I participated in an activity earlier this year, in which the membership of the refugee advocacy group that I contribute to were invited to write a letter which would be delivered to an asylum seeker in detention, to help give them some hope that Australia’s harsh stance on asylum seekers is not representative of all Australians’ views. I wrote a simple letter which I felt struck the right balance between respect, compassion, friendliness and being down-to-earth. I didn’t hear back from anyone, but hopefully someone received it and it made them feel a little bit better.
What must it be like to be detained indefinitely on a tropical island, living in a tent in 40 degree temperatures, with or without family, with no idea about your/their future? And all the more hurtful if you had thought Australia was a fair and friendly country, to be treated in this way because you have sought asylum by boat. What must it be like for children to be fed the same food day after day, to have nowhere to play or explore, to have unhappy people all around them, and to not understand what is going on or why you are being punished?
Another United Nations report has just been released which has found that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers, including children, is ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ which is forbidden by international law. Meanwhile the Government is pressing ahead with legislation to curtail the rights of asylum seekers to have refugee decisions reviewed and to increase the Minister’s power to make more decisions instead; while returning people who are attempting to seek asylum in Australia by boat to their country of origin (also against international law – the technical term is ‘refoulement’). What do we think about this? Who is speaking for refugees, when their voices have been silenced?
If peoples’ lives must be made miserable and their spirits broken to avoid loss of life by deterring asylum-seeking by boat, is this something we as Australians are comfortable with? Why is it so critical that ‘we will determine who comes to Australia, and the circumstances in which they come’? Yemen, Cameroon and Turkey have asylum seeker flows of 5 times, 17 times, and 18 times the number Australia had at its zenith in 2013, with far, far lower levels of wealth, as countries, than Australia (between 6 and
54 times less, in fact). Australia receives less than 2% of the more than 2 million refugee claims lodged throughout the world.1 Why can’t we take our fair share? We are not that accessible. We have never been, and will never be, flooded with refugees by world standards.
Control is something that a parent learns to let go of fairly early on. It’s not such a bad thing. We learn and grow, and put things in perspective, in so doing.
Isn’t it time we as a country did a bit of that too, for the sake of human rights and a fair go? This race to the bottom by the major political parties, ostensibly with the goal of saving lives but just as much due to racism and a desire for control, has gone far enough. Yes, it’s a multi-faceted issue and Australia needs to play its part in reducing world conflict that leads to more refugees fleeing persecution. But let’s be a compassionate nation. Let’s put pressure on both major parties to be more compassionate, and as recommended by the UN, use any mandatory detention as a last resort only, which is the approach taken by so many other countries in the world which do not apply this barbaric practice.
We are one world, and we are all people with a right to live with dignity within it.
If you want to help:
Refugee Council of Australia: www.refugeecouncil.org.au
Chilout: www.chilout.org
Amnesty International: www.amnesty.org.au
1. Source: UNHCR data from www.refugeecouncil.org.au.
