Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Switchboard >

open the borders, free the refugees

05:37 / 17.08.01

ah so it's pretty well known where i live that australia's refugee policy is even more fucked than most western countries (i.e., lock up all boat people on arrival, without trial or possibility of appeal, while the dept of immigration assesses their claim for asylum, ranging up to spending a year locked up not knowing if you'll be released or sent back to the country you risked your life to flee - and actually the policy is worse than that makes it sounds). now that i'm researching it it's just driving me crazy knowing how fucked things are

like: on the newsbreak, they tell us the biggest boatload of illegal immigrants ever has arrived in australia (um tell that to the indigenous people?) the tv completely distorts what's going on (i.e. calling them both illegal immigrants and refugees - they can't be both, refugees are a category of legal immigrants) and then shows the prime cunting minister saying we need to pass legislation to tighten up loopholes that let too many people stay.

so i get incredibly fucking annoyed because the legislation he's talking about would legalise procedural errors on the part of the refugee review tribunal, which are currently the only grounds for appealling their decisions. (i.e., they can and do send people back where they came from based on factual errors, you can't appeal that, you can only appeal administrative mistakes.) so they could send people back to torture, death, etc. by mistake, and their would be no way to appeal.

uh driving me fucken crazy. needed to rant. but if anybody wants to tell me about cool international crossborder actions that would cheer me up no end. and otherwise maybe go here (there's a good list of international links if you look around a bit).

And I'm sorry I said cunting. I was angry. And if anybody can suggest a less misogynistic adjective I will be very grateful.

[ 17-08-2001: Message edited by: Crunchy Mr Bananapants ]

12:34 / 29.08.01

Just call him John Howardy, adjectives don't come any more cunting than that.

Tonight they were calling these poor bastards "illegals", as if a person can BE illegal. I had enough trouble wondering how a PLANT can be illegal without having to contend with the concept that human beings can be too.

Graham the Happy Scum

13:58 / 29.08.01

I actually agree with John Howard on this one.

(NB: This has happened about three times in the past five years. The first time was after Port Arthur, with the gun law reform.)

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:24 / 29.08.01

quote:Originally posted by Graham the Happy Scum:
I actually agree with John Howard on this one.

Could you unpack this a little? Why do you agree with him? What do you see the benefits of the current immigration policies as being?

22:15 / 29.08.01

Yeah, what do you agree with him about? I agree with him about some things. But basically, I think Australia either should accept its commitments under the UN conventions on refugees it's signed (which it's not currently doing, ESPECIALLY after sending the goddamn army onto the Tampa, then drafting legislation to make it legal in hindsight), or get out of the convention. Personally I favour the first option, but in general I think we should do one of the two.

The detention centres are a disgrace. There's a twelve year old in detention right now with his lips sewn together as part of a hunger strike. I am beyond understanding how anyone can see a system like that as an acceptable part of any country that thinks it's civilised.

I have never heard Howard make a statement about refugees and detention without lying. Whether he knows he's lying or is just misinformed, I don't know. But just the phrase, 'queue-jumpers', is a lie.

I can expand on any of this if you want.

Lazlo Woodbine [some call me Laz]

23:02 / 29.08.01

Think about it, it all makes sense, to start Australia isn't really a large enough county with a small enough population to let any one else in.

BOLLOX!!!!!

Just take their customs. Awhile ago an old friend of mine went to live there, it took them two years to get Visas and when they did get there their belongings were taken from them for three days, incase they had any traces of foreign bacteria on them.

It's not that ther'e Communist, ther'e Socalist, and have been since the English arrived with POMs, Prisoners Of his/her Majesty, which is why they call us brits pommies, The English government wanted a country that work as one for itself.

How were they to know that they'd create a government of self ritious arseholes!

Graham the Happy Scum

13:57 / 30.08.01

yerself. Being nice and compassionate and easy-going does not mean that we're a bunch of saps waiting to be hoodwinked by a bunch of opportunistic people smugglers.

Never mind the landmass, we've got no water, mate. Seriously. We're already buggering up the continent building dams which encourage irrigation (to grow rice of all things), which raises the water table and causes massive salinity problems and all that.

I mean, Canada's a big country, it's only 25 million people, they can fit a million in Nunavut, oh yeah!

But yeah, sending the SAS onto the boat was fucked up, G. The govt will have to back down in the next couple of days, but not until they've gotten their pound of flesh, I guess. John Howard's shown his true colours with that over the past couple of days, still a racist ignoramus, as suspected.

As for the quarantine, we didn't want to get CJD from the Poms. (But then that's caused by manganese contamination, not bacteria...)

The Return Of Rothkoid

14:11 / 30.08.01

quote:Originally posted by The Flyboy:
Could you unpack this a little? Why do you agree with him? What do you see the benefits of the current immigration policies as being?I think that GTHS may be referring to the current situation involving a Norwegian ship picking up refugees from a foundering vessel, and entering Australian waters. The comments about being concerned about being taken as a soft option seem to be pretty widespread at the moment.

And Kosh: you kiss your mother with that mouth? I don't know if you've ever bothered to try and get working visas anywhere else, but it's pretty much the same level of difficulty. Additionally; if you break quarantine rules anywhere, you can expect to have to have your stuff fumigated or destroyed. I don't think it's just Australia that's self-righteous; you could perhaps be exhibiting some of that yourself.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:27 / 30.08.01

UN calls for Australia to admit refugees.

In addition, the government's attempts to force through legislation to retrospectively legalise the illegal boarding of the ship by the SAS has been rejected.

More info here.

quote:The prime minister is adamant that the vessel did not need to let off a distress signal on Tuesday - giving it the right to enter a country's territorial water under international conventions - as none of those aboard needed urgent medical attention.

The asylum seekers yesterday called off a hunger strike started on Monday, although several still needed treatment, according to the Tampa's owners. Mr Howard said their illnesses had been feigned and exaggerated by the ship's Norwegian captain. Australian defence force doctors reported that none of the asylum seekers was in a critical condition.

The arrival of the Tampa off the island this week - after rescuing the asylum seekers from a sinking ferry which had left Indonesia - has coincided with the run-up to national elections. In a country built by European immigrants there is mounting antipathy towards refugees arriving from Asia.

In the first sign of wavering in the bipartisan support for the Liberal coalition government's hard line on the asylum seekers, the emergency bill was opposed by the Labour party. The leader of the Australian Democrats, Natasha Stott Despoja, warned: "This is effectively a ban on refugees. Men, women and children fleeing terror will be sent back in a display of callousness."

Residents of Christmas Island yesterday described how dozens of commandos cradling machine-guns sped out in three small boats to board the Tampa. "They looked like they were on their way to a combat mission," said a local, Oliver Lyons. "It seemed to be complete overreaction."

Obviously I'm an outsider, but it strikes me that your man Howard there is a vote-chasing piece of scum...

22:29 / 30.08.01

Well, of course. He's a politician.

To clarify, the Tampa is a Norwegian freighter which was asked by both Australian and Indonesian governments to help the refugees whose boat was sinking between the two nations. They picked up what they estimated as 438 people (the ship is only licensed to carry 50). At that point, the ship was closer to Indonesia, so the Captain announced he would head there. Since there is no refugee resettlement program in Indonesia, the refugees said if he did that they would throw themselves overboard. So he headed for Australia.

It was widely reported in the Australian press that the refugees had threatened the ship's captain.

Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, refused to let them land even though they had entered Australian waters and were, under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, entitled to claim asylum here. He subsequently sent out troops to hold the ship, and so far as I know that's still where it's at (pending checking the morning news).

Howard's claim that nobody on board needed urgent medical attention was made based on a report from the SAS unit after 50 minutes examining 460 people. It took them hours longer than that to count the number of people on the boat; you might be inclined to wonder about how thorough the medical exams were.

The idea that Australia would be seen as a soft touch because we rescued people who were drowning in international waters seems pretty hard to accept. But the level of misinformation circulating in Australia around refugee issues is just extraordinary.

However, my happy fact. With the mass media across the board (even lefty liberal sources) insisting there's massive public support for Howard's action, it was getting pretty depressing. But on the train last night, I noticed MX - a free tabloid which isn't at all a lefty paper - had published the result of a reader's survey: 78% said let the refugees land. (That's almost exactly the opposite of the figures reported in other newspapers and on TV.)

And I'm flying kites at one of the detention centres on Sunday.

Disco is My Class War

22:58 / 30.08.01

Oh, it makes me so mad. So very very mad. I don't care that we have enough water, this is not about resources. It's about using fear and xenophobia as a tool to scare people into voting for the Liberals at the next election. The very human-ness of the people on the boats and in the cages is concealed under heavy layers of media coverage which allows everyone (the 'Australian people', as if none of them are immigrants or came here from places as refugees) an opinion on 'what should be done with them'. But the people themselves cannot speak. They aren't even allowed to fly kites in the detention centres, because they were a way of getting messages between different compounds. (Which is the point of making kites and flying them at Maribyrnoing on Sunday.)

It makes me feel sick.

12:31 / 31.08.01

Me too. The photographs of the refugees, with apparently forty children amongst them, all huddled on deck, are appalling. Surely the government doesn't expect the Tampa to sail the seas like some sort of ghost ship seeking a safe harbour. No one else is going to accept them if Australia doesn't.

And it's utterly despicable and shameful that Howard, in the hope of gaining some political advantage at the November election, is using public opinion polls to ignore the refugees' plight and deny them entry.

I'm just hoping that, having made the legal points so melodramatically, the scum bag 'll back down.

Disco is My Class War

13:19 / 02.09.01

This is a letter the refugees on the Tampa sent

To the Australian government, human rights organisations and Australian ladies and gentlemen,
We hope you accept regards and warm feelings of the miserable and oppressed Afghan refugees turning around Christmas island in the middle of sea, while having no shelter, clothes to change after ten days and even toilet and bathrooms.

Respected Australian government and gentlemen and ladies! You know well about the long time war and its tragidic [sic] human consequences, and you know about the genocide and massacres going on in our country and thousands of men, women and children were pit in public grieveyards [sic], and we hope you understand that keeping in view all aforementioned reasons we have no way but to run out of our dear homeland and to seek a peaceful asylum. And until now so many miserable refugees have been seeking asylum in so many countries. In this regards before this Australia has taken some real appreciatiable [sic] initiatives and has given asylum to a high number of refugees from our miserable people. That is why we are whole-heartedly and sincerely thankful to you.

We hope you do not forget that we are also from the same miserable and oppressed refugees and now turning around Christmas island inside Australian boundaries waiting „permit‰ to inter [sic] your country. But your delay while we are in the worst conditions has hurt our feelings. We do not know why we have not been regarded as refugee and deprived from rights or
refugees according to international convention (1951). We request from Australian authorities and people, at first not to deprive us from the right that all refugees enjoy in your country. And in the case of rejection due to not having anywhere to live on the earth and every moment death is threatening us. We request you to have mercy for the life of (438) men, women and children.

Yours sincerely,
Afghan refugees
Now off the coast of Christmas Island
30/8/2001

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:30 / 11.09.01

Some good news: Australian Federal Court Judge oorders government to accept refugees.

quote:An Australian Federal Court judge has overruled a government decision to turn away more than 400 asylum seekers who are currently being transported to Papua New Guinea.

"An ancient power of the court is to protect people against detention without lawful authority" - Judge Tony North

The refugees were prevented from landing on Australia's Christmas Island two weeks ago after being rescued by a Norwegian cargo ship, the Tampa, from a sinking Indonesian ferry.

In a case brought by civil liberties campaigners, Federal Court Judge Tony North ruled that Australia illegally detained the mainly Afghan passengers and should now allow them to land on Australian soil.

Justice North gave the government until Friday to comply, unless there was an appeal. The government has subsequently said it will appeal, and that the troop ship transporting the refugees to Papua New Guinea will hold its course.

Interesting that this comes in the same week as this: the High Court in the UK ruling that four Kurdish refugees were unlawfully detained at the Oakington refugee centre, which apparently has home secretary David Blunkett furious with the "human rights lobby". When people start using the term "human rights lobby" as an insult, I hear major alarm bells going offf... But anyway, what do people make of two governments in a week being overruled by their own justice systems on the issue of asylum?

07:37 / 11.09.01

I'm divided on this particular refugee issue because of one massively overlooked fact:

The 450 people in question had already been accepted into Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia BEFORE paying an Indonesian smuggler for passage to Australia. I'm all for open borders, but to call these people refugees or asylum seekers is just plain idiotic when Australia is their fourth port of call. What exactly are they refugees from, then? A non-Western* lifestyle?

* Malaysia's pretty fucking Western as it happens. KL may as well be in the States...

08:35 / 11.09.01

Source for this information? I ask because I haven't heard it before, and because it seems like semantics. They may have passed through those countries, but I can't see what you could mean by saying they were 'accepted'. Pakistan doesn't 'accept' refugees, it lets them stay in extremely poor conditions in dangerous, massively overcrowded refugee camps without anything as basic as access to fresh water. They have no rights to work, social services, etc. Indonesia's not a signatory to any of the UN conventions on refugees, and so has no obligations to accept refugees - so far as I know, they don't take any, either. Not sure about Malaysia.