Prime Minister Tony Abbott has told Today that he won’t give into “moral blackmail”, after up to a dozen asylum seeker mothers on Christmas Island reportedly attempted suicide.
And here’s why: by calling these acts of human desperation “moral blackmail”, Tony Abbott has once again painted asylum seekers as the bad guys. As people who follow a different moral code. As people who are different to you and I. As ‘queue-jumpers’. As law breakers. As ‘illegals’.
Last night, Fairfax media reported that almost a dozen mothers in detention on Christmas Island have tried to commit suicide, after deciding that their babies – many of whom were born in detention – would have a better chance of being resettled in Australia if their parents were no longer living.
President of the Christmas Island Shire Council, Gordon Thompson told Fairfax, “Their thinking is that if the babies have been born in Australia, they cannot be sent anywhere else, including Manus Island or Nauru… It’s a shocking conclusion to come to, but that’s the state of helplessness in the centre at the moment.”
The mothers were told this week that they would be sent to Nauru and Manus Island detention facilities to await further processing, and became inconsolable.
Jacob Varghese, a lawyer at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers — who is representing 72 asylum seeker babies — told Fairfax, “We have heard from our clients there that in the last day several women have attempted suicide or harmed themselves. They are in a state of utter despair. They are concerned about the health of their children.”
This morning, Prime Minister Tony Abbott acknowledged that while the reports of detainees’ suicide attempts were “harrowing”, his Government would not give into this kind of “moral blackmail”.
“No Australian Government should be subjected to the spectacle of people saying ‘unless you accept us, I am going to commit self-harm’,” the Prime Minister said.
”I don’t believe any thinking Australian would want us to capitulate to moral blackmail. ‘This is not going to be a Government which has our policy driven by people who are attempting to hold us over a moral barrel – we won’t be driven by that.”
Australia’s Government and the conservative media have already accused asylum seekers of so much.
They’ve called asylum seekers ‘illegals’, even thought it’s not illegal to seek asylum.
They’ve dismissed ‘boat people’ as economic migrants looking for a better life, despite the fact that 90 per cent of asylum seekers who arrive by boat are found to be refugees.
They’ve accused them of being ‘country shoppers’ and sailing past other stops just to get to ‘our’ country, despite the fact that Malaysia, India and Indonesia haven’t signed onto the UN Convention that would recognise them as refugees.
And now Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said that asylum seekers are blackmailing the Government.
There’s a reason our Prime Minister has chosen to frame this story in the least empathetic light, and that’s because that is the angle that backs up his policies. Because if asylum seekers are morally bankrupt individuals, who would go so far as to threaten suicide before they have been declared ‘genuine refugees’… then they are the ‘bad guys’. And it doesn’t matter how much long we keep these human beings in detention, or how we treat them while they’re there.
It’s easy to paint asylum seekers as the bad guys, and let that justify Australia’s current harsh policies.
It’s a lot harder to think of asylum seekers as what they really are: as human beings. To think of them as people just like us, who are capable of the same emotions as us. Despair, joy grief, loss, and hope.
People just like us, who would do anything for their family and their children. People just like us, who can be driven to a breaking point.
People just like us, who can break.
The situation has continued to develop throughout the day, with journalists tweeting updates. Further details as they emerge.
Top Comments
Love your point of view Joe............people smugglers are absolute scum, but how to stop them without the assistance of the countries they work from ?
Our government simply isn't doing enough to work with the officials in those countries.
If you combine the corruption and the fortunes being made off the backs of desperate people who've probably handed over their life-savings to these criminals - it's going to be quite a while before that human-trade slows down.
Our government's lack of respect for asylum seekers and it's willingness to feed the myths about them such as "queue jumping" is driving it's management.
People still think that most of these people can afford to wait.......that there's some orderly process for all of them to access. In some countries THERE ARE NO QUEUES..........the military is killing people (or the Taliban, or some opposing political party).........people are terrified of word (of their intention to escape) reaching "the wrong people" for fear of their families left behind being tortured or killed.......they may indeed destroy their ID's because they're trying to prevent a direct link back to those relatives.............hundreds of young men are trying to escape being forced into military service with terrorists or "the bad guys"......women are trying to find a peaceful, safe life away from rape, "bride-burning", torture.
The link I provided further down talks specifically about Sri Lanka's refugees, but similar stories are true of so many others.
If terrorists with an agenda wanted to be sure of reaching Australia - they'd probably come by "the proper channels" to ensure it's success.
So while our conversations continue I believe there's some hope.
Australians are fair-minded people when they have all of the facts - but deliberately "fudging the details" is causing confusion in the community and feeding racism.
Obviously I don't accept any asylum seeker deaths at sea, and I hate the fact that there have probably been far more than we've been told about.
I also hate the fact that politicians have used this issue to gain political brownie points.
The refugee problem world-wide is growing and like you JOE I would accept more than double the intake of what we accept now.
Ultimately though, even that number won't be enough
Julian Burnside is one person Australia should be turning to for answers as to how to treat these people and on what grounds they should be processed and where.
We should all be thinking about how we'd hope to be treated if we found ourselves in a situation like theirs.
I'm all for re-evaluating the amound of refugees we take and I'd be more then happy for Julian Burnside to play a large part in that conversation but we still need to stop these people from putting their lives at huge risk and hopping on a boat to get here.
Let's put this into perspective. From a google search I've got a rough number for the amount of asylum seekers who've tried to come to Australia by boat since the Pacific Solution was dismantled.
51637
Ok, so if we take the conservative number of deaths as 1400 even though we can safely assume that this number in reality is higher, then we see roughly 2.7% of those that travel will die. Let's consider that percentage for a bit. If 2.7% of children in Australia died crossing the road after school we'd be rioting. If 2.7% of people who ate at McDonalds died of food poisoning we'd burn the place down. That percentage is 100 times higher then rape victims in Australia and I think we all agree that too many women are raped in Australia.
I say that if anyone considers that and still thinks we shouldn't be discouraging asylum seekers from travelling here on boats, then they are heartless. They are the ones who lack compassion. They are the ones who are in this debate to score political points at the expense of people's lives. I would take all the complaints about being fed food past it's "best before" date over just one more life being lost taking that journey.