An open letter from Manus
By Jane Salmon
This epic howl of anguish came from the RPC on Manus via the internet today.
Mourning and Weeping From Hell
These words are coming from hell. There are many broken hearts screaming with heartache because we have been kept for such a long time, with nothing except failing lives …
Our stories might not be interesting to you. If you spend lots of time doing nothing, please listen to our voices and try to feel what these voices and what this letter tells you. It is not magnificent, it’s pain, yes extreme pain. That pain makes tears for all and everyone’s tears have made this letter for this beautiful nation.
Yes, our dreams are failing, we are failing with our hopes and we are failing with our future too. Our lives were set on fire by inhuman politics, that fire burns us little by little every single second.
Those who can feel our bodies and souls burning with our dreams … you’re the real Australians and great humans.
We can’t imagine why humanity is disappearing from this Nation…Waiting and waiting, but there is nothing, just a little bit of hope in everyone’s deep hearts, that the disappearing humanity will return back to everyone. Then we can see that humanity will feel our pain and extreme grief and share our feelings.
let’s see … we are waiting.
We have kids. We can’t think about our future. We can’t do anything for them, even their smallest wish. Our kids are dying slowly in front of us. We can see it with our own eyes, every second our hearts are crying so badly about our kid’s futures. Where are they going to go, what they are going to do? All these questions are killing us. You also have kids, you’ve made plans for when they are growing up. But what can we do? Just one thing: dying all together slowly, day by day, every single second.Please give us your hand to get us out of this deep dark hell. We are so broken. Our souls are crying silently every night. Only our pillow and bed knows. We can’t share our pain with each other here because everyone is in the same boat. We are travelling into the deep darkness, with extreme pain … we can’t smile, we can’t be happy, these things are all gone. Our mind is melting away from us.Now our heads are empty, our lives too. Oh our Nation, many fathers and mothers have children and babies … yes … they are all happy with their freedom and they trust in their lives but we are wasting our lives inside the fence. Our joy and freedom is locked up in this hell. Still, we can’t start our life.
We are asylum seekers. Sorry but we have forgotten our names because now we are just called by our boat numbers. We have been in detention for years in this hell you call offshore processing centre. We cannot describe our suffering. We are tired of being tired. We are dying every single second because of your inhumane treatment. Our presence is burning here. How can we have a future? All you give us is extreme pain and grief …
When we came here we became the victims of your policy. Sent to offshore processing centres and kept there with 2000 people. By the end of 2012 almost 27000 asylum seekers reached your country by boat. Where are they now? You know well some are unlucky and innocent and are still kept in the hell of offshore processing centres.
All the time we are sorry about our life inside the fence on this dry land. We are coping with time and emptiness day by day you make life hard every second and cause us pain too.
Wondering why our lives were saved in the ocean, if we died in the sea it would be wonderful because we can’t cope with your inhuman actions. You took our joy, you took our hope, dreams and locked us up inside the fence … We can’t breathe freely.
844 people from Manus an Nauru signed this letter (but because of our fear we just sent the signatures to one Senator).
04/10/2015
10 comments
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Chris -
Russell Powell -
Florence nee Fedup -
Matters Not -
oldfart -
Kaye Lee -
Alison White -
mars08 -
Kaye Lee -
diannaart
Return to home pageI think your chosen route is hopeless. Try some lateral thinking, perhaps volunteer to go back to where you come from. Then try a different route to Germany. They are taking 1,500,000 refugees according to the latest press reports. Good luck because Nauru, Papua New Guinea or Cambodia do not offer a good future for you while Germany will be paradise!
Chris , your deficit of understanding and compassion I find truly astounding – how about ruminating on a very simple cliche . . . “Do unto others . . . “
Chris, I suspect if the answer was that easy, they would have all be long gone by now.
As I understand it, the Middle East is (not) a great place to be at the moment. There are Russians with bombs. Americans with bombs. Turks with bombs. Australians with bombs. Then there’s the French, the British, ….
Chris, I can only assume you are ‘taking the piss’. But it’s in very bad taste.
What we (Australia) is doing on Manus will be judged very badly when any history is written.
A collective shame.
walk in their shoes Chris, but then again you may already be beginning to. How many freedoms have you lost since 2013? Being spied on by your own government a politicized police force in every state, a politicized defence force, migration and customs departments (note the new look militaristic uniforms here
I am sick of Peter Dutton treating us as fools.
Faced with a high court challenge to the constitutionality of offshore detention, all of a sudden everyone on Nauru can walk free and will have their applications processed within a week and Dutton says this has nothing to do with the court case – except the lawyers for the government immediately asked for the case to be abandoned specifically because of this change.
“Our primary submission is there’s now nothing left in this case where the court could give relief in respect to the future because of those facts,” Solicitor General Justin Gleeson said.
“The question has fallen away.
“Knowing that the facts now are radically different we would submit the court would not even entertain an injunction or prohibition.”
And now we see shenanigans by the Nauruan government. The legal action is being brought on behalf of people brought to Australia for medical attention who are facing deportation to Nauru. The Nauruan government has said it will not process the families of anyone who is not on Nauru, effectively holding these families hostage unless their relative returns.
I hope the court rules the whole bloody nightmare unconstitutional and directs the closure of these hellholes. Forget politics – what we are doing is not only inhumane, it should be ruled illegal.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-08/nauru-backtracks-on-vow-to-process-asylum-claims-within-week/6839250
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-07/australian-offshore-processing-examined-by-high-court/6828464
My heart breaks for these people. Oh when will we just let them come – all of those poor souls on Manus, Nauru and Christmas Islands who have paid such a heavy price for purely political gain by a few? The financial cost pales by comparison to the moral ruination of our country’s soul. I am deeply shamed by our elected representatives.
@Kaye Lee… the main reason Dutton keeps “treating us us as fools” is that he knows he can get away with it. The general public will not question him.
$7,000 for a visa to Nauru and if they knock back your application you don’t get the money back.
Justice Minister David Adeang ordered the arrest and deportation of Nauru’s former resident magistrate Peter Law in January last year.
Before his arrest, Mr Law was preparing a coronial inquiry into the death of Mr Adeang’s wife.
Chief Justice Geoffrey Eames had intervened by issuing an injunction against President Waqa’s deportation of Mr Law, but that was ignored.
Not only was Mr Law put on a plane back to Australia, the president then cancelled Justice Eames’ visa, preventing him from returning to Nauru to deal with the matter.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-20/nauru-sacks-deports-australian-magistrate-chief-justice/5207600
The President and the Chief Justice Minister are accused of taking bribes from a phosphate company
Nauru’s police commissioner, former AFP officer Richard Britten, was suspended one month after the Waqa government came to power.
Mr Britten was investigating the bribery allegations when he was dismissed.
“David Adeang calls the shots on Nauru,” said Roland Kun, one of five opposition MPs suspended from parliament indefinitely last year for criticising the government.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-08/nauru-president-and-justice-minister-allegedly-bribed/6530038
I cannot add mcuh that has not been said before… Australia has discovered its own Pol Pot moment…. our leaders refuse to listen.
As Kaye said I hope the court rules the whole bloody nightmare unconstitutional and directs the closure of these hellholes. Forget politics – what we are doing is not only inhumane, it should be ruled illegal.
Before anyone claims that what Australia is doing is not mass extinction of people – its denial, its obfuscation, its internment of innocent people is having the same result – ruined lives, increased division – we do not have any claim on the word ‘civilised’.