Americas
Europe
Africa & Middle East
Indian subcontinent
Asia Pacific
News
Analysis
Economy
Environment
Oppression
The Basics
Science &
Culture
Marxist Theory
History
Publications
Links
Workers Power, Melbourne
Australia's image is one of a mean spirited nation which forcibly dumps refugees onto its poorer neighbours. A nation so racist it will not even allow those who have risked everything to set foot on its soil.
There is a lot of truth in that image. Certainly, the federal election was fought and won on a racist ticket. John Howard's declaration that, "none of them will land" flatly contradicted his denials of playing the racist card. But racism has long historical roots in Australia.
It is a country where the indigenous people were not even counted as human until well into the last century and not granted the vote until the 1960's. The Prime Minister still will not apologise to a generation stolen from their families and used as servants by wealthy whites.
It is a country still talking about reconciliation and redressing the injustices of a colonial past in which the original owners of the land were massacred and dispossessed.
As of September 7, 2001, the Australian government was keeping 3,403 people in detention centers, the majority in Woomera, in the desert. This figure included 744 children, 111 of whom were not accompanied by a member of their family. These figures do not include over 1,000 refugees who have been sent to Pacific neighbours for detention.
The total - close to 5,000 people - is a disgrace.
Labor and Liberal alike have locked up people who, even by the UN's extremely restrictive definition, should be classed as refugees. Because asylum-seekers are often forced by circumstance to travel without passports or other papers, the Convention says governments should not penalise refugees "on account of illegal entry or presence".
Despite this, the Labor government introduced mandatory detention in 1992. This means that anyone who arrives without documentation is immediately locked up. Until recently, people had all their personal belongings confiscated and were not allowed to contact families abroad, or even in Australia itself.
Australia is the only Western country with such a policy of mandatory detention. It is the only country that then hands people temporary protection visas that are valid for only 30 months and do not allow for the chance of family reunion.
Aside from the problems inherent in locking people up for nothing more than trying to escape hardship and injustice, the conditions in detention centres are in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Detention is what happens to those "lucky" enough to reach Australia's shores. A problem of equal size is the number of people, already granted refugee status by the UN, who languish in refugee camps in places like Indonesia.
Often these people have families already settled in Australia and are simply waiting permission to enter. Large numbers of those who recently drowned off the coast of Australia had all their papers, they had been waiting years to rejoin their families. No wonder they, and others like them, took the dangerous, and often fatal, trip by rickety fishing boat.
By the standards of the UN convention, something like 90% of the people held in detention centers are eventually granted some kind of visa. But what about the other 10%? Are these people not "genuine" refugees?
The problem is that the UN definition is too narrow. A refugee, by this definition, is a person who has a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership of a particular social group.
Australia chooses to interpret this very strictly. Race, religion, and so on do not cover, for example, women who face murder at the hands of their families for bringing "shame" on them - the so-called honour killings.
It does not cover women facing forced abortion or genital mutilation if they return home. It certainly does not count those who are elderly, ill or very young who can expect levels of health care in their own countries which will result in their deaths.
It does not account for those escaping from slave wages, from mass unemployment, from poverty and degradation, the conditions that huge numbers of people around the globe suffer daily.
It does not count the people who cannot prove that they will be persecuted if returned to their country of origin, the people that the Appeals Tribunal simply chooses not to believe.
The important issue here is that, even if Australia were following all the international conventions, it still would not be enough.
It should not be a question of alternatives to detention, of fairer criteria for visas, of greater refugee quotas or more lenient rules on who can seek asylum and who can settle.
We must not get caught in the trap of accepting the government's logic that some people are refugees and some just "economic migrants". That some refugees are deserving and some are not.
The only way through the jungle of regulations and definitions, used basically to disguise a racist policy, is to fight for a world without borders. If the borders were open, if people could come and go as they wished, there would be no "refugee problem".
|
Site search |
Australia: Labor Party under pressure from right and left
Australia: race card wins election for the coalition
Australia: Howard wins third term
The full programme of Workers Power in the election (pdf file)
Australia: Mayday reclaimed by trade unions
Australia: let's make Mayday massive! All out on 1 May
Australia: Socialist Alliance launched to fight federal elections
WPA, March 2001
Australia: Summer of discontent – workers strike back
WPA, March 2000
The Australian Labor Party’s ‘Third Way’
WPA, March 2000