ‘Prepare your passports,’ he joked. ‘We are now leaving Austria and about to enter Prussia.’ The border checkpoints, operational until 1918, stand as reminders of the eighteenth-century partition of Poland when it ceased to exist as a nation (as it did again from 1939). The idea behind European union––distinct nations united by a shared destiny––is an undoubted improvement for Poles after centuries of partition and domination. Affirming this, as they do, they take a wary glance back in the direction of their old nemesis, Russia. Though the fighting in Ukraine seemed far removed from the beer and food-laden tables of Krakow’s teeming Old Square, the ordinary Poles I spoke with believed Moscow’s territorial ambitions extend well beyond Crimea.

    Frontiers are a European obsession these days, much as they are in Australia. With internal borders essentially open, an unauthorized entrant can make his or her way to any of the member nations of the EU. If they survive their journey in a leaky boat across the Mediterranean (Italy has received 40,000 unauthorised arrivals, mainly crossing from Libya, so far this year), theoretically they might end up in Bayeux or Bonn or Birmingham (or so the sloganising goes; the reality is somewhat different). This, more than any other issue, is hardening attitudes and inflaming rhetoric, and threatening the European experiment. New scapegoats have been found to blame for economic dysfunction and social stress, in a pattern that has terrible antecedents.

    In Block 6 at Auschwitz, the main hallway is covered with photographs of former inmates of the notorious concentration camp. Nothing, not all the books and films, can completely prepare you for a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is fine and warm on the day we are there, and many hundreds of tourists are being guided through the two camps (Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, the purpose-built extermination camp, is many times bigger than the other). Among the images on the wall at Block 6, I come across that of a Polish girl aged about 10. The caption tells me that she survived only a fortnight after being brought to Auschwitz in 1942. My eye alights on the next photograph: her identical twin sister.

    There is something about their expressions I cannot immediately fathom. Bewilderment I see, certainly, and fear; but what is the other thing? It would be grotesque to compare the sufferings of the 1.3 million people, mainly Jews, who perished in Auschwitz to the present-day treatment of asylum seekers in Italy or Australia, and I do not intend to do so; and yet, as I walk past the rows of photographs, taking in the individual faces and reading the individual names, it occurs to me how easy it is to forget that, behind barbed wire somewhere bleak and inhospitable today, and also incarcerated for no crime and provided no date of release, are many nameless, faceless individuals for whom we have a duty of care. It becomes a compelling thought when in Auschwitz, but it should not be necessary to travel here to feel it.

    And now I understand what it is about the portraits of the twin sisters that has so puzzled and disturbed me. In their anguished moment before the camera they ceased to be photographer’s subjects, just two more victims of a distant horror. Rather, they became cameras pointing at us, capturing an image of our souls, interrogating our hearts and consciences. It seems facile to speak of ‘ghosts’ in such a context, but for the first time in my life I truly felt that the mirror had been reversed.

    Walter Hamilton is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.

     

  • Hugh Mackay. Immoral acts – that’s one way to stop the boats.

    “No boats have arrived for 36 days!” That was the recent proud claim of our immigration minister, Scott Morrison, delivered in a tone that suggested we should all cheer such a wonderful accomplishment.

    In fact, given the strategies employed to achieve this result, we should hang our heads in shame. We are living through a dark period in our cultural history where politicians like Morrison are actively encouraging a dulling of our moral sense by appealing to that most dangerous moral principle of all: “The end justifies the means”.

    It’s not just this government, of course: the stain on our national conscience has been spreading for years, through the life of several governments from both sides of politics. And an odd things about this situation is that our leaders – normally so timid in the face of the polls – are seriously out of step with the majority of Australians (who, according to two reputable national surveys, favour rapid, onshore processing of asylum-seekers’ claims).

    We can tip-toe around this and speak of “human rights abuses”, or a lack of compassion, or a failure to honour our international treaty obligations. But why mince words in the face of the intentional brutality – psychological and physical – being inflicted on asylum-seekers imprisoned on Christmas Island, Nauru and Manus Island, by an elected Australian government? Why not call our asylum-seeker policy what it is: immoral.

    It’s immoral because it treats people who have committed no crime as if they were criminals. It’s immoral because it fails to honour that most basic of all moral principles: treat others as we ourselves would wish to be treated. Even if we add the caveat “in the circumstances”, the principle doesn’t go away.

    There are many situations in which we are bound to treat people more harshly than we would wish to be treated ourselves: we do it with criminals; we do it with enemies; we do it with people we’re retrenching, or lovers we’re abandoning. But even in situations like those, members of a self-proclaimed civil society are obliged to treat everybody with appropriate dignity and respect – two ingredients glaringly absent from life in an Australian detention centre.

    Our asylum-seeker policy is also immoral because it involves bad behaviour in the pursuit of a “good” goal. Given the vast scale of the world’s refugee crisis, it’s arguable whether stopping the boats is, in fact, a morally praiseworthy goal, but let’s accept, for the moment, that it is (and stopping rapacious people-smugglers is undeniably good). Precisely because it is a good goal, everything done in pursuit of that goal must be good. If not – if we fall for the mad idea that we can behave badly in pursuit of a good goal – then we have compromised our own integrity and tarnished the very values we are claiming to uphold.

    If you embrace the idea that the end justifies the means, then you’ll be stuck with accepting torture as a legitimate way of extracting useful information. You’ll accept that bribery and corruption are justifiable ways of achieving political or commercial goals. You’ll endorse assassination as a legitimate tool of the political struggle.

    Is that us? Is that the moral framework Australians want our governments to adopt when dealing with hapless souls who arrive here, by whatever means, as asylum seekers? Are we so committed to the sloganistic ideal of “stopping the boats” that we think it’s morally okay to incarcerate such people – men, women and children – in conditions deliberately designed to dehumanise them, rob them of hope and destroy their faith in the future (including their faith in Australia as an honourable, civilised, compassionate society). Do we seriously believe this strategy can be justified on the grounds that it might discourage others from trying to come here?

    Do we think it’s morally acceptable to condemn authentic refugees to the crushing uncertainty of temporary protection visas, and to deny them the right to work here? (Economic stupidity, as well: fancy deciding it’s better to support them than to encourage them to support themselves and, in the process, make a useful contribution to our economy.)

    We have become participants in a tragedy that will attract as much opprobrium in the future as the “stolen generations” and White Australia do now. Having chosen to behave immorally, we are setting ourselves up not only for international condemnation, but also for massive compensation claims in the future and, no doubt, yet another hollow apology to the thousands of people we have abused because we adopted that tacky mantra “whatever it takes”.

    If we really want to stop the boats, we should demand that our politicians, diplomats and aid agencies find morally acceptable ways of doing so. To pursue such a difficult goal in a state of moral blindness is hazardous in the extreme.

    There’s an ironic little twist to this tale. Many Australians who support the present brutal policy seem to think they are defending “Christian values” against an invasion of infidels. But isn’t the very essence of those values that we should show kindness to strangers, offer support to the weak and disadvantaged, and succour to the poor, the hungry, the dispossessed who come knocking at our door?

    Hugh Mackay is a social researcher and author.

     

  • Tuong Quang Luu, AO. Cambodia, a deterrent or an opportunity lost?

     

    My old friend looked straight at the stage with a strong determination, and perhaps, a touch of sadness. Sitting next to him, I sensed that the events of 60 years ago for Bern Brent, were rolling back to him as he mentally relived his teenage years. The occasion was a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Dunera Boys’ arrival at SydneyHarbour in 1940.

    I first met Bern in the late 1950’s when he taught me English as a lecturer at the University of Saigon. He was my first contact with Australia. Unbeknown to me at the time, Bern had been a ‘displaced person’ or an unattached refugee minor prior to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. It was an unforeseen irony for both of us that I should follow in his foot steps a quarter of a century later.

    Berlin-born to parents of Jewish background, the 16 year-old Bern was sent by his mother to London to escape the Nazi tyranny and persecution. His search for safety went terribly wrong when he and thousands of others in the same circumstance were shipped on HMT Dunera by mistake to Australia. He became unwittingly a ‘boat person’ joining the First Fleeters in 1788 and other subsequent arrivals by boats from the United Kingdom. The Crown or more correctly His / Her Majesty’s Government organised these transportations as a state policy, so no one and much less the Aboriginals dared to label the organisers as today’s ‘people’s smugglers’

    Indeed, Australia has resettled many hundreds of thousands of displaced persons mainly from post-war Europe and refugees from all parts of the world, including those who came directly to Australia.

    In 1977, Hieu Van Le, a young man in his twenties, waded with his wife and scores of other exhausted Vietnamese asylum seekers to the shores of Darwin in search of freedom. Found to be refugees, they were allowed to stay permanently in this country. Hieu Van Le has subsequently gone on to become the longest serving member and chairperson of South Australia Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission, and is currently lieutenant governor of the state.

    Of course not everyone amongst the Australians of a refugee background can be as successful as Bern Brent or Hieu Van Le in their respective careers, or as Frank Lowy, an entrepreneur in the business world. By and large, surviving refugees tend to possess a strong will to overcome calamities and generally demonstrate a good entrepreneurial spirit to succeed. Their contribution to Australia has never been in doubt and their commitment to this country as a democracy has never been questioned.

    Until 2013, Australia normally allowed on-shore asylum seekers who were found to be Convention refugees to resettle, subject to security clearance. Only when both sides of politics, in my view, competed against one another for electoral advantage that denial of a permanent residency in Australia became part of a suite of deterrent measures against potential asylum seekers.

    But why was Cambodia chosen?

    The government has said correctly that Cambodia is now a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention. But Cambodia – and for that matter, Papua New Guinea and Nauru – are the poorest amongst developing countries. One can assume that these three countries have agreed to settle refugees only on the basis of generous financial aid from Australia, but one cannot assume that Australian tax payers’ monies will be properly spent as intended, because local corruption is rampant.

    Cambodia has promised that it will provide welfare and education to refugee families who come ‘voluntarily’ as settlers, while at the same time failing to look after its own people, including around 1 million ethnic Vietnamese Khmers without citizenship, employment and education.

    As a signatory of the 1951 Convention, Cambodia has an abysmal record of treating refugees and at times has sold them down the river as in their dealings with Beijing (relating to Uighur asylum seekers), and Hanoi (relating to Vietnamese dissidents). Some Vietnamese dissidents supposedly under the UNHCR protection in Cambodia had to escape a second time to Thailand to avoid forced repatriation back to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

    To force those asylum seekers who are found to be refugees by Australia under the Australian legal mechanism is not just to deny them a legitimate desire to live in a democracy after fleeing authoritarian regimes, but also to take away from Australia a group of potentially good contributors

    The writer came to Australia as a Vietnamese refugee and is a former Head of SBS Radio (1989-2006)

     

  • Elaine Pearson. Cambodia: A poor choice for Australia’s refugee resettlement

    “It’s not about whether they are poor, it’s about whether they can be safe,” Australia’s Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said in defence of Australia’s plan to resettle refugees currently housed on Nauru to Cambodia. It appears Cambodia and Australia are in the final stages of signing such an agreement.

    But is Cambodia a safe place for refugees?

    Not if you’re from China. In 2009, under pressure from China, Cambodia forcibly deported 20 ethnic Uighurs back to China. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had already issued “persons of concern” letters to the Uighurs—most had fled China for Cambodia after July 2009 protests in Urumqi that the Chinese authorities brutally supressed. We know some of those returned to China have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

    Not if you’re from Vietnam. Human Rights Watch has long reported on the forced return of Khmer Krom activist monks straight into the hands of Vietnamese security services. Cambodian authorities have used the threat of forced return to Vietnam to stamp out any activist activities, preventing monks from forming, joining or meeting with local Khmer Krom groups, distributing bulletins, or participating in protests.

    Cambodia is not particularly safe if you’re Cambodian. Freedom of expression, assembly and association are under regular attack, while corruption is rampant. Let’s hope no resettled refugee end up in Cambodia’s courts, where matters are decided by bribes and political influence, not law and facts. Decades of authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Hun Sen have empowered Cambodian security forces to commit abuses such as killings, torture, and arbitrary detention with impunity. Those especially vulnerable include government critics, activists, journalists, and those living on the margins.

    Human Rights Watch has documented the arbitrary arrest, detention and mistreatment of “undesirables” housed in squalid detention centres run by the Ministry of Social Welfare, where beatings and rapes by guards continue with impunity. Where will the refugees Australia sends away be housed, and which Cambodian ministry will be responsible for their care and integration? What freedoms will these asylum seekers have to live where they please and get education or find jobs?  How long before the authorities might consider them “undesirables” as well?

    These are among a long list of questions that the Australian government has avoided, stonewalling on the specifics of what the agreement will entail.

    Another key question is what has the Australian government offered Cambodia in return for agreeing to resettle refugees? Cambodian officials deny being offered money, though it is hard to believe there will be no economic benefit to Cambodia.

    When Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison made recent visits to Cambodia, they failed to speak publicly about the serious human rights concerns there. Hun Sen, in power for 28 years, has not of late had to worry that Australia would be a regional critic of his series of flawed elections and a coup and a long history of human rights abuses.

    Australia sold out human rights in Sri Lanka, appeasing the Rajapaksa regime and protecting it from international criticism rather than trying to protect Sri Lankans from abuses by their government. Ostensibly, this was in order to “stop the boats” of Sri Lankans coming to Australia, and ensure Sri Lanka’s cooperation in sending Sri Lankans back home.

    Australia should not make the same shameful mistake with Cambodia. Hun Sen may have maintained a grip on power for decades, but opposition is growing. Australia should not discount the voice of the opposition which has strongly condemned using Cambodia for Australia’s refugees.

    Cambodia is one of the few Asian countries that is a party to the Refugee Convention. Yet it has long made a mockery of its refugee commitments.  Australia should help Cambodia become a rights-respecting, safe and stable place — but the best way is by holding the government to account for its abuses while providing capacity-building assistance.

    Australia needs to stop setting a bad model for the region by shirking its obligations. What incentive is there for countries in the region to ratify the Refugee Convention, when they see Australia and Cambodia render signatures meaningless through their actions? Australia’s policy of sending asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea and Nauru for months on end with no long-term prospects has been bad enough. When detainees are considering “voluntary returns” to war-torn Syria, then we know how limited their options are.

    Australia needs to end the suffering and indecision on Manus and Nauru, but not by sending people to Cambodia. Rather, it should do what’s fair and right by abiding by the long-standing principle that refugees are deserving of a durable solution. Australia should take the responsibility to examine asylum seekers’ claims, return those found not to be in need of protection, and integrate refugees who cannot return to their home countries.

    Australia, not Cambodia, has the capacity to restore their rights and enable them to become productive and self-sustaining contributors to their host country.

    Elaine Pearson is Australia Director at Human Rights Watch. 

  • Michael Keating. Part 2. The Budget and our Values

    The Budget is always the clearest guide to a government’s priorities and values. In the present instance, the Coalition Government wants to define this budget as being all about “contribution”.  Their rhetoric is that we should all make a contribution towards restoring the nation’s finances. Spreading the burden would be fair and therefore consistent with Australian values. But nothing could be further from the truth. Disadvantaged and low income people are being asked to make very big sacrifices, while most of us will be little troubled, and a few very rich people will be better off as a result of this Budget.

    In addition, not only is the Budget unfair, but it also represents a deliberate attack on our social capital. Our aspirations for an inclusive society are being trashed, as first the Government demonised refugees, and now has moved on to demonise unemployed people, and tear up the grants to many community based organisations which are critical to maintaining our social capital and an inclusive society.

    As many people recognised immediately, the notion of six months on and six months off unemployment benefit up to the age of 30 is appalling. The Minister for Social Security says that now unemployed people will have to get off their couch and look for work, which shows how little he knows about the circumstances of the people he is meant to be responsible for, and/or just how perverted his values are. Anybody who has worked with long term unemployed people, or who has talked to those who do work with them, would know how much the vast majority of job seekers want a job. The reality is that most often these people are the victims of circumstances beyond their control, and without adequate skills they are simply not suitable for the jobs that are available.

    Furthermore, there is nothing new about a policy of “work or learn”.  It has been the official doctrine for many years, but unemployed people cannot learn or work when their training funds have been slashed by over $1billion in this budget. As a partial offset the Government now proposes a modest increase in job subsidies, but years of experience has shown that such subsidies are relatively ineffective and do not lead to continuing employment.

    The real problem is that many long-term unemployed people lack basic employability skills, so they are not employable in the modern labour market even with a subsidy, or for that matter with a lower minimum wage. They need training to get these skills, preferably training tied to a job, and in addition, they typically need a lot of support services and mentoring; indeed the reason why they are unemployed is because they suffer multiple disadvantages and all their sources of disadvantage need to be addressed in a coordinated manner.   At present this coordination and associated support services are provided most often by community-based organisations, but this Budget has also slashed the funding of many such bodies. In short if this is Joe Hockey’s ladder of opportunity then he has cut the bottom rungs off.

    Other vulnerable groups who will suffer as a result of this budget include some of the world’s poorest people who depend upon the generosity of foreign aid, which was the biggest single cut in the Budget, and indigenous Australians whose funding has also been severely cut. Less tough but still significant is the impost on single income families. An unemployed lone parent will experience a cut in disposable income of 11 per cent. While a single income family living on a near average annual wage of $65,000 will lose almost 10 per cent of their disposable income in 2017-18 because of changes to family benefits and the scrapping of the school kids bonus.

    But if the most disadvantaged people are to be hounded and not supported, what about the rest of us, and what are we contributing under this Budget? The fact is that the majority of Australian households are comprised of healthy people with two incomes, plus a further substantial number of healthy one person households. Essentially this majority could spend a dollar or two more a week on health, another dollar on petrol, and several dollars less on electricity after repeal of the carbon tax. In sum the majority are being asked to contribute next to nothing, and no doubt that was intentional so that this majority of households will not have a financial reason to change their vote.

    And then if you are in the top 4 per cent of income earners you will have to pay the 2 per cent “temporary Budget repair levy”.  But even if you are in the top 1 per cent income bracket, with an annual income of $300,000, this levy will still only cost you around 1 per cent of your income. While if you are a super rich miner you will be laughing with no mining tax, no carbon tax and, despite the call for a ‘contribution’, the diesel fuel rebate continues.

    Other areas of expenditure that have been singled out for cutting are the arts and research other than the always favoured medical research. And of course the War Memorial has had extra funding added to its already very generous base, while all the other national institutions’ funding has been severely cut.

    In short this Budget seems to reflect a very narrow conception of society and our duties to one another as citizens. There is still plenty of ‘entitlement’ for those people and organisations that are favoured by the government, but the basic inequality of sacrifice and the bias in the areas targeted for savings in this budget is deeply disturbing. Indeed this Budget seems to reject;

    1. the traditional Australian notion of a ‘fair go’ where those who suffer from misfortune should be given a helping hand, and be assisted to realise their potential capabilities; and
    2. the state has an obligation to assist community-based organisations and to provide adequately for those things that we enjoy collectively, which enrich our culture, and which are critical elements of our social capital.

     

     

  • Michael Kelly SJ. Why Protestants are more popular than Catholics in China

    Questions abound over the recent vicious actions of the Chinese government towards Christians in the prosperous Zhejiang Province just south of Shanghai. The actions of the government during the fortnight after Easter against both Protestants and Catholics are unprecedented in recent decades and, justifiably, have received world attention.

    As with all actions in a country as vast as China, whose government could never be accused of transparency, it is difficult to discover who is making the decisions and what they hope to achieve. But one issue that has surprised many people outside China is both the size of its Christian population and the ruthlessness, born only of fear, that the government’s violence displays.

    A recent claim by a US-based Chinese academic to London’s Telegraph newspaper – that China would have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030 – was not only exaggerated but also factually wrong. Will Brazil (200 million Christians) and Nigeria (85 million Christians), for example, simply stop producing Christians in the next 15 years?

    The reality is that no one knows how many Christians there are in China. In fact, there’s good reason why Christians do not declare their growth. Just look at what’s happened in Zhejiang in the last fortnight, where the growth of the Christian community has been declared “unsustainable” by the authorities who have command of assessments of the “sustainability” of faith communities.

    Put your head up as a Christian in China and it will be cut off. Catholics have maintained a standard figure for their own numbers for three decades. It was 12 million in 1980, 12 million in 1990, 12 million in 2000 and – surprise, surprise – it was 12 million in 2010. No one in any religion declares real figures in China. It only attracts government attention and then persecution.

    That there is a massive growth spurt among Christians in China is indisputable. What has not been addressed is what has made the exponential growth among Protestants possible, far outstripping the growth among Catholics.

    But it’s not something the officials know anything about because they have such a rudimentary and uninformed view of what Christianity is that they are the last to know what’s happening. For example, only the Chinese government thinks that Protestants and Catholics are separate religions.

    They are two of the five it recognizes along with Buddhism, Islam and its homegrown religion, Daoism. No one else in the world thinks Protestants and Catholics are anything but parts of Christianity.

    Whatever one is to make of the uninformed view that the Chinese authorities have, Protestant Christianity is growing far more quickly and extensively than Catholicism. Why?

    Maybe the Chinese authorities have something to tell us. After Mao Zedong’s victory in 1949, China was established along lines that the Communists learned about from their then friends, the Soviet Union, and the real maker of 20th Century Communism, Vladimir Lenin, the founder and first father of the Soviet Union.

    The Chinese Government manages religious groups through the Religious Affairs Bureau, a department of the Communist Party’s United Front organization for controlling the country’s disparate movements, groups and institutions such as Protestants and Catholics.

    The Catholic Church in China, divided as it remains, is caught: its strength is its weakness. Everywhere in the world and with local variations in China, its universality (with an accepted pattern of worldwide relationships), its institutions (parishes, seminaries, welfare services, publishing houses), its statuses (clergy and religious) and its ceremonies (the sacraments) are visible and remain the continuous and coherent identifications that draw or repel membership and participation.

    In a Communist country, they are an easy target for a Leninist administration intent on detailed control. And then, when some comply with government structures while other Catholics see those acting in such a way as cowardly and cooperating with the enemy, many form the view that rather than complicate their lives, they leave the established and regulated Church well alone.

    The same applied to Protestant denominations and was institutionalized through the three self- movements (self–government, self–financing and self-propagation; or no foreign missioners). This approach run through the United Front’s Religious Affairs Bureau captured the attention and controlled the practices of Protestant Christians throughout the People’s Republic.

    But the recent explosion in Protestant Christian numbers has happened outside this rubric. Most of the buildings, churches and Christian gathering points have been built on local initiative without government authorization. And most of the communities around the often triumphalist buildings that have been damaged or demolished in recent times in China began life as small communities of little more than a dozen people – gathering in friend’s homes outside the net of government supervision.

    Protestant Christianity, in contrast to the institution-based approach to community building familiar to Catholics, has thrived on its nimble, light-footed and adaptable response to local opportunities. In China, it has grown out of small communities sharing prayer, Bible study and videos at home or in a work place. At times, Christian businessmen and manufacturers have workplace Christian groups that form and meet for prayer and Bible study on their business premises.

    Meeting all over Eastern China in clusters of no more than 12, groups gather for what Catholics would call primary evangelization. Two-hour Bible study programs conducted over two to three months and often aided by a Chinese version of the Alpha Course provide a neat and compact way to introduce Christianity. The Alpha Course is a 12-part video series first created by an Anglican priest in London, Nicky Gumble, that has gone worldwide and has a Catholic version.

    These groups are unencumbered and unregulated by the Religious Affairs Bureau. Multiply the dozen members of these groups by thousands of such small groups in homes and work places and you reach hundreds of thousands pretty quickly. But when you get to that scale, as China has in the last 20 years, it’s not long until you need a larger, dedicated building – a church. That’s where these emergent communities have run into the brick wall of the Religious Affairs Bureau and the fear that the entire Chinese political leadership has had of any group, especially a religious one, that it can’t control.

    Fr Michael Kelly SJ is executive director of ucanews.com and is based in Bangkok.

  • Refugees to Cambodia

    ​The Australian government appears to have struck a deal with Cambodia to house 100 refugees in exchange for a massive increase in foreign aid. But Cambodia is far from a safe place to settle.

    (more…)

  • Penne Mathew and Tristan Harley…Regional Cooperation on refugees

    In November last year Penne Mathew and Tristan Harley of the Australian National University undertook field work in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to examine the treatment of refugees in those countries and to discuss the possibilities of improved regional cooperation amongst themselves and also with resettlement countries such as Australia. I am strongly of the view that shared responsibility and cooperation is essential

    The Indonesian Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa recently put the case succinctly. “For Indonesia, the message is crystal clear: the cross border and complex nature of irregular movements of persons defies national solutions…There is no other recourse but to take a comprehensive and coordinated approach…a sense of burden sharing and common responsibility should be the basis for our cooperation.

    .John Menadue

    The Executive Summary and Recommendations follow. This report is based on fieldwork that Professor Penelope Mathew and Mr Tristan Harley conducted in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in October – November 2013. The authors gratefully acknowledge all of the participants in our research who graciously offered their time, expertise and hospitality. The purpose of the fieldwork was to examine the treatment of refugees in each of the three countries and discuss the issue of regional cooperation with respect to refugees in the Southeast Asia region. Some key findings of the fieldwork are:

     

    a)      Thailand and Malaysia remain reluctant to become party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol because they believe that it will lead to an increase in the number of refugees arriving in their territory and they believe that there are associated security threats. On the other hand, ratification is currently part of Indonesia’s national agenda. However, there are concerns that this process has been stalled and may not be realised.

    b)      States in the Southeast Asia region have indicated a desire to cooperate with one another in the area of refugee protection, particularly through the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (the Bali Process) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). However, states continue to act unilaterally in ways that endanger refugees and cause friction among states. Current Australian policies undermine efforts at regional cooperation.

    c)      Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia recognise that regional cooperation is necessary in order to address the particular refugee situations that each country is facing individually and to tackle the initial causes of displacement in countries of origin. While ASEAN members adhere to the principle of non-interference in the sovereignty of other states, it was suggested that ASEAN could be an appropriate forum whereby states could assist countries of origin to minimise the need for persons to flee the country and seek asylum elsewhere.

    d)      Interviewees in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia suggested that resettlement programmes in the region should be increased and that states from outside the region should increase their efforts to help share the responsibility of hosting refugees.

    e)      Malaysia and Indonesia appear willing to consider granting refugees the right to work. However, there are strong concerns about how this policy would affect national migrant worker schemes and domestic labour supply. States are also concerned about the ‘pull factor’ that they perceive such a policy may produce.

    This report concludes by making recommendations for states to enhance the protection framework for refugees. These recommendations are divided into short, medium and long terms goals. Some key recommendations in this report include the following:

    a)      Skills training programmes should be established in countries of first asylum that prepare refugees for either resettlement to another country, voluntary return to their country of origin or local integration in the host county. These programmes can be funded by donor and resettlement countries;

    b)      Refugees should be granted the right to work in countries of first asylum and employment programmes for refugees should be established in areas and industries where there is high demand;

    c)      Refugees should be allowed to access health care at the same cost as nationals and refugee children should be allowed to access the public education system;

    d)      United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, should be expanded and more funding allocated with the particular focus of improving both speed and fairness of refugee status determination (RSD) procedures;

    e)      Resettlement states should increase their annual intakes to provide protection to a greater number of refugees and share responsibility with countries of first asylum.

    f)       New projects and programmes should be established which simultaneously aim to support both refugee communities and local communities hosting refugees; and

    g)      The 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol should be ratified by states in the region.

    Penelope Mathew is Freilich Professor, ANU College of Arts and Sciences

    Tristan Harley is Freilich Foundation Research Assistant at ANU.

     

  • Michael Sainsbury. Australia and Cambodia’s shady asylum seeker deal.

    Australia’s history of dealing with asylum seekers continues to spin into a dizzying spiral of contempt. Already under fire for shutting its doors to some of the world’s most vulnerable people, the Canberra government is now in talks with Cambodia, the latest in a rollcall of poor, dysfunctional neighbors to whom it will “outsource” its so-called asylum seeker problem.

    Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, who counts as a ‘success’ every asylum seeker he can banish, last week became the second member of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s Cabinet to visit Cambodia this year, following Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s whistle-stop trip to Phnom Penh in February. Seemingly peripheral to the talks was any discussion of Cambodia’s own woeful rights record, and how that may impact on the refugees Australia is unwilling to shelter.

    Abbott’s aggressive but election-winning asylum seeker policy is a marked departure from Australia’s once proud record of handling those forced to flee their homelands. In the 1970s, the Liberal/National Party government under Malcolm Fraser threw the doors open to over 70,000 Vietnamese escaping the communist invasion from the North. That era is now confined to history – unlike most other western democracies, Australia wants to shirk its moral and ethical obligations to help the ever increasing numbers displaced by war, political oppression and persecution.

    The request for help from Cambodia, which relies on foreign aid for nearly half its annual budget, also coincides with Australia slashing billions of dollars in aid to the Southeast Asia region. Cambodia will receive money from Canberra if it does agree to take asylum seekers, but Prime Minister Hun Sen’s own record of embezzling large chunks of the state budget does little to boost confidence that the money will be spent on the welfare of those whom Australia deports to Cambodia.

    But back to Australia. The citizenry’s own fears of an asylum seeker “crisis” are grossly inflated, but have been used as a cynical ploy by politicians, notably Abbott, who campaigned on an anti-asylum seeker platform, to win votes. Australia has a per capita GDP that now ranks only behind oil-rich Norway and Singapore, and has to date been relatively sheltered from the global burden of accommodating refugees.

    According to figures from the UN Human Rights Commission, Australia had 10,900 asylum seekers in 2012. That year, Belgium had more than 14,000, as did Ecuador, still a developing country. France, where politicians and citizens alike fear imminent collapse due to the heavy refugee traffic, muddled along with almost 50,000 in 2012. Europe’s economic powerhouse, Germany, had 85,000.

    Pledges from the Abbott administration that the policy will alleviate pressure on the taxpayer to fund the wellbeing of asylum seekers runs into problems, given estimates that the outsourcing program will cost some US$2.85 billion. Papua New Guinea was reported to have received an initial US$25 million in “aid” in exchange for allowing Canberra to send human cargo to a now-notorious holding facility on Manu Island.

    So turning to Cambodia will do nothing to boost Australia’s global standing. Hun Sen, who has been in power for 36 years, has a less than stellar record with asylum seekers, having returned to possible incarceration people trying to escape to Cambodia from China and Vietnam upon request of the two governments who have helped to prop him up.

    His treatment of political opponents, lawyers, rights campaigners, thousands of whom have been either murdered, tortured or locked up in dark holes, should give further pause to Australia. Even the Australian Trade Department says: “A key disincentive to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been the lack of an effective judicial and legal system and a poor corporate governance environment.”

    Apparently this hasn’t registered, and rights groups have accused Abbott of neglecting his obligations to international rights protocols.

    “It’s quite clear that Cambodia does not have any sort of appreciable service for refugees,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “They have a shoddy record of protecting refugees despite having ratified the refugee convention and there’s very little political commitment from the Cambodian government to ensure the ongoing support or safety of refugees.

    “One wonders how Australia thinks the Cambodian government would be in a better position to provide support and protection than Australia would be.”

    Tony Abbott and his lieutenants rail against the grubby human traffickers who take the money of people desperate to escape oppression by any means, shifting them across borders and across oceans on rickety boats. Yet they consciously move the very same human traffic, handing out cash for others to take the problem off their hands. All told, Australia’s prime minister wants to send people desperate to escape from oppressive regimes right back into the arms of another.

    Michael Sainsbury is a Bangkok based journalist who writes for www.ucanews.com

     

  • John Menadue. Using the military for political purposes

    In my blog of March 26 (below) ‘Using the military for political purposes’, I drew attention to three instances in which the Australian Defence Forces have been used, apparently willingly, to support the party-political aims of the government.

    That political support has now been stepped up several notches by the comments of the Commander of Operation Sovereign Borders, Angus Campbell, on a government television advertisement.

    In a series of government advertisements on U-Tube, Angus Campbell, standing next to a sign ‘No way’ says ‘The message is simply, if you come to Australia illegally by boat there is no way you will ever make Australia home.’  Angus Campbell then adds ‘The Australian Government has introduced the toughest border protection measures ever … it is the policy and practice of the Australian Government to intercept any vessel that is seeking to illegally enter Australia and safely remove it beyond our waters.’

    In this government advertisement General Campbell goes far beyond operational responsibility for government policy. He has allowed himself, apparently willingly, to become an arm and an advocate for the government’s political policies.  John Menadue

    Repost follows.

    On March 20 guest blogger Susie Carleton drew attention to the blanket acceptance of accounts by our service people in treatment of asylum seekers despite the record, according to former Defence Minister Stephan Smith of 2000 incidents of mis- treatment within the military itself including sexual abuse.

    Last night’s 7.30 ABC program lent more credibility in my mind to the allegations against our service personnel in their treatment of asylum seekers.

    We need to examine carefully what our military is doing.

    In my blog of March 5 ‘The war on asylum seekers’, I drew attention to the misuse of the Australian military in Operation Sovereign Borders. That military style operation gives the impression that we are really being threatened and invaded and that our response to asylum seekers must be regarded as a military challenge. Operation Sovereign Borders also gives the government a threadbare excuse that the public is not entitled to be told what is really happening. ‘On water’ issues will not be discussed. The language is also about war. Tony Abbott told us that we are being invaded by boat people. Scott Morrison said that the government is ‘Using the full arsenal of measures’ to stop the boats. What should be a humanitarian issues backed by action by Customs and Immigration has become a war. Governments have used ‘the war on terrorism’ as an excuse for limiting our freedoms, ignoring our rights to information and exciting xenophobia. The same approach is now being made with the war on asylum seekers.

    Unfortunately, the Australian Defence Force is allowing itself to be drawn into this abuse of their real responsibility. They have allowed themselves to become part of a political cover-up in their involvement in Operation Sovereign Borders.

    But this misuse of the military by the government and the complicity of the military is not restricted to Operation Sovereign Borders. As reported in the Hobart Mercury of March 14, the Defence Chief David Hurley rebuked the Palmer United Party Senator-elect Jacqui Lambie. Jacqui Lambie, a ten-year military veteran, said ‘It’s clear from information that’s become public, and information received privately, that abuse, including sexual abuse in Australia’s Defence forces is an intractable problem’. She added that there was a ‘high level and poisonous culture of cover-up within Defence that has stopped abuse victims speaking out’. She was publicly rebuked by General Hurley in a letter in which he said that he was ‘alarmed’ by Ms Lambie’s use of emotive language to make accusations against senior military officers. He added ‘I encourage you in future to provide me an opportunity to address any matters of concern you may have rather than becoming aware of them through a media release. Ms Lambie reacted and accused General Hurley of using ‘patronising and condescending’ language. She said ‘For the head of Australia’s military, uninvited, to interfere with the public work of a democratically elected representative, attacks the very foundation of our system of democratic government’. General Hurley obviously thinks that ex-military people, particularly women, are fair game. The Minister for Defence has said nothing.

    Not to be outdone by this bullying and abuse by General Hurley, Tony Abbott decided that he would join in during the South Australian election campaign. A Liberal Party banner was displayed at a Liberal campaign event at an RAAF base at Edinburgh. When this politically partisan act occurred on a military base, with the inappropriate use of the military, Tony Abbott’s office said there was no problem and the Defence minister avoided the issue by saying that he was away.

    If the ADF continues to allow itself to be drawn into political partisanship as in Operation Sovereign Borders, the Tasmanian election and the South Australian election, Australia and the ADF will pay a heavy price. The ADF is a creation of the Australian government. It must act honourably and miscreants brought to account. It must never be part of a party-political operation. The ADF must never identify itself with the Liberal Party or any other party.

     

  • Ben Saul. Australia’s Guantanamo problem.

    Ben Saul has written an article for the New York Times about the imprisonment of 52 people in Australia for up to nearly five years without trial. Secret evidence has been presented against them. They have no prospect of release. 

    Read the full article from the New York Times by following the link below.

    Ben Saul is Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney.

    John Menadue

     

    http://sydney.edu.au/news/law/436.html?newscategoryid=64&newsstoryid=13274

  • Kerry Murphy. To Kill a Mockingbird and 2014.

    Mark Twain is quoted as saying that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.  I was reminded of this when seeing the excellent production of To Kill a Mockingbird at the New Theatre in Newtown, Sydney last week.  Good literature manages to make us reflect on our own times, and challenges us to think about how we might act in difficult times.

    Harper Lee’s 1960 novel is well known and is a modern classic.  The seemingly simple story of young Scout and her brother Jem, and their widower lawyer father in 1935 Alabama still resonates with an Australian audience in 2014.

    The community attitudes on race we would think are unacceptable in 2014, however it was only a week ago that the Attorney-General told the Senate that there was a ‘right to be a bigot’.   A ‘rhyming Twanian’ theme would be the vilification of those arriving by boat and the increasingly harsh way they are treated, under both Labor and the Coalition.  In To Kill a Mockingbird we can feel for Scout’s father Atticus, the lawyer defending a black man on a charge of rape of a white woman.  Like young Jem, we ask how could the jury possibly find him guilty on that evidence.

    In the New Theatre production, the jury is the audience and we are challenged to face and reflect on our own fears and prejudices in 2014 Australia, just as Atticus challenged the jury in the 1935 story.  How do we come out of this challenge?

    Atticus tells Jem and Scout to ‘spend time in the skin or shoes of the other’ so they can understand that person. This is a challenge for us in 2014.  What if we spent time in the shoes of an Aboriginal who was discriminated against because of their race or colour, or an asylum seeker who was vilified because of how they arrived in Australia fleeing the feared persecution.   Would we so easily say there was a ‘right to be a bigot’ or that ‘illegals’ should be locked away in Pacific penal colonies?

    Lee’s 1960 story of a small town trial in 1935 Alabama resonated as much with the 1960s in the US as it does with Australia in 2014.  The play was well produced and a simple and effective set added to, rather than distracted from the story.  9 year old Teagan Croft stole the show in her confident and credible Scout.  Ably supported by 14 year old Hudson Musty as Jem and 12 year old  Kal Lewins as Dill.  Lynden Jones ably portrayed the genuinely good character of Atticus the lawyer, who had to explain to his children the bigotry of the town against his client just because of his colour.  As good as Lynden was, I still think of Gregory Peck in the 1962 film.

    Revisiting this timeless tale gives a chance to reflect on whose shoes we should stand in to understand them better.  It is easy to preach or pontificate about the inflationary vilification and appalling treatment of asylum seekers in Australia, but like Scout and Jem, I need to stand in the shoes of the others.   What makes people so prejudiced against asylum seekers?  Why does the Attorney-General think there is a right to be a bigot?  Understanding their position will help me better explain my position and views.  I just wish they were able to stand in the shoes of the other as well, and maybe their bigotry and fear would diminish.

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

    The play is at New Theatre until 19 April http://newtheatre.org.au/whats-on/season-2014/to-kill-a-mockingbird/

  • Louise Newman. Detention of children seeking asylum in Australia.

    Australia has a unique approach to the ‘problem‘of asylum seekers arriving by boat in an ‘unauthorised’ fashion – exportation. Under current policy all unauthorised arrivals are processed as rapidly as possible on Christmas Island and then transferred to Nauru or Manus who are supported by Australia to assess refugee claims, house and ultimately resettle those found to be refugees. Or so the story goes. Much recent discussion, particularly since the attacks on asylum seekers on Manus allegedly by those in protective roles, has pointed to the breakdown of this system with increasing numbers remaining on Christmas Island and lack of any processing of claims or moves to resettlement. There is even discussion about the commitment of PNG to the resettlement process and they themselves have recently stated that it will not be possible to resettle in PNG those already there. The politics is complex and with a certain air of separation on the side of the Australian Government which is wedded to the concept of off shore processing as part of a framework of deterrence. The focus on deterrence of any arrivals on the mainland has led to extreme measures such as towing or pushing boats away and setting asylum seekers in the opposite direction in life boats where they become someone else’s problem on landing. The consequence or outcome is seen as the sole factor driving policy and little account is taken of the means. It is in this context that vulnerable groups such as children and unaccompanied minors and the mentally ill are caught in a particularly unpleasant political drama.

    As this is played out on the high seas we hear little discussion of Australia’s position as a voluntary signatory to the UN Convention on refugees and our responsibilities. We do not hear much discussing of the regional issues and need to support neighbours who bear most of the burden of supporting asylum seekers with minimal support. We do not provide leadership in the construction of a regional protective frame work despite this being raised by the Government appointed expert group looking at a system of response to the needs of asylum seekers and displaced persons. The ‘problem ‘ of displaced persons continues to grow as Australia’s response shrinks  – to the point where we now accept no asylum seekers coming by boat and will never resettle these arrivals on the mainland.

    In the middle of this debate the plight of the asylum seekers is often forgotten or trivialised. Many find stories of persecution and trauma ‘distasteful ‘and Government prefers to dismiss many as ‘economic refugees’ with the implicit judgment that they are unworthy. The system does not value seeking a safe life for children or fleeing ongoing persecution as worthwhile goals. The notion of threat from asylum seekers continues to be used as a political tool. The community has been caught in this escalating series of political moves aimed at limiting discussion of the broader issues and escalating fear and xenophobia. The language of “sovereign borders” and approaches veiled in secrecy as we wage a war on people smugglers does little to help us think in a rational way about Australasia role in supporting the worlds dispossessed or being a leader in our region. Both major political parties brought in reductionist approaches and prided themselves on harshness and firmness in the name of a greater good.

    The current situation emerges from a history of harsh approaches including arbitrary and mandatory detention of all unauthorised arrivals including infants, children and the mentally ill. In the days of Baxter and Woomera detention centres in remote locations a considerable amount of research and clinical evaluation documented the damage of indefinite detention on mental health and the deterioration of asylum seekers capacity to tolerate the situation. Helplessness, depression and despair took their toll as the community witnessed mass despair, self harm and protest. Children witnessed violence and behavioural breakdown and saw the deterioration of their parents. The damage was significant and well described in the HREOC report of 2005 which recommended that children should only ever be detained as a matter of last resort. Following this and with the support of all major medical and health groups, children and families were moved in to community settings with seemingly greater awareness of their needs.

    The past 5 or so years has seen a reversal of that position as successive Governments saw the need to maintain a politics of exclusion and to appeal to those sections of the community with deep seated anxiety about Australian security in a changing world. Detention of the vulnerable has continued and no exceptions are made on the grounds of trauma exposure, age, mental disorder or physical condition. Government has exported the most vulnerable to situation where health and mental health services are  minimal and with no certainly about the future has essentially recreated the conditions of over a decade ago where the detention centres became the breeding ground of mental disorders and breakdown. Recent protest, violence and self-harm are entirely predictable in these circumstances and should therefore be preventable.

    The detention of children and other vulnerable groups in these circumstances is a great shame and belittles us all. Those of us in the mental health sector need to speak out about any policy which damages the mental health and development of children and others and help to develop a higher level of discussion across the community about these important issues, Whilst Government may prefer to remain silent on its actions and their morality, we cannot.

     

    Louise Newman is the Professor of Developmental Psychiatry and Director of the Monash University Centre for Developmental Psychiatry and Phycology.

  • David Isaacs. Impacts of detention on children.

    I am a paediatrician. I specialise in paediatric infectious diseases but also work as a general paediatrician. For the last 10 years, I and my colleagues have run a Refugee Clinic at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where we assess child asylum seekers and refugees. The initial aim of this clinic was to screen children for treatable infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria and for other non-infectious conditions like rickets. However, the whole nature of the assessment has changed of late.

    Over the ten years, we have seen a very large number of children who have been in detention centres. It has become increasingly apparent that many of the children we see are suffering from post-traumatic stress and this number has risen steadily so that currently more than half of all the asylum seeker children we see are suffering from post-traumatic stress. This may be because we are increasingly aware of post-traumatic stress and ask more searching questions, but often a history of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress is easy to obtain. Young children have nightmares and sleep disturbance including sleep-walking. They are fearful and cling to their parents. They may start wetting their beds or pooing their pants. They may have problem behaviours, such as being defiant, angry or irritable. They may have somatic symptoms such as head-aches or abdominal pain. Older children may self-harm.

    Many of these children were exposed to traumas in their countries of origin and undertook perilous journeys, which clearly contribute to their stress. However, the trauma of being in detention centres without knowledge of when they will be released clearly adds to the stress and compounds the problem. Children are particularly vulnerable if their parents are struggling to cope with the trauma.

    We are able to refer our most severely affected children to a dedicated psychologist working in the Department of Psychological Medicine in our hospital. The NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and

    Trauma Survivors STARTTS is a useful resource for adults and children with post-traumatic stress.

    Impact of length of detention on children

    Unequivocally, we find that the longer a family is in detention, the greater the stress on the child and on their parents. Mounting parental stress in turn increases the stress on children.

    Measures to ensure the safety of children

    Although traumatised children in detention are referred to specialist mental health staff occasionally, this is the exception rather than the rule. Children in detention who are suffering from post-traumatic stress need to be seen by a paediatrician to see if they need specialist mental health assessment.

    Education, recreation, maternal and infant health services

    Australia is a co-signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which states that all children have the right to be provided with a safe environment and with adequate health-care and education. We have an obligation to provide these to children under our care, whether they are citizens, permanent residents, refugees or asylum seekers. This includes asylum seeker children on Manus Island or Nauru. Australia cannot abdicate its responsibility to asylum seeker children by preventing them reaching the mainland.

    The separation of families across detention facilities in Australia

    Separation of families is fortunately uncommon, but when it does occur it can have a disastrous effect on children’s mental health.

    The guardianship of unaccompanied children in detention in Australia

    Unaccompanied minors have often left their entire family behind and are in urgent need of being able to contact them and to stay in contact. Closed detention is particularly inappropriate for these highly vulnerable children.  There is a clear conflict of interest in having the same person who is detaining the child as the person who is legally responsible for their welfare (i.e. the Minister).  The role of advocate for the child has to be independent of judicial decisions about the child’s fate.

    Assessments conducted prior to transferring children to be detained in ‘regional processing countries’

    Children in offshore detention should have appropriate screening tests and catch-up vaccinations and be adequately protected against malaria.

    Progress made during the last 10 years

    There has been only minor progress in the last 10 years. It was acknowledged by the previous Government that children should not be in detention at all. The number of children in community detention has grown slowly but steadily. According to DIAC, however, in September 2013 there were still over 1000 children in immigration detention facilities and alternative places of detention (not community detention). There are no current figures available on the number of children in immigration detention or their whereabouts. This is disturbing. We need more transparency. No child should be detained unnecessarily in a detention centre.

    Conclusions

    Australia has a duty of care to asylum seekers under International Law, which includes protecting them. Delaying decisions about their fate and imprisoning asylum seekers and their children in detention centres is a dereliction of that duty of care. Whether or not the asylum seekers are eventually accepted as refugees, it is counter-productive and cruel to increase their mental health problems by inappropriately draconian measures such as detention.

    Professor David Isaacs is a Consultant pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Clinical Professor in Paediatric Infectious Disease, University of Sydney

     

     

  • Mark Isaacs. Deterring boat arrivals!

    Over the past decades of asylum seeker policy in Australia we have heard many justifications for a strict deterrence policy. Border protection, save lives at sea, ‘no advantage’ for queue jumpers, smash the people smugglers’ business model, and, of course, ‘we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’.

    At the same time, public debate fostered by mainstream media and by Australian politicians continually refers to asylum seekers by terms such as ‘illegals’ and ‘queue jumpers’, terms that we must continually reject as they have no legitimacy in Australian or international law and aren’t representative of the global view of asylum seekers. Those who control the public discourse have created a confused and purposefully misleading national discussion that shadows the truth and promotes anti-asylum seeker sentiment.

    This was recently made clear to me with the recent publication of my novel, The Undesirables, and the subsequent media space I have had the privilege to occupy. I was faced with a multitude of different arguments that rarely aligned but all came from a similar source, propaganda. The main issue most journalists wanted me to address was the idea that a deterrence policy does stop asylum seekers getting on boats to come to Australia, and hence, the government is saving lives. It seems that when a person speaks out on humanitarian grounds, with the knowledge and conviction to say that these people aren’t illegals, terrorists, threats to our security, the debate focuses on ‘saving lives at sea’.

    First and foremost, I don’t believe that this policy is about saving lives. If this policy is about saving lives at sea, and not the border protection threats Scott Morrison cites in his press releases, why aren’t we championing this policy to the world as a humanitarian achievement? Why is the policy so heavily criticised by international organisations such as UNHCR and Amnesty International? Why has the Australian government banned Australian media from entering the camps? Why are we not allowed to know how many boats the government has turned back to Indonesia?

    Let’s say that this policy does stop asylum seekers taking boats to Australia. This doesn’t necessarily save lives and doesn’t solve any global issues with asylum seekers; it merely shifts our responsibility for protecting asylum seekers, a responsibility assumed by signing the United Nations Refugee Convention, to another part of the world. It means those asylum seekers originally facing persecution now face a very bleak situation in Indonesia, a country that has no such obligations to processing refugees. Asylum seekers will still need to flee persecution and will still need the help of people smugglers to facilitate their escape because there are few ‘correct channels’ of migration, if any, available to them. I asked the men I worked with in Nauru why they didn’t come to Australia by the ‘correct channels’. Such a question was an insult in the camp.

    ‘You show me the Australian embassy in Afghanistan. You see if a Hazara man can go there without being shot. If you go to the Australian embassy they ask you why you want to leave. If you say you have a problem, they say it is not enough. Many people have tried. We cannot go to our government and ask for visas. We are not even allowed to study in Afghanistan. How do I apply for a visa to Australia when my government wants to kill me? If you want to go to the United Nations office in Quetta, Pakistan, it is in a dangerous area. People recognise Hazara faces and they target them easily. If you go there, you have to stay for a long time and it is dangerous. Maybe you will be targeted. You think we would leave our homes if we didn’t have to? You think I’d leave my family if I didn’t have to?’

    The reality of deterrence is indefinite detention: incarcerated for unlimited time periods with no idea of when you can leave. Every day feels the same, no progress, no change; just waiting. The reality of deterrence is an illogical processing system that purposefully avoids giving people answers because judging by statistics 90% of these people will be approved as refugees. In my time in Nauru I witnessed self-harm, hunger strikes, thirst strikes, psychosis, and the ultimate loss of hope, suicide attempts. Saving lives at sea by ruining lives. Countless times I heard Nauru described by asylum seekers of all ethnicities as hell. If these people could return to their home countries, they would.

    I wrote ‘The Undesirables’ for many reasons, one of which was to show the Australian people what the reality of offshore detention centres is. If the Australian people are okay with placing people in such conditions in an attempt to shift our responsibilities for protecting the world’s most vulnerable then so be it, but better they make an informed decision than hide behind the falsities and mistruths peddled by both sides of politics and claim ignorance due to this veil of secrecy that has been placed over both Manus Island and Nauru.

    Mark Isaacs

    Author of The Undesirables

    http://www.bookworld.com.au/book/the-undesirables-inside-nauru/47134434/

    https://www.facebook.com/isaacsmark1

    http://markjisaacs.com/

  • Wayne Gibbons. The boats were not sabotaged.

    “So we convince ourselves every cruelty we’ve inflicted – beginning with sabotaging boats along the Malaysia coast under Malcolm Fraser – isn’t a reflection on us. It’s tactical.”

    I was surprised and disturbed by this sweeping statement from David Marr in theguardian.com on 5 March. It unfairly casts a pall over the great success of Australia’s Indochina refugee program led by the Fraser government and the role of the immigration officials involved.

    From 1978 to 1980 I was based in Malaysia as Coordinator of Australia’s refugee resettlement programs in South East Asia. Prior to that fulltime roll I lead several short term missions to Guam and the East coast of Malaysia to offer resettlement in Australia to Vietnamese refugees. I have also served as private secretary to Ministers for Immigration in the Whitlam and Fraser Governments.

    From this vantage of involvement at the highest levels of government and at the coal face of refugee selection and resettlement, I am confident that no directions to sabotage boats were given to Australian immigration officers by people in authority and that no boats loaded with refugees were deliberately damaged by our officials. Though, I believe we may have disabled several empty boats to prevent their reuse to “push off” people who had already arrived on other vessels.

    I understand why some people may be confused on this point because we often spoke publicly about the need to “stop the boats”.  But far from resorting to sabotage as a tactical response, our strategy was to conduct a sizable, caring and efficient resettlement program under a Comprehensive Plan of Action with the countries of SE Asia in co-operation with the US, Canada, France, the UK, New Zealand  and ourselves.

    From the start, all resettlement countries wanted to discourage refugees taking very long and risky journeys across open seas in unsuitable craft. We all wanted refugees that were fleeing Vietnam on small boats to be landed in neighbouring first asylum countries into the care of the UNHCR. Australia and other countries had already agreed to treat all such people as refugees. This meant we could offer resettlement without first having to determine individual status under the UN Convention.

    From the fall of Saigon in 1975 until the first half of 1978, those setting out from Vietnam to cross the South China Sea were mostly rural ethnic Vietnamese. They travelled in small owner skippered fishing boats that were usually reasonably seaworthy.

    If our immigration officers came across any of these people as they arrived along the Malaysian coast they would try to counsel them to disembark and await an offer of resettlement. Most heeded that advice, but a few pressed on. At the same time, some local Malaysian officials would insist they keep going if their boat was seaworthy and in some instances resorted to towing them back to international waters.

    Being owner fishermen and competent seamen the Vietnamese were very reluctant to disable their own boats and would keep going if pushed off. Some made it to Darwin but most broke down en route and ended up in makeshift camps in Indonesia.  It is difficult to believe them allowing Australian officials to sabotage their boats.  Indeed I have been unable to corroborate such a suggestion among surviving officials who served in Malaysia during this period.

    All this changed rapidly from mid 1978 as arrivals increased dramatically. This next, far larger wave of departures consisted of urban people who paid corrupt officials and middlemen for their passage. They were predominantly ethnic Chinese who were crowded into vessels in numbers that made their journey highly dangerous. For example, a small vessel that would have carried 15‑20 Vietnamese could be packed with 100-130 ethnic Chinese in appalling conditions. Understandably they were almost always desperate to disembark at first landfall, be that in Thailand or Malaysia. Their wretched, cramped conditions and not infrequent encounters with pirates en route fuelled fears about being forced back to sea, which in turn encouraged them to scuttle their boats as soon as they reached coastal waters or if they were intercepted by Malaysian patrol boats. In any case, very few boats were able to withstand the coastal surf and most broke up within hours of beaching.

    UNHCR was very slow to gear up as arrivals skyrocketed and this created great frustration within the Malaysian Government, which was increasingly worried by the growing concerns evident among Malays living in kampongs along the east coast. Malaysia soon reacted by closing all mainland camps (except for the transit centre in Kuala Lumpur) and designating Pulau Bidong, an uninhabited island,  as the site for a major holding camp for arriving refugees. This created huge logistical difficulties for all resettlement countries, made worse by continuing UNHCR shortcomings.

    Malaysian patrols were also subsequently increased with orders to stem numbers landing in Malaysia by intercepting boats further offshore and deflecting them south. This led to a rapid build-up of refugees landing in the Indonesian Anambas Islands where the local population was quickly overwhelmed as more and more makeshift camps developed. Australia was among the first countries to organise resettlement from these new remote camps.

    Far from calculated cruelty, our approach to people leaving Indochina was generous and fair. It certainly did not include sabotage of small boats crowded with refugees.

    Despite the many difficulties, we made a significant contribution through resettlement. It was made possible through close cooperation with regional countries in a strategy that balanced their requirements and the demands of refugees with our own need to maintain public support at home.

    Whatever has happened since then, at the time of these policies it was a watershed for Australia. As John Menadue said in an earlier blog, “in accepting 150,000 refugees from Indochina …… Malcolm Fraser broke the back of White Australia”. Australia is a better society for it and I am grateful I had a role helping achieve that outcome.

    Wayne Gibbons was the Co-ordinator, Australian Indo-Chinese Refugee Resettlement Program. He was later Deputy Secretary, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Deputy Secretary, Department of Employment, Education and Training. He was also the CEO of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Susie Carleton. The ABC is at it again.

    Don’t we all now know from the upright Hon Scott Morrison that decent members of the Australian Armed Services would never – and did not – cause the burning of the hands of asylum seekers under their control. Nor was there any further ill-treatment of a later batch of unfortunates as claimed in ABC 7.30- Report of March 17. Servicemen told Scott – and he told us.

    Australian servicemen, according to Scott, are above such conduct and it is an insult to our nation’s Armed Services to think otherwise. Of this he is convinced because there are “Regulations” and a “Code of Conduct” which rules out the sort of behavior widely claimed by the victims.

    Isn’t there also not only a code of conduct but a criminal law to provide protection within the services against the gross ill-treatment and sexual violation of young men in the services’ playful initiation ceremonies or the sexual harassment, mistreatment, even rape of their female colleagues in the services.

    Recent years have seen, according to former Minister Steven Smith, more than 2,000 such incidents perpetrated by Mr Morrison’s upright servicemen. Almost without exception these have taken place on military establishments or vessels at sea with very senior military personnel close at hand. These offences have been committed against workmates and colleagues in the services.

    It ‘s surprising then that the same people become White Knights when operating among “enemies”, “Illegals” and “undesirables” virtually unsupervised on the high seas. Morrison said he had not bothered to question the alleged victims as they had “vested interests” in making their claims.

    In view of his “Code of Conduct” mightn’t the servicemen in question also have a vested interest in denial?

     

     

  • Azita Bokan. The tragedy on Manus – an eye-witness account.

    Azita Bokan was on Manus Island as an official Iranian interpreter during the recent violent clashes. What follows is an edited version of her interview by Richard Glover on ABC Radio Sydney on 21 February 2014.

    I came to Australia some 27 years ago and am a proud Australian.  My father was a writer and had a newspaper of his own. He was imprisoned in Iran as a political prisoner for his anti-government views. I escaped Iran and was forced to wait three and a half years in Turkey for my turn to migrate to Australia. At the time Turkey was unsafe and dangerous, rife with smugglers, drug dealers and organised prostitution but I had to wait there alone as a little child without a family. I was very grateful to Australia for rescuing me as a refugee which was why I recently enlisted to assist the Department of Immigration in its efforts to protect Australia’s borders.

    I was previously in Nauru and it is bad, but the situation on Manus is simply horrendous – the heat, the physical conditions, the malnutrition [mostly raw red meat without any vegetables] leading to diseases of many different kinds, and so much more. Oral hygiene is almost completely absent and what dental treatment is available results not in remedial attention but in the detainees having their teeth pulled out without anaesthetic. Most upsetting of all is the absence of anything for the inmates to do day after day and the fact that they mostly sit in dirt looking out to the surrounding fences, which have resulted in personal suffering with deep mental conditions which I can only describe as psychological numbness. When I became aware of this situation, my immediate reaction was that I would prefer to be dead than to live in a camp like this for a day.

    Until the recent troubles, I saw and heard no unruliness or misbehaviour still less violence on the part of the detainees. In fact I could not believe their calm patience, waiting seemingly for better days to come. They told me that they had been warned by departmental officials that if they misbehaved in any way or that something goes on their files suggesting that they were or might be troublemakers, their cases would not be processed and they would not be allowed access to lawyers.

    Then on the Sunday morning, with all of them holding onto the hope that they would one day get out of that hell, they were told by departmental officials that they will never see Australia, that no third country was volunteering to take them, and that because if its awful economic situation PNG would never be able to assist them.

    Despite the fact that most of the Iranians were well educated and their leader was a PhD who was against any protest or uprising, that news became a catalyst for the first real reaction among the inmates. Two guys climbed a fence even though there are many fences, each one further away than the others, and absolutely no chance of escape. The men had no weapons so they threw fruit at the guards, mostly peaches. The response of the guards was to use rocks and metal legs of dismantled tables destined for junking to attack the detainees. Some of the detainees may have thrown back the same rocks at the guards.

    On the Monday morning, we interpreters were told that there was no work for us as no lawyers were being allowed to enter and only the medical team was being admitted. After some delay, some of us were in fact allowed in to assist the medical team and from a distance of 6 or 7 metres, I saw one detainee pushing another guy in a wheelchair. The wheelchair guy was “brain dead” – his mouth was distorted, one arm was hanging down and he could not pull it back up. One of the guards called out to the man pushing the wheelchair – “Get out, get out!!!” The guy pushing the wheelchair held tight to the wheelchair and refused to let go. In very broken English, which I did my best to translate, he said that the guards had killed his mate the previous night and he did not trust them with the wheelchair man. He said he was going to stay with him in the medical room to wait for his turn with the doctor.

    Because of my efforts to interpret, the guards turned on me and accused me of interference and of sticking up for the detainee. This was nonsense as all I was doing was interpreting what he was trying to say. The man said to me that he feared the guards would kill the wheelchair guy if he left him. I offered to the guards that I would push the wheelchair or that they could get someone from the medical team to do so. There were many guards there at the time and one or more of them pushed me away and jumped on the guy pushing the chair. He was strong and would not let go of the wheelchair until 7 of the guards threw him to the ground and held him down. I pleaded with the guards to stop the violence but they and others in the pay of the Government turned against me.

    When my attention was again drawn to the guy in the wheelchair, I could see there was blood all over him. There was a needle in his arm as if for a drip but his arm was bleeding and there was no drip attached to it. No nurse would have done something like that. His head was injured, he had no eye movement and his mouth was hanging to one side. He was just hanging like a piece of meat. Any human being would want to help a person in that state.

    I remonstrated with the guards. I said that you cannot do this to people to whom you owe a duty of care. These people paid everything they had to a people smuggler, they put their lives on the line coming through a difficult journey. Many of them lost loved ones on the way yet they somehow got to Australia. Now you shift them to the most dangerous place in the world away from the media and from the eyes of good hearted Australians. I cannot believe that Australians support what you are doing to these people. You are killing them.

    This outburst had me escorted out and treated worse than a criminal. I knew I would lose my job but I refused to let them do such awful things in silence in the name of Australia so that people elsewhere can think of Australians as a violent people intent on killing innocents.

    While I was sitting in the interpreters’ room waiting to be deported myself, I heard the sound of shooting and a lot of noise and disturbance. So I went up on the roof where I saw some horrendous things. There were many people badly injured. I saw one man who had no brain, and nothing on his neck. His skull was crushed. Another man had his throat cut and a doctor was trying to push a tube through the hole in his neck but there was too much blood coming out. He could not find the man’s lung to get the fluid out while telling someone else to pump air in. I actually heard the doctor say that he was very tired after three days of constant work. I come from a country that went through a violent revolution. I have been through a war. But I have never seen anything like this. It was barbaric.

    I am for stopping the boats and the people trafficking but I want Manus and Nauru closed and the people treated properly. Australian taxpayers are paying a fortune to the Governments of Nauru and PNG to have these terrible camps in their countries. People who cannot pay their mortgages are funding these other Governments for this sinful activity. Bring them to Darwin or other places on the Australian mainland where we have ample facilities to house them. Those who are found not to be refugees should be sent back to their homes. But those who are genuine refugees should be introduced gently to the Australian way of life and culture and then into the community.

    The politicians do not like to admit they are wrong but they have made the wrong decisions here. I appeal to them – please be honest with yourselves. You have children and families. What would you do if your brother’s throat was cut? What if your children were starving, without water or showers, and standing in 50 degree heat? What if they are dehydrated, have diarrhoea vomit every day? Where are your consciences?

     

     

  • John Menadue. The war on asylum seekers

    For political purposes the government has deliberately embarked on a policy and a language to militarise the asylum seeker issue in the same way the Howard Government did in the “war on terror”. It is designed to highlight the government’s resolve, to play to our fears about a threat and to lessen our rights to be informed. Failure to disclose is justified because we are ‘at war’.

    But the ‘war on terror’ and the so-called ‘war on asylum seekers’ would in fact be much better conducted by police, customs and our intelligence services.

    In this misuse of the military and language for political purposes we should not be surprised if a two-star military general is drawn into the political fray. Neither should he or his colleagues be surprised if they also get caught in political flack.  If they are in the kitchen, they can’t complain about the heat!  The military has crossed the line before. General Cosgrave showed that he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Howard Government in forcing Tampa to transfer the asylum seekers on board. He will now be our Governor General.

    Senator Conroy has been criticised for saying that General Angus Campbell, the Head of Operation Sovereign Borders, has participated in a ‘political cover-up’. In my view that is precisely what the Government and General Campbell have done. The military has been manoeuvred by the government into a role in the coordination of government agencies, most of them civil agencies like immigration and customs. To avoid public examination, the Minister Scott Morrison and General Campbell keep hiding behind the parroted phrase ‘on-water matters’. This is a political cover-up in which the military has become involved. That cover-up should be called as such.

    The Coalition has been quite clear in its language that it is at war with asylum seekers and people smugglers. Scott Morrison has described Operation Sovereign Borders as ‘a military led border security operation’. Tony Abbott has spoken of a war against people smugglers. In the first week of parliament Scott Morrison said that ‘The battle [against people smugglers] is being fought using the full arsenal of measures’.

    In war situations, the withholding of information can be justified. But surely we are not at war against unarmed people in rickety boats.

    Just consider what we heard last week in Senate Estimates about Operation Sovereign Borders and the cover ups.

    • Under the charade of ‘operational security’ the Defence Force Chief, General David Hurley would not confirm that orange lifeboats had been used. He replied ‘That is an on-water issue’. Yet we have all seen the orange boats on TV time and time again.
    • Asked if the lifeboats were Australian-flagged, Hurley responded ‘We can’t comment on on-water issues’.
    • Asked if the lifeboats were navy assets, Hurley replied ‘They are an on-water issue’.
    • Asked if there was general training for navy personnel in the handling of the lifeboats, the Chief of the Navy, Ray Griggs, said ‘If I talk about training then I would be going to “on-water matters”’.
    • How at least six Australian navy vessels intruded into Indonesian waters was a matter of ‘on-water operations’. Undoubtedly the crew of the navy vessels will be censured, but not General Angus Campbell who is in charge of OSB. That would be politically embarrassing because he has become the point man in the government’s cruel policies and the cover up.

    When public policy becomes militarised like this, no-one, including the military, can hide behind trumped up excuses, time and time again about ‘on-water issues’.

    How out of proportion this has all become. The plight of vulnerable people has become a highly politicised and military issue. This is a humanitarian issue which must be handled with firmness, but that does not mean that the military should be leading it. We also need the truth rather than senior officers and military leaders using lame excuses. We have seen too many other instances where the performance of the military, particularly at the Australian Defence Force Academy leaves a lot to be desired.

    Senator Conroy was much closer to the truth than his critics in the Canberra press gallery who so often see parliamentary events through a party political prism only and seems oblivious to the wider and more important issues of policy and principle.

  • Arja Keski-Nummi. Offshore Processing in Cambodia – Really?

    The idea of Cambodia as a so-called offshore processing centre is not new. For a nanosecond I recalled the former government contemplated Cambodia as a likely candidate for an offshore processing centre. Thankfully saner heads prevailed, although to their discredit they did also contemplate East Timor.

    The scramble to avoid doing the decent thing and accept our responsibility to process asylum seekers quickly and fairly is mind-boggling.  This government is following in the questionable footsteps of the former government in shirking decency for short-term political gain.

    Just consider the countries we are using for off shore processing or the one, Cambodia, now being considered.

    According to the CIA publication The World Fact Book 2013, Australia’s population of 22.2million has a life expectancy of close to 83 years, a GDP per head of $US 42 000  We have 3.85 doctors available for each 1000 people and by international comparisons negligible poverty. Compare this with PNG which has a GDP per head of $US 2700, a life expectancy of 66 years, where 37% of the population live below the poverty line and where there are only 0.05 doctors per 1000 .In Cambodia the statistics show the following for a population of 15.2milllion: life expectancy 63 years, GDP per head $US 2400, and where there are 0.23 doctors per 1 000 population and where 20% of the population live below the poverty line.

    We live in different worlds. Not only should we be embarrassed.  We should be ashamed to think that this is even considered.

    If we were truly serious about regional security and building a sustainable and dynamic regional economy and societies then we would not be offshoring our responsibilities for a small proportion of the world’s asylum seekers. We would not be decreasing our aid efforts in poverty alleviation, health and education as we have done to the tune of $250 million in the Asia Pacific region while “bribing” poor, politically unstable countries to take asylum seekers for an unknown number of years.

    The Foreign Minister cited the Bali Process as justification for the approach to Cambodia. It is a disingenuous characterization of the Bali Process to see an arrangement with Cambodia as consistent with recent Bali Ministerial communiqués that endorsed the concept of regional processing centres. It would do the government well to know how such arrangements worked in the Comprehensive Plan of Action under the Indo China program to understand how regional governments might view such arrangements now.

    It would also diminish the Bali Process if the Government uses it as merely a people smuggling forum and not actively support the development of the broader regional arrangements that Bali Process governments have endorsed in recent years and which address in a more holistic way both the people smuggling dimensions of population movements as well as protection and support arrangements for displaced people.  Admittedly such arrangements are not “quick fixes” but in the long run are more sustainable and realistic.  The pity is that Australian governments seldom have a long-term strategy in mind and are limited by their lack of imagination, the political cycle and fear of an electoral backlash.

    In 2012 there was an answer in the proposed arrangement with Malaysia that the Abbott Opposition rejected because it suited them, not because they really believed it was wrong but because they did not want the former government to succeed in “stopping the boats”.  Well, now that the Abbott Government has succeeded in that they should be big enough to revisit the Malaysia arrangement. It should see if it can be salvaged, make the necessary legislative changes and get on with the job. That arrangement was sound, it was humane, it was supported by the UNHCR and importantly it addressed the issue of displacement “in situ” unlike the arrangements on Nauru, PNG or indeed if it happens Cambodia. None of these are countries of transit or in any appreciable way countries of first asylum. Indeed with the current arrangements we are exporting those problems to them!

    If the two parties were really serious they would do what two previous Governments, the Fraser and Hawke governments did when faced with similar issues and talk to each other, agree on a way forward and show leadership by dealing with these issues not as a political free for all that creates social disharmony but rather as a responsible and humane approach to address the circumstance of vulnerable people displaced by war and civil unrest.

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

     

  • John Menadue. Manus and Nauru and Australia’s responsibility in regional processing.

    An asylum seeker who comes to our shores must be protected. We cannot offload that responsibility onto another country. We continue to carry a responsibility for that asylum seeker whatever happens in Manus, Nauru or even Malaysia.

    I have not always held the view that those 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 in2011. 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 just. The issue of where that processing occurred was a secondary issue.

    I also supported the proposed Malaysian Agreement for two other reasons. I saw it as part of an important building block in regional cooperation. Secondly, the UNHCR was actively supporting 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 in the Senate was supported by refugee advocates across Australia. It was quite extraordinary to hear Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison along with refugee advocates criticising human rights abuses in Malaysia. No country is perfect, including Australia in mandatory detention, but the position of asylum seekers in Malaysia would have been a long way ahead of what is now unfolding in Manus and Nauru.

    The collapse of the Malaysian arrangement 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 arrangement. Policies by the Labor Government and the Coalition since then have been punitive and cruel. The result has been Manus and Nauru.

    In my blog of January 14, I pointed out that 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.
    • Amend the Migration Act to assert the principle of ‘effective protection’ and bind governments to that principle in any transfers of asylum seekers.

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

    Just as importantly, the Australian Government is failing to accept its responsibilities to asylum seekers that we have transferred to PNG and Nauru. We cannot offshore our responsibilities for ensuring effective protection and safety for asylum seekers. After demonizing asylum seekers for so long I don’t think the Coalition Government cares about the human rights of asylum seekers. Their rights, even their lives are just unfortunate and embarrassing collateral damage

    The horror on Manus is only one part of the havoc that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have wrought. They have badly damaged our relations with Indonesia. Their actions have resulted in the collapse of the rule of law in Nauru. And they are responsible for the release of details of 10,000 asylum seekers that will now be eagerly accessed by security agencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. What an opportunity it will be for those security agencies to now hunt down the families of asylum seekers who have fled to Australia from oppressive regimes in those countries.

    How ironic it now is that China is rebuking us for our abuse of the human rights of asylum seekers.

    One thing the ALP in Parliament should do immediately  is move to incorporate the principle of “effective protection ” in the Migration Act. It would clearly express the responsibility we have for persons transferred to another jurisdiction. We could then not shirk our responsibility by  passing the buck to others.

  • Michael Kelly SJ. Australians as the ‘white trash of Asia’ reaches new depth.

    It is now over thirty years since the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew described Australians as the “white trash of Asia”. The barb stung and is still recalled with shame and hurt by Australian politicians as then Prime Minister Julia Gillard did in 2012.

    But the term has reached a new level of accuracy with the current Australian Government led by Tony Abbott who has degraded Australia’s relations with China, Indonesia and Timor Leste close to their lowest points in decades with one piece of diplomatic ineptitude and insensitivity after another.

    White trash is a derogatory American English term referring to poor white people, especially in the rural South of the US, suggesting lower social class and degraded standards. The term suggests outcasts from respectable society living on the fringes of the social order who are seen as dangerous because they may be criminal, unpredictable, and without respect for authority whether it be political, legal, or moral

    While the deafening “stop the boats” mantra of the Abbott Government, with muscle supplied by the defence forces in Operation Sovereign Nation, gains all the media attention in Australia and throughout the Asian region, a policy shift introduced by the Government on refugees and asylum seekers has gone almost unnoticed.

    By accident this week, and despite the Government policy of “no speaks”, I discovered something new – to me anyway. Almost since the day they arrived on the Treasury benches, the Abbott Government has found a new way of persecuting victims.

    In Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s armory now is a rule that anyone who arrived by boat in Australia is unable to sponsor any other refugee or asylum seeker.

    Thanks to information provided to me this week in Bangkok by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), I discovered that a Sri Lankan family that has been waiting for resettlement for THIRTEEN YEARS and finally got accepted by Australia, had their visas revoked because relatives who reached Australia by sea were sponsoring them.

    I was speaking with one of the legal team at JRS, Kathryn Smyth, because of some Pakistanis I am helping with their application for refugee status. In response to a request from a Jesuit friend in Pakistan, I am effectively “in loco parentis” for five (soon to be six with a birth expected in April) refugees whose only crime in Pakistan is that they are Catholics.

    They were forced to flee following events where they were beaten up, shot at and given the popularly administered death sentence that comes with accusations of blasphemy.

    With Kathryn, I was checking some of the documents I’ve prepared for these people and she told me again in graphic detail something I know too well: that even if they got the first of three interviews with the UNHCR today, they would most likely not get the second interview till January 2016.

    And then there’s a further year of waiting for the UNHCR’s adjudication followed by an unknown wait till a country accepts them for resettlement.

    I said “Yes, yes, I and they know about it” only to be told of the casual vindictiveness of the Abbott Government in its merciless treatment of people adjudged by the UN to have “a well founded fear for their lives on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion”.

    There are literally thousands of refugees and asylum seekers in Thailand. The UNHCR can’t cope with the scale of demand that the troubles in Pakistan and Afghanistan are presenting them with. When a refugee lands in Bangkok, they register with the UN for consideration of their case.

    Many of the refugees and asylum seekers in Bangkok are like my friends – Christians fleeing the terror of the blasphemy laws introduce President Zia Ul Haq who was assassinated in 1988. Those laws allowed Muslims to allege that anyone had been blasphemous by insulting the Prophet Muhammad.  Summary execution of the accused is then allowed with no action taken by police or Courts to bring the murderers to justice.

    For refugees arriving in Bangkok, it takes between three and six months to get to first base – and initial consideration that allows the applicant to be scheduled for an interview about their case that takes at least two years to happen.

    And in the Thai capital, there are currently 3,100 in that category of applicants trying to get to first base. There are many thousands more in the line waiting for the interview two years hence. They live on a pittance, patiently doing all they can do – wait!

    For the Sri Lankan family I mentioned earlier, where do they go after 13 years waiting, finally getting acceptance only to have the prize ripped from your grasp? Perhaps the Australian Government has done them a favor. Who’d want to live in a place that treats human beings this way?

    White trash, as mentioned, live beyond the common standards of decency and respect for human dignity, and through their assessments and actions degrade the common humanity we share.

    As an Australian, I regret to say the country’s performance in Asia deserves the description that Prime Minister lee gave us long ago.

     

  • Andrew Babkoff. The human side of refugees.

    (*names have been changed to maintain privacy)

    There is a significant amount of misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding asylum seekers (in particular ‘boat people’) and refugees in Australia. In response, a number of people outside of the mainstream media have highlighted the need for refugees’ stories to be presented through mainstream outlets. My personal experience as a teacher of refugees and migrants has allowed me to see the human side of the refugee issue by hearing about the stories of people who have been granted asylum in Australia.

    Below is a reflection I wrote after a numeracy class I had with a group of refugees and migrants in Brisbane in 2013.

    We had our tests today in numeracy. I gave them the shopping docket test and the one on the ANZAC biscuits recipe. Attendance was good. I spent the first twenty minutes pre-teaching vocabulary and reminding the students to show their working on the test paper. When they started the test, a hush of concentration fell over the room, and I kept a lookout for anyone who needed help. Some students, especially the younger ones, worked quickly, only needing a little help with concepts and the wording of questions. A couple of the mature age students, Afghan men, lagged behind and needed a lot of explaining, although their maths skills were quite good. Hassan, who seems around seventy, laboured faithfully over his paper, scribing his working and answers methodically and accurately. Several times, when they were speaking to each other in Dari, I had to remind Hassan and Mustafa, a man in his late forties, to ask only me if they had any problems, as it was a test. I sensed their frustration building, but I had to keep it fair for all students and maintain the standards of the process.

    I ended up spending another half an hour with Hassan after class. Apologetic and grateful for my help, he felt compelled to explain his slowness. His wife, in a beginner English class, came in and, after seeing us talking, sat down at the front of the room facing us. In what most people would call broken English (which was a huge improvement from when I first met him), Hassan recounted to me how he’d been denied the opportunity of an education in Afghanistan. He said, “I couldn’t have an education. Neither could my wife. Many times I’ve thought, ‘Why am I alive? What am I living for? Wouldn’t I be better off dead?’”

    For many years, he had done business in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, so spoke five languages fluently, but he lacked the English to be able to work and support his family in Australia. He told me, with heartbreak on his weathered face, how in Afghanistan he and his sons had run a successful used car business and that, when he had refused to share his profits with the Taliban, they had killed two of his sons. As he spoke, tears ran down his face and his wife wept silently. Despite her very limited English, I felt she knew what her husband was talking about. After he told me they had brought their three daughters to Australia, he and his wife lit up with joy as they expressed their gratitude at being given a second chance at life.

    Hassan came to Australia by boat with his wife and three daughters. Sadly, his third son and daughter-in-law died en route to Australia.

    Many refugees have similar stories of escaping horrors such as the torture, rape and murder of people in their family or community. In many cases, the journey to asylum is long and painful. It can also include years enduring the conditions of overcrowded refugee camps. In some cases, mothers even resort to prostitution to attain limited food for their children while staying in a camp. Some asylum seekers have to go to several different countries before they are finally granted refugee status. For some, getting on an old boat to come to Australia is the last option for survival, not an easy way to a better life by ‘cutting the queue’. If someone is willing to leave their home country and give AUD20, 000 or more to a ‘people smuggler’ to make the perilous journey across the sea to Australia, then it must be an act of extreme desperation to escape a situation that promises dangers such as persecution, even death. Some families send their eldest son with all their savings, a gamble for safety.

    In my nine years of teaching, I have never seen such determination to learn as I see among my refugee students. People like Hassan have rescued their families from imminent danger, giving them the chance to have a full and productive life. Though they may have experienced or witnessed horrific abuse, they live with a spirit of resilience and profound gratitude.

    As Hassan told me, “Here, in Australia, I feel for the first time I am free. I have started to live here. I and my family are very happy here.”

    Andrew Babkoff was an English language teacher in Seoul for five years. He is now an ESL teacher in Brisbane.

     

     

  • John Menadue-Refugees – the demographic dividend.

    As responsible members of the human family, we have a strong moral case to provide protection for the victims of persecution and violence.

    There is also a strong case in our own self-interest – that refugees almost by definition are risk-takers and entrepreneurial. It can be argued that they are amongst the most highly motivated and determined in the Australian community.

    Most importantly if we want to see economic growth and rising productivity we need young people. Even the hard headed economists know that it is people that matter and not how they have come here. We need to open our minds as well as our hearts.   Let’s look at asylum seekers and refugees from an economic perspective as well as a humanitarian perspective.

    Along with many other developed countries, Australia has a problem with its rapidly ageing population. Treasury and others have pointed out that in the future there will be many more old Australians than there are today. The number of Australians 65 and over is expected to increase rapidly from around 2.5 million in 2002 to 6.2 million in 2042. That is, from around 13% of the population to around 25%. For Australians aged 85 and over, the growth is even more rapid from around 300,000 in 2002 to 1.1 million in 2042. In 2002 there were more than 5 people of working age to support every person aged over 65. By 2042 there will only be 2.5 people of working age supporting each person aged over 65.

    Data published by Professor Graeme Hugo at the University of Adelaide has highlighted the much younger age structure of refugees. Refugees are not only younger than the Australian population, but also younger than migrants. Migrants and refugees will not be a silver bullet. We need to respond in many wages including lifting the retirement age, but refugees can make a significant contribution to slowing down the ageing of the Australian population. In his report published in May 2011, Professor Hugo pointed out the following:

    • ‘An important characteristic of the contemporary refugee/humanitarian intake … is that it is substantially younger than the national Australian population. … The medium age of the refugee/humanitarian intake over the 2003-09 period was 31.8 years compared with the medium age of 42.9 years in the population.’
    • ‘Not only is the refugee intake young when compared to the national resident population, it is very young when compared with the total immigration intake. … Dependent aged children and young adults aged 15-24(from a refugee background) are significantly over-represented compared with all migrants, while the middle and older working aged group (25-49) (of refugees) are significantly under-represented.’
    • ‘Refugee/humanitarian entrants… are disproportionately concentrated in the age groups which contribute towards a demographic dividend.’

    There has been recent comment about the increased number of Iranian asylum seekers. There is a debate whether they are really asylum seekers or economic migrants. There is no doubt however that they are young, well-educated and very determined. Most would make excellent settlers and are a very good example of how young migrants and refugees can lower our age profile. We need to open more migration pathways for young people who face discrimination within their own country but cannot be regarded as refugees as they have not fled their country.

    But an expanded refugee intake would not only deliver us a “demographic dividend”. Refugees make other important contributions as outlined by Professor Hugo

    • They are increasingly settling in regional Australia.
    • They place a high store on education for their children. 48% of second generation people who are Australian born have post-school qualifications. For the total refugee groups, the percentage is much high at 59%, with some refugee groups showing remarkably high levels of post-school qualifications, e.g. Estonia 65%, Latvia 65%, Slovakia 65%, Sri Lanka 61%.
    • Refugees are more likely to demonstrate entrepreneurial and risk-taking attributes than the Australian community as a whole. They have a higher incidence of owning their own businesses than other migrant groups.
    • The second generation of refugee settlers have a much higher level of labour force engagement than the first generation and in many cases, the level is higher than for second generation Australians.

    Their commitment to Australia is also shown in their uptake of citizenship.  A study prepared for OECD by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (October 2010) reveals that the naturalisation rate by birthplace for all foreign-born is 80%. For significant refugee groups it is much higher – Croatia 97%, Poland 96% and Vietnam 97%. For New Zealand it is 45%, for the United Kingdom 71% and the United States 70%.

    Not surprisingly, refugees in their early years are ‘takers’ of Australian generosity. But year by year they increasingly become great contributors. They pay back many times the generosity they initially receive. They contribute to Australia out of all proportion to their number. It is a great success story for all Australians.

    We can draw inspiration from the very successful refugee programs of the past. Australian business and society generally have been great beneficiaries. It is in our self-interest, as well as for sound moral reasons that we need to break with the stalemate and toxic debate that surrounds refugees. Doing the right thing really pays off.

    Refugees deliver many dividends including a “demographic dividend”. They are much younger than the Australian population and migrants.

  • John Menadue. Cutting back government spending – does it include middle-class and corporate welfare?

    Tony Abbott told his listeners recently at Davos that small government was the best form of government.

    The Minister for Health, Peter Dutton, has said that waste must be reduced in our health sector.

    The Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews, has told us that our welfare system is unsustainable and has appointed Patrick McClure to review welfare in Australia.

    And the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has established a Commission of Audit to look at ways to reduce ‘big government’ with priority to reducing government outlays. He said that the age of entitlement had to end. But for whom! He said ‘it is .. essential that the Commonwealth government lives within its means and begins to pay down its debt’. We know of course that by any international measure we do not have a debt problem but let us pass on that for the moment.

    Before we look at fair and efficient ways to improve our public finances, there are a few broad issues to be considered.

    First, we do have a long term ‘structural deficit’ of about $60 billion p.a. The IMF has told us that the most recent culprits were the Howard/Costello governments that reduced tax rates year after year when we were flush with revenue from the mining boom. The Gillard and Rudd governments did face the GFC and sensibly increased government spending. They made some attempt to reduce middle class welfare, but they failed to grasp the major recommendations of the Henry Review to reform our tax system.

    Second, Australia does not have a growing public sector. As Ian McAuley, Jennifer Doggett and I have set out in our submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Commission of Audit, there is no evidence of any sustained increase in government spending (see my website by clicking on at top left of this blog). In fact, outlays have been trending downwards since the mid-1980s. Andrew Podger, who is Professor of Public Policy at the ANU and former Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing, said on January 22 in the AFR, ‘The claim that Australia’s welfare system is unsustainable would surprise observers in most other OECD nations which spend a much higher percentage of their GDP on social security payments. Our emphasis on flat rate, means-tested payments rather than earnings-related social insurance has limited the burden on Australian taxpayers.”

    Third, our tax as a percentage of GDP has fallen steadily since 2002 from 30% to 28%, well below the OECD average of 34%.

    Fourth, our health expenditure runs at about 9% to 10% of GDP which is much the same as the OECD average, mainly because of the efficiency of our public insurer, Medicare. We could save substantial amounts in the health sector however if the government would confront the vested interests in health that force up government spending – the AMA, the Private Health Insurance firms, Medicines Australia and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.

    The issue that stands out is that we need to improve our revenue base. This is where middle class and business welfare is a major problem – the tax-deductions or ‘tax expenditures’ that reduce the effective level of tax and provides disproportionate benefits to the well-off in the community. FlagPost, published by the Australian Parliamentary Library noted on January 29 2014 that Australia has the highest level of tax deductions in the OECD

    • Treasury estimate that the concessions for super contributions and tax-free payments of superannuation to persons over 60 years of age, like me, costs about $32 billion p.a. A phase-in of a 15% tax on superannuation draw-downs would quickly raise $5 billion p.a.
    • The Grattan Institute estimates that property investors get a benefit of about $7 billion p.a. through negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. These concessions help inflate property prices and push home ownership out of the reach of young people.
    • The Grattan Institute also estimate that the government provides about $36 billion p.a. in benefits to home owners through exempting the principal house of residence from capital gains tax and aged pension entitlements. The aged pension is asset-tested, but that test excludes the principal residence. The Minister for Social Services is not prepared to address this issue. The aged pension is excluded from his review. Yet the aged pension costs $36 billion p.a. and accounts for roughly half of the welfare budget. If the government was serious about winding back welfare it would not exclude the aged pension from any review.
    • The government has also excluded from the McClure Review Tony Abbott’s $5.5 billion pa parental leave scheme in which the baby’s primary carer would receive six months leave on full pay up to a maximum of $75,000 p.a. This is middle class welfare in neon lights.

    There are also large hand-outs to the corporate sector, particularly the finance sector

    • There is a subsidy of $6 billion to $7 billion p.a to the high cost Private Health Insurance companies who keep pushing up their premiums which are really private taxes.
    • If we had blinked just before Christmas, we would have missed the largesse that Assistant Treasurer Sinodinos handed out to the financial services industry. The previous government took action to stop superannuation advisers automatically collecting commissions year after year – trailing commissions. It was estimated by the Industry Super Network that this reform by the previous government in stopping these commissions would add $144 billion to private savings by 2027. But Arthur Sinodinos has announced that the Abbott Government will roll back this reform and give financial advisers a chance to plunder our superannuation savings again. The government has given the all clear to the financial advising industry to re impose a private tax on superannuation contributors. There is also no sign that the government is acting to stop the super funds owned by the big banks funnelling their cash exclusively into their parent banks for relatively low returns. It is a private tax on super contributors. That is surely abuse of power or worse but neither ACCC nor APRA seems concerned!
    • The Abbott Government has announced that it will retain the fringe benefits salary packaging for expensive, mainly foreign cars at a cost of almost $2 over four years.
    • The government shows no interest in saving $2 billion pa in drug costs by being as rigorous as New Zealand in negotiating drug prices with suppliers in Australia.
    • Large polluters will be subsidised by removing the market discipline of a price on the carbon that they emit.

    There are also other ways that the Commonwealth Government could address the structural deficit. It should expand the GST to include food, education, health and financial products. Most countries do not have the exclusions that we have. The extension of the GST would raise about $16 billion this year and $70 billion by 2016-17.

    In short, we need to lift taxation. Taxes in Australia are too low. It is the truth we refuse to name.

    In global terms we don’t have a government expenditure problem, although a great deal of middle class and business welfare should be rolled back.

    We also need to look urgently at areas of real need, particularly the disabled, those in need of special help in social housing, those who receive meagre benefits in Newstart (the dole) and refugees.

    We should all share the pain in getting our budget into shape, even though the problem is nowhere as severe as we were told in the election. My concern is that so-called “dole-bludgers “of talk back fame will be the target and the wealthy and politically powerful will be largely exempt. The government has already cut aid to the poor in developing countries.

    I live in hope but I am not expecting an end to the age of entitlement for the rich and powerful. Just think executive salaries, transfer pricing and tax havens! But maybe Joe Hockey has something up his sleeve!.

    Given the present weakness in the Australian economy it is also  important that the reduction in our structural budget deficit is done carefully and not in the drastic way that brought so many problems in Europe.

  • Chris Geraghty. The ABC and Scott Morrison

    The ABC has been much criticised, by our Prime Minister no less, and by the silly bullies on some commercial radio stations, for not being patriotic enough, for not barracking for the home team. Disloyal journalists published a story that some wounded, unwelcome refugees who had been intercepted on the high seas by our navy boys and girls were alleging that they had been tortured by them, forced to grasp and hold onto hot engine pipes and burnt. These dishonourable journalists broadcasted pictures of several dark-skinned men presenting their severely burnt hands to camera and complaining about the brave troops defending our borders.

    I don’t know whether the allegations are true or false. I wasn’t there at the time to witness what was happening. Some people were there if such an incident or anything like it occurred. Presumably the refugees themselves were there, but even that I do not know from my own knowledge, so I must suspend my judgment pending further information. However, they have said that they were there and that they were tortured, or at least treated in such a way as to sustain serious injuries.

    The Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, would have us believe that the incident never happened, that the allegations are unsubstantiated, and therefore false. He might be right. I don’t know. And neither does he. He wasn’t there either. So he is clearly relying on what he’s been told, though we don’t know what he was told, or by whom. We don’t know whether the person he spoke to (if he in fact spoken to anyone) was present at the time or where he got his information from. As far as the Minister’s denial of the truth of the allegations is concerned, we are still all in the dark.

    Now, as to the allegations themselves, Scott Morrison invited us to accept that they are false, for two reasons.

    Firstly, this alleged incident was not something our brave, professional, respected, trustworthy navy men and women would ever be part of. It’s offensive to contemplate the possibility.

    Secondly, there is no evidence to substantiate these serious allegations.

    As to the first basis offered for rejecting the allegations, like all other patriotic Australians, I’d like to think it is true that our service personnel would not engage in such cruel and criminal treatment of vulnerable human beings. But this was the very same reason offered for years by naive Catholics to refute the vile allegations that members of the clergy were sexually abusing children. Professional people don’t always act professionally. Sometimes, some professional people, even Australian professional people, commit crimes. It’s hard to believe, but unfortunately it’s true. American troops in Vietnam engaged in the mass slaughter of civilians, and participated in horrible torture of the enemy in Iraq. We even saw pictures on television of unprofessional, criminal behavior of service men and women. It’s not new, and it’s not confined to the enemy. And closer to home, we have had to accept that unwanted sexual activity, criminal sexual behavior has been engaged in on naval vessels by our brave, professional service-men. I wish it wasn’t true, but we have to accept that sometimes good men can do terrible things, especially to people they have learnt to classify as “illegals”, as “invaders”. If these allegations eventually prove to be true, the shock jocks and our Prime Minister will have a lot to answer for.

    As to the second reason proffered by the minister, it might surprise him to know that there is evidence to substantiate the allegations, and no admissible evidence to undermine them – only the merest hearsay of the minister. The evidence might be thin. We might wish to have more evidence – evidence of an independent witness, for example. There might be grounds for some suspicion. As the evidence stands, it only amounts to a prima facie case, but in the absence of any admissible evidence to the contrary, it substantiates and establishes the allegations.

    What is the evidence? It consists of three important items. Firstly, several people, more than one, make a similar allegation. Secondly, each alleges that he was tortured or treated harshly by members of the Australian navy, and suffered injuries to their hands. And thirdly, there are pictures (presumably genuine pictures) of the burns sustained to the palm area of their hands.

    Now, that’s the evidence. It’s easy to say that it’s a slur, that it’s false and that the ABC should not have given succor to the enemy, but neither the navy nor the Government has taken any steps to demonstrate in any way that the allegations are groundless. And they claim to have the proof. It’s just that no one else is allowed to see or hear it. We have to trust the word of the minister. He assures us that the claims are scurrilous and groundless.

    Let’s hear from someone who was there, other than the refugees. Someone from the poop-deck or the engine-room. The captain or one of the petty officers. The person recording the events on video as they were unfolding. Let’s see the film. We didn’t see the poor mother throwing her baby overboard. Maybe we won’t see sailors mistreating refugees on the high seas.

    It’s not the traitorous behaviour of the ABC journalists that worries me. It’s the fact that smug, secretive ministers and their shock jocks treat the public like drongos.

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. Sharks and asylum seekers

    Over the weekend we have seen thousands of people crowding onto our beaches on both sides of the country to protest against the culling of sharks in Western Australia.  I happen to think that the protesters are right, that people who swim in dangerous seas know the risks but are prepared to take them. Compared with the carnage on our roads, the number who die from shark attacks is quite minor.

    But the protests made me ask why we do not see the same protests supporting asylum seekers, fellow human beings fleeing terror of a different sort.

    Why are we so exhausted in defending the rights of asylum seekers? Maybe it is because the problem is so large, it’s long-term and seems to be intractable. What can we do to make a difference?

    I think our willingness to “pass by on the other side” is because for over a long period deliberate and successful attempts have been made to anaesthatise our consciences to the plight of asylum seekers and refugees. We have become numb to the tragedy that we have allowed to happen in our name.

    I suggest that there are a string of events and actions that have made us less sensitive.

    • John Howard was the first Prime Minister in Australia since the war to show us the great political benefit in appealing to our fear and our worst instincts. Tony Abbott has followed in the same path.
    • We were told at the time of the ‘children overboard’ event that asylum seekers were so inhuman and degraded that they would even throw their children overboard.
    • Tony Abbott continues to call boat people ‘illegals’, akin to criminals, when they are not. As a colleague of Tony Abbott’s at a Jesuit college put it ‘They are not illegals, they are our brothers and sisters’.
    • Scott Morrison told the Coalition Caucus that most people believe that asylum seekers are Muslims and that that should be exploited.
    • He later told us that asylum seekers bring disease and wads of money.
    • The new Member for Lindsay at the last election told us that asylum seekers are blocking the M4 in Sydney.
    • Eric Abetz in Opposition told us that asylum seekers in the community who offended, even in a trivial way, should be treated like paedophiles.

    The demonization of asylum seekers and refugees continues almost daily. The media is largely silent. Its major interest is the politics of boat arrivals, not the plight of the persecuted. The leadership of our churches, synagogues and mosques is scarcely heard. The Vietnamese community that was given a haven in Australia more than 30 years ago is silent. The Labor Party is largely silent as are many members of the Coalition who I know are privately very concerned about what is happening.

    What is it that sharks have that seems to make their plight more important than that of asylum seekers and refugees? Our consciences have become numb. The demonization of asylum seekers is proving to be a political winner.

    It seems to be worth making the effort to save sharks but not human beings also fleeing terror.

     

  • Pope Francis – Message on Migrants and Refugees. January 2014

    ‘Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.

    They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their

    homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having,

    but above all for being more.

    Contemporary movements of migration represent the largest movement of

    Individuals, if not of peoples, in history.

    As the Church accompanies migrants and refugees on their journey,

    she seeks to understand the causes of migration,

    but she also works to overcome its negative effects,

    and to maximize its positive influence on the communities of origin, transit and

    destination.
    While encouraging the development of a better world,

    we cannot remain silent about the scandal of poverty in its various forms.

    Violence, exploitation, discrimination, marginalization, restrictive approaches to

    fundamental freedoms,

    whether of individuals or of groups:

    these are some of the chief elements of poverty which need to be overcome.

    Often these are precisely the elements which mark migratory movements,

    thus linking migration to poverty.

    Fleeing from situations of extreme poverty or persecution in the hope of a better

    future, or simply to save their own lives,

    millions of persons choose to migrate.
    A change of attitude towards migrants and refugees

    is needed on the part of everyone, moving away from attitudes

    of defensiveness and fear,

    indifference and marginalization – all typical of a throwaway culture —

    towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter,

    the only culture capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world.

     

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi. They are us … and the language of war!

    Why are we using the language and methods of war against civilians fleeing war and persecution?  Asylum seekers are not our enemies. Our real enemies are our complacency and a willingness to turn a blind eye to the spin we are getting. This reflects the Abbott government’s ability to drill deep into our collective psyche of fear with our settler past. What if we lose it all?

    It conflicts so dramatically with our other self-image of an open, caring and welcoming society.

    This debate is about much more than people arriving by boat, it is about reshaping an Australian narrative that excludes and rejects difference. “In our image or no image” is the message. The High Court action against the ACT legislation on same sex marriages and Christopher Pyne’s curriculum review are part of that same agenda.

    In trying to turn the page back to an Australia that no longer exists and never in reality existed the Abbott government is using the asylum debate to send a message of “them and us”.  At best it is elitist. At worst it is narrow minded, bigoted and opportunistic. The problem is that the “them” eventually become “us” as over 200 years of migration – illegal and legal – has proven.

    Governments and politicians carry an enormous burden of responsibility in helping shape how we react and welcome the stranger.  We are the community and society we are because by and large governments understood that most people did not feel comfortable with immigration but if we were to grow and develop and be prosperous we needed people. Nothing has changed.

    The language used about asylum seekers by both the previous government and the current one however has sought to divide our communities. Little compassion is shown or expressed to the plight of people displaced by war and human rights abuses. Rather the language is about people cheating a system and a vow to not “let them get their way”. Disturbingly in the last few months the language of war has started to be used with greater frequency.

    While this may be playing out well in the polling of today, we will pay a price for such demonization. A cornerstone of our success in settling millions of people in Australia over the past 70 years, irrespective of how they may have arrived in this country has been that we have genuinely subscribed to the ethos of a “a fair go”, helping create the opportunities for people to establish new lives and participate in the broader Australian community while at the same time valuing and cherishing their cultural heritage and giving some of it to our own uniquely Australian society. We don’t have an underclass at risk of exploitation nor do we have ethnic ghettoes. Our settlement programs have helped avoid that.

    We do have vibrant culturally diverse suburbs that reflect our cultural make up. It is true that for some the process of settlement is difficult and not trouble free and will be so for a long time but a generation on the children of those arrivals are politicians and in professions creating new wealth and opportunities for all Australians. They are us. That is the time when we need to measure how successful we have been in welcoming the stranger, and by any measure we have been truly successful.

    The previous government’s decisions to lock asylum seekers out of work and the continuation of this policy by the current government will have consequences. We are creating a new underclass. People will have to survive and it is disturbing to contemplate where this may lead and not just into a thriving black economy. It is an own goal we could well avoid if we just recognized and capitalized on the resilience, toughness and determination to succeed that asylum seekers bring with them.   It is on these qualities that Australia’s wealth has been built.  Rather than spending billions of dollars on detention centres and offshore processing centres (where is the budget emergency now?) a little helping hand will in the long run be rewarded a hundred times over. We have two hundred years of evidence to prove that.

    Our problem today therefore has been of our own making. Currently there are no formulated political structures to counter the governments’ opportunistic and increasingly militaristic approach. The Opposition is caught in its own appalling policy paradigm, one which cleared the way for the Abbott government when they reopened Nauru and Manus Island and went still further to announce that no people detained in those centres would be resettled in Australia.   They seem to have forgotten what they stand for!

    Likewise the Greens show no great policy nous in this area having a simplistic, emotive response that ignores the reality of multiple issues colliding with each other including the very difficult issues of how to manage mixed migration flows, return of non refugees, countering people smuggling and support for refugees. Their starting off point is that everyone is a refugee. It leaves no space to contemplate the harder elements of a refugee and asylum policy.

    Emotionalism is not a substitute for a good political strategy.  We cannot turn back the clock and bemoan missed opportunities but nor should we simply accept the mantra of war. It is disrespectful to survivors of wars and betrays the shallowness of politicians who have turned civilians, seeking sanctuary, into enemies.

    What we need is an approach that engages our international partners and regional governments in finding genuine regional solutions and not the Orwellian ones of Manus Island and Nauru). We need to recognize the humanity of people seeking asylum but we also need to have a process that quickly identifies who is and  who is not a refugee and be able to resolve the immigration status of a person who is not a refugee quickly and with dignity even if this means return to their country of origin. To do anything less undermines our obligations under the Refugee Convention, a protection tool that has withstood the test of time. We must compromise the system of international protection that we as a country have worked so hard to shape.

    We have done it before. We can do it again and we can be true to our own self image of a caring and open society.

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

  • Mission accomplished? Be careful which war you wish for. Travers McLeod

    “We are going to hold the line, we are going to protect the borders”, Scott Morrison, Federal Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, told the 44th Federal Parliament in its first sitting week. “This battle is being fought using the full arsenal of measures”, he wrote elsewhere. Last week, the Prime Minister defended the secrecy of the ‘battle’, saying, “if we were at war we wouldn’t be giving out information that is of use to the enemy just because we might have an idle curiosity about it ourselves”.

    Whatever the wisdom of Operation Sovereign Borders, Australia’s “military-led, border security operation”, if it is going be described as a military campaign we should assess it like one. When we examine military campaigns we often reflect on two interrelated questions: what is the strategy, and are the tactics appropriate and adapted to achieve that strategy? Strategy is important because it declares the intent and links ends and means. Tactics are also important. As the military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, explained, “only great tactical successes can lead to strategic ones”.

    On strategy, Operation Sovereign Borders has been explicit: “We are going to stop the boats.” In the first of the now discontinued weekly briefings, the Minister said “those seeking to come on boats” would be “met by a broad chain of measures end to end that are designed to deter, to disrupt, to prevent their entry” and “to ensure that they are not settled in Australia”.

    The tactical waters have been muddied. One tactic offered but discarded was to buy the boats. Another tactic, begun by the former Government, is to ensure certain persons arriving by boat cannot be settled in Australia. A new tactic – gifting patrol boats to Sri Lanka – was announced last year. The tactic most discussed has been to turn or tow back the boats.

    Determination not to comment on “on water” matters has marked the campaign. This approach, too, can be evaluated from the perspective of a military campaign. The Australian Defence Force (“ADF”) has defined information operations (“IO”) as “the coordination of information effects to influence the decision making and actions of a target audience and to protect and enhance our decision making and actions in support of national interests”.

    Can this campaign be won in part through an absence of information? In 2007, Lieutenant Commander Chris Watson wrote “the key for IO is choosing to release information to the media on one’s own terms, for example as regards the timing and quantity of material released”. He described IO and “Shaping and Influencing” as “potent but underutilised tools available to government” during peacetime. The Minister appears to share this view.

    One difficulty for Operation Sovereign Borders is multiple target audiences: Australians, regional governments (not least Indonesia’s), asylum seekers and people smugglers. A lack of footage from the High Seas and detention facilities also makes it problematic for actions to articulate a message in and of themselves. Those in charge would prefer no boats, and therefore no actions. No information means no boats. No boats means mission accomplished.

    It is worth recalling debates in the United States during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In 2006, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded the U.S. deserved a “D” or “D+” for its job in the “battle of ideas”. What became apparent was the moral dimension of the information battlespace. The need for accurate, regular information became paramount, informing the directive given to commanders not to put “lipstick on pigs”.

    Taking stock, one might observe Australia has a strategy supported by at least one tactic, and that its information operations are under siege. This observation is made without considering whether the current strategy is the ‘correct’ one. The Jakarta Declaration on Addressing Irregular Movement of Persons, signed by Australia and 12 other countries from the region last August, and endorsed by the UN Refugee Agency, offers other approaches.

    Tellingly, new members of Parliament have cautioned against ‘Fortress Australia’ in their maiden speeches, making the case for new arrivals and new markets. Clare O’Neil, Labor Member for Hotham, described how immigration has “brought more than 150 cultures” to Australia peacefully. Angus Taylor, Liberal Member for Hume, said Australia “must boldly expound and stay true to a narrative that explains the benefits of openness”, which includes a “generous humanitarian program”.

    Clearly, ‘Fortress Australia’ bears multiple meanings, whether we think about trade, immigration, or border protection. But they are all related. Militarising some of the issues and some of the discourse may not be a constructive development. It may not help Australia’s diplomatic and civil-military relations. It may not help Australia’s openness to trade and immigration, which is vital to continued competitive advantage in the global economy. But as long as any government continues to treat Operation Sovereign Borders as a military campaign, we should continue to assess its strengths and failures as such.

    One would hope militarisation has not been pursued in order to control the flow of information. At the end of the day there are human beings on these boats. Their “on water” stories will emerge. It just might be that many have fled countries undeniably at war to join the long list of migrants who have helped build and shape Australia for the long term.

    Travers McLeod is the Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Policy Development. He holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford.

    An edited version of this article was published in the Melbourne Age on January 14, 2014.