On 30 November 2015, six hundred men in Manus RPC (Regional Processing Centre), PNG, wrote the following letter to Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia and Peter Dutton MP, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.

The importance of this letter is that it sets a challenge for all of us who are preparing to celebrate Christmas.

Read the letter and then ask yourself: by treating people this way, are we being true to the Christian spirit, or are we betraying it?

Christmas is the time when, according to Christian tradition, Christ’s parents could not readily find shelter as they fled to escape persecution. If they did the same thing today and found themselves in Australia, they would be taken by force to another country where they would be locked up indefinitely in shocking conditions.

This Christmas, we should all face up to some uncomfortable facts:

Any government which is willing to tolerate these things cannot possibly describe itself as adhering to the Christian tradition. Likewise any Opposition which does not oppose it. If your Federal MP is a member of the government and sends you a Christmas card this year, you can be pretty confident that he or she is a hypocrite.

Here is the transcribed text of the letter:

This piece originally appeared on http://www.julianburnside.com.au/ and has been republished here with full permission.