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“They come for help and you torture them.”

Dear Mr Dutton,

Words cannot express just how disgusted I am in you and your Department.

It is clear that your abhorrent asylum seeker policies have nothing to do with ‘saving lives’ and everything to do with securing votes from bigots, racists and xenophobes.

I know it is too much to ask that you show empathy and compassion. You’re clearly too busy blaming refugee advocates for stirring up trouble instead of taking personal responsibility for the disasters happening under your portfolio, because that is just how you roll.

What will it take to make you change your policy? How many more women need to be raped? How many more children abused and traumatised? How many more men have to die from lack of medical treatment? How many more people will be pushed to attempting suicide because of your cruelness and inhumane stance?

How many more nasty, brutal, and completely preventable deaths must occur before you stop dragging out the same tired lines about ‘drownings’ and ‘people smugglers’ and ‘illegal arrivals’?

The cost of off-shore detention is no deterrent to your insistence on torturing innocent people. Clearly the illegality of Manus Island is no issue to your insistence that men be held there against their will. It is blatantly obvious that you would rather send a pregnant rape victim to a country where abortion is illegal than give her treatment in Australia.

It is evident that you would prefer refugees commit suicide than drown in the perilous crossing to Australia.

Is that because you can blame them for their choices? Do you really think a sane, rational person, with hope, opportunity and a safe home to live in sets themselves on fire?

How dare your Department not immediately bring Omid to Australia for treatment. How dare you let him suffer for hours with no morphine in a stinking, repulsive, ill-equipped hospital on Nauru.

You let him die, Mr Dutton, through you and your Department’s inaction.

And now, after your henchmen dragged an innocent women from her bed in Brisbane, a refugee who fled to Australia for sanctuary as a 16 year old, after you sent her back to Nauru, so desperate, frightened and full of despair, she too has attempted to kill herself.

This is also your fault, Mr Dutton.

Your treatment of these people is pushing them to desperate measures, and you stand back and watch them burn.

It is disgusting.

Don’t think I am all ‘misty-eyed’. Don’t think I’m not rational.

I am perfectly rational. I am not the slightest bit misty-eyed. I am angry.

Do not attempt to write me off as a teary, irrational, hand-wringing, bleeding-heart.

There is nothing irrational about my assessment of you as being one of the most vicious, evil and psychopathic Immigration Ministers Australia has ever seen. You have beaten Scott Morrison’s efforts hands down.

It is not acceptable to torture people to achieve a political purpose.

It is not acceptable to hold innocent people hostage to secure votes from ignorant racists.

It is not acceptable to send a pregnant woman to a country where abortion is illegal because your policy is to inflict as much suffering as you can on these people who seek our help.

It is beyond comprehension that you would leave a man to suffer with serious burns all over his body, because your policy is to torture asylum seekers to send a message to ‘people smugglers’.

It is abhorrent that you seek to win votes at the expense of innocent peoples’ lives.

Your current policy is unsustainable. It is unconscionable. It is disgusting.

You can change it, Mr Dutton. Or are you adamant that you go down in history as a man who willfully tortured innocent people to stay in political power?

If you think torturing these people gives you some kind of moral high ground over Labor because there have been no drownings in Australian waters in the past two years, you are gravely mistaken.

Torture is torture. Abuse is abuse. Deliberately traumatising men, women and children is despicable.

You cannot justify your treatment of these people in any way.

Enough is enough, Mr Dutton. I know that you do not care, and no amount of death, trauma and public outcry will make you change your mind. But you are being judged, and judged harshly by millions of Australians and the rest of the world.

And when you finally scuttle off from whence you came, history will record you as the vile specimen that you are: a man who deliberately inflicted the worst kind of treatment on innocent people, for the sake of votes and winning an election.

Sincerely

Eva Cripps

43 comments

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  1. townsvilleblog

    Eva, I don’t consider myself a racist, a bigot or xenophobe however I am among those hundreds of thousands of Australians who don’t want any more Islamic refugees, we have already seen quite enough. The Cronulla riots, the Martin place siege with two Aussies murdered, the cold blooded murder of Curtis Cheng, we have seen enough. However we still have some empathy for them as human beings and think that the LNP should have processed them and sent them to Cambodia who the LNP have paid money to, to receive these people who have been gaoled for 3 years, so that they can settle their lives.

  2. Athena

    “I don’t consider myself a racist, a bigot or xenophobe however I am among those hundreds of thousands of Australians who don’t want any more Islamic refugees, we have already seen quite enough.”

    I’m with you there, townvilleblog. Let’s see, taking Aboriginal children from their parents and trying to breed their Aboriginal genes out of them, Martin Bryant, those eight children stabbed to death in Cairns last year, the bodies in the barrels at Snowtown. The list goes on and on. Those Muslims have a lot to answer for!

  3. Max Gross

    @townsvilleblog: Mate, the Cronulla riots were ignited by flag-waving, beer-guzzling anglos. The Martin Place siege occurred when Attorney General Brandis and the National Security Hotline ignored calls identifying the deranged lone gunman who killed ONE hostage. The other was a victim of an appallingly inept police response. Curtis Cheng was murdered by a deluded kid. Hardly what I would call terrorism.

  4. my say

    townsvilleblog in my opinion it is people like you that keep the hate of refugees going ,a couple of points
    how many white Australians were involved in the Cronulla Riots,and the Martin Place siege could have been avoided if certain person had taken notice of his threats before hand, send them to Cambodia you say where they would be raped and murdered , still that is happening to the poor desperate people here in Australia ,people being murdered children and women being raped ,and now they are so desperate they take their own life rather than being treated worse than animals,Shame Australia Shame

  5. Jagger

    Townsvilleblog” I don’t consider myself a rascist, a bigot or xenophobe, however” I might suggest you get a second opinion.

  6. nurses1968

    townsvilleblog
    I’m with you, as it would just seem sensible to relocate Muslims to other Muslim countries where their cultures beliefs and religion is practiced.
    Why bring them here to a culture they, as a religion do not accept and their religious beliefs in many ways are counter to everyday life here

  7. seawork

    There is one thing that you have omitted from your article, good as it was and that is the fact that Australia, together with the UK and the US is totally responsible for all of this ongoing misery.
    Bush and his two sidekicks Howard and Blair, by invading Afghanistan and Iraq for no other reason than to grab control of oil at the behest of the Neocons pulling his puppet strings, has been the cause of the displacing of about 60 million innocent people.
    Even now they are still bombing, killing and maiming for no other reason than to be the big men of the world.
    These three countries are morally bound to take in as many refugees as they can to make up for the war crimes committed by those three leaders.
    The people pulling the strings are every bit as much to blame for causing this mayhem and them retiring with their ill gotten millions in safety away from the carnage.
    Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Codolizza Rice are the ringleaders who should be brought at account for this.
    Australians who say “we don’t want anymore Islamic refugees should consider that if they had not backed Howard, this would not be happening now.

  8. David Bruce

    When the appropriate court finds the Australian Government guilty of crimes against humanity, it won’t be the Ministers like Dull One who will carry the can. It will be low level public servants who are required to implement government policy. I would like to see the Minister take responsibility for the Duty of Care for people in his/her custody! As an aside, I think you will find the Intelligence Agencies have blood on their hands for the Hilton Hotel bombing, the massacre at Port Arthur and the Martin Place siege. In each case, the Prime Minister at the time was able to introduce martial law, or new legislation within a couple of days. If a terror event happens, and it results in political action,it was planned. Such is the way of our world.

  9. Terry2

    Eva

    thanks for that, I share your frustration and even the genuine offer to break this stand-off from New Zealand is getting nowhere.

    Dutton said :

    “On Friday the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said the proposal would do nothing but encourage people smugglers to “get back into business” because people with New Zealand citizenship can settle in Australia.”

    It would seem that no matter where these people are settled Peter Dutton would see this as a back-door into Australia. This type of muddled thinking is preventing a solution to this intractable problem and spurious arguments such as those volunteered by townsvilleblog just continue to muddy the waters.

    The only remaining solution to closing Manus and Nauru – which must be our end game – is to consider these people in the same context as the 12000 we are supposedly processing in Syria assisted by UNHCR : for instance, we can say to the UNHCR for every 20 Syrian refugees we take, UNHCR will tale one asylum seeker from Nauru/Manus for resettlement in another country.

    In other words we take the politics out of it, leave it to the UNHCR as an impartial body and resettle these people once and for all and close these Offshore camps.

    As regards opening the flood gates and sending green light messages to people smugglers – a favourite of the Right – the maritime blockade that we have in place is sending back boats and will continue to do so and whilst this is not ideal it is the best we can do until a regional plan is put in place.

    In the meantime we must focus on the problem at hand and that is to close down offshore detention, it is a failed policy !

  10. Athena

    nurses1968, there have been Muslims in Australia since the mid 1800s. The religious beliefs of practising Christians is in many ways counter to everyday life here.

  11. geofheav

    So far the psychotic terrorists have killed 100 times more Muslim men women and children than any other nationality or religious group. Lets keep terrorism in perspective

  12. rangarobRob

    I love your work Eva.

  13. rangarob

    Love your work, Eva

  14. keerti

    This is brilliant Eva and how amazing to have one of the people who these policies are enacted outing themselves so immediately! Thankyou for your demonstaration of what ignorance, bigotry and racism sound like, townesville blog.

  15. axemangraphics

    townsvilleblog: So, based on your outlook of “Islamic Migrants” causing the Cronulla Riots (proven to be caused by Alan Jones calling for bogan listeners to head down there and stand their ground!) the Martin Place Siege (One civilian shot by Monis, the other by a police officer) and Curtis Cheng (shot by a deluded child), Should we also ban Italians? Melbourne’s Underbelly was almost exclusively 2nd and 3rd generation Italians, causing terror on Melbourne’s Streets. Or perhaps shut down Kings Cross due to the Ibrahim family?
    Don’t forget our worst act of terror, the Port Arthur Massacre… perhaps we should ban all white male Tasmanians?
    All races, religions and demographic has its own share of crime. Its when bigots and brainwashed like you go digging deep enough that you find it all. The media in this country has been highlighting Islamic crime for far too long, as it sells their news to the dumbed-masses.

    Should we perhaps ban Cat Stevens from entering Australia? What about Mouhammad Ali? both are Islamic converts.

    The LNP have paid a 3rd world nation $55m of OUR MONEY to take these asylum seekers, with no support, no assistance and no future. These people are entitled by International law to seek asylum here in Australia. We agreed to this in 1955. We have taken Italian, Greek, Maltese, as well as many other European refugees over the years under these laws. But now that the LNP are in, we forget that this country is built on migration, and the hard-working people that it brings to our shores. Our many landmarks were built by these migrants! The Sydney Harbor Bridge, Opera House, Snowy River Hydro, as well as much of the skylines that make our cities beautiful.

    I have met some of these asylum seekers currently in detention, and have met Accountants, Mechanics, Painters, Artists, Doctors, a Surgeon, Fitness Instructors, Labourers, Chefs, Hospitality Staff, Builders, and many others. I have yet to find a single person who plans to take advantage of our system. Every single one wants to work hard, give back to the community (the same people that call them derogatory names, or vote to keep them inside detention) and pay taxes. They actually WANT to pay taxes to assist our government in building a better Australia for everyone…

    nurses1968: Perhaps we should also send all Protestants back to England? All Buddhists back to Tibet? All Sikhs back to India? All Catholics back to Rome? What a ridiculous statement… I suggest you diversify, meet some muslim people and have a chat with them. I have several Muslim friends, and all are lovely. I have yet to be radicalised, blown up or converted. I find I have more trouble in regards to being converted by the Mormons…

  16. John

    It would be cheaper and more humane to set up a refugee processing centre in Indonesia, most refugees could then be settled quietly in Australia without the dramas and bipartisan dog whistle politics (looking at you Townsvilleblog).

    Oh, and that would stop the boats.

  17. SICKOFBS

    Typical rhetoric guaranteed to appease the bleeding heart regressive leftist rabble. These people have passed though many countries where they could have safely settled but didn’t simply because they are nothing more than Country Shopper’s looking for the best welfare handouts. The LNP will continue to win votes based on their border protection whilst ever you and other fringe leftist fools like you keep promoting your desires to flood this country with refugees/Muslims. Wake up and realise, the majority of Australians don’t support your desire for the destruction of Australia or its current values.

  18. Athena

    SICKOFBS, if there was money to be made out of it, you conservatives would eat your own children. You’re the nastiest, greediest, most primitive bunch of people around. Your clothes are more expensive but you’re still savages.

  19. George Theodoridis

    Now, Eva, could you see what stirrings you can get out the other mob?
    You know the mob whose boss keeps saying, “we’re on the same page,” and “we’re singing from the same hymn book” on just about every criminal policy their policy announces.
    Can you ask Mr Mumbling Marles if he, too exhorts us not be “misty eyed?”

    Our Parliament is a veritable womb of mindless, lazy, oink blurbers, bereft of morals, bereft of vision, bereft of even the slightest sense of humaneness.

    I cannot believe that this is the best 200 odd men and women who are boasting leadership of this country, can come up with. Abject cruelty and egregious criminality to the most vulnerable people on the planet, to the people who have asked us to help them. To the people who, in almost every case, are suffering because of our greed for gold and gluttony for blood.

    Please send a similar letter to Shorten and Marles and demand from them to tell all Australians -in crystal clear language, free of waffle and mealy mouthed words- what they intent to do if the people are so desperate that they vote you in.

    Demand that they tell us!

  20. lawrencewinder

    I hope the ruling rabble are proud of reproducing Fascist Germany a’la 1938 and that Labor is proud of it’s kow-towing to the electoral backlash of racist xenophobia. What a sorry place we have become. We “protect” our borders only to lose our sovereignity to the TPP, We accept dismantling CSIRO and education to be “innovative”…. We can afford Submarines that may well be Nuclear and aircraft that are duds but can’t afford dental care for kids, diagnostic services for the sick or hospital maintenance in general.
    We have become a joke, an IPA joke that will take years to rectify.. unless we revolt!

  21. Anthony Element

    Townsvilleblog So you’re going to hold one poor genuine refugee responsible for every crime you perceive as being anything to do with migrants.
    It’s precisely because of people like you that I avoid admitting I’m an Australian when I travel overseas.
    I’m too ashamed.of so many of my fellow Australians.

  22. SICKOFBS

    ATHENA. Thank you for a typical ignorant regressive leftist response. All BS and no substance.

  23. Wayne Turner

    Totally agree with this article.

    It’s terribly sad what this country has been for along while,and continues to be…. A country where horrible pollies can demonize these PEOPLE,and attract votes.A sad pathetic lot of the uncaring racist people in this country.

    On the very issue of asylum seekers:-

    Liberal party = NO SHAME.

    Labor party = NO GUTS.

    If only more money was spent processing these PEOPLE quicker.Instead of demonizing them,locking them up,and starting wars that cause many to flee in the first place.

    Poor fella my country 🙁

  24. Rossleigh

    Mr Abbott, you have been warned about using pseudonyms like “SICKOFBS” before.
    We understand that you’re angry about losing the leadership and have tried to be understanding but you should remember that it’s your Liberal colleagues that you’re upset with, so perhaps you’d be better trolling some of their sites instead of trying to pick a fight where it won’t help your future leadership prospects!

  25. Athena

    “We “protect” our borders only to lose our sovereignity to the TPP,”

    lawrencewinder, you just can’t make this stuff up. The government has played upon people’s most undesirable qualities to keep their focus upon a false enemy, whilst they systematically ruin local businesses, industries and the economy for their own personal gain. While we’re so fixated upon that false enemy, we’re not seeing the proliferation of cheaply manufactured rubbish that is infiltrating our nation and all of the environmental damage caused by the manufacture and disposal of stuff that has a short life expectancy.

  26. SICKOFBS

    Not my words but very appropriate for some on this page.

    These people are not really classical “Leftists” – real Leftists would fight for the rights of their own people. These people are the “Regressive Left” – a sad and pathetic abboration of the Left that seem to me more totalitarian and fascistic than anything. They need to be removed from power wherever they are found

    So, when they accuse opponents of being, for example, racist, intolerant, or bigoted, etc., they are, in actuality, describing themselves

  27. Michael Taylor

    Townsville Blog, whilst I disagree with your opinions, you are entitled to them. But it’s a bit rich blaming Muslims for the Cronulla riots. It was found that this was ‘inspired’ by Alan Jones who starred people up into bashing a ‘Lebo’. He didn’t target Muslims. He targeted Lebanese. I am half Lebanese, and all my hundreds of Lebanese relatives in this country are Christians. He wanted them bashed too. He wanted Christians bashed.

  28. Athena

    “real Leftists would fight for the rights of their own people.”

    FULLOFBS, real lefties fight for the rights of everyone.

  29. Athena

    “I am half Lebanese, and all my hundreds of Lebanese relatives in this country are Christians.”

    Lebanon today consists of about 54% Muslims and 40% Christians. The Christian numbers have dropped below the Muslim numbers in the last 30 or so years due to the migration of Christians.

  30. guest

    SICKOFBS,

    “real Leftists would fight for the rights of their own people”

    It is not clear what these ‘rights’ are. Do you mean the ‘right ‘ to torture people who seek our help?

    I have not heard of such a right. But I do know we are a signatory to the Refugee Convention. And that the NG Court has deemed Manus to be unconstitutional and illegal.

    I will not support people who conduct illegalities.

    To seek refuge is not illegal.

  31. Phil

    Eva, thanks for the writing – I sense your frustration and share your anger at this truly dishonourable politician Dutton – he represents so much of what I detest about Australia – his pathology feeds off the pathology seen in some of the commentary to your article. Unlike some commentators here I don’t fear Muslims or those of any other religious persuasion for that matter, who are fleeing war ravaged states that we Australians are so blithely involved in bombing and destroying at the behest of the US.

    I think Australia is behaving extremely poorly internationally. – it has disgraced itself as a global citizen. None of the nations we are currently destabilising with our paltry armed forces have harmed us. The one sided alliance with the US is our sure path to endless war.

    One trillion Australian dollars to be spent on military weaponry over 20 years!!. This truly obscene expenditure from a nation of 23 million people is driving an arms race in the Asia-Pacific. Those commentators who so mistakenly fear a few Muslim refugees need to open their eyes and their minds and look to their political leaders as the root source of real fear.

  32. silkworm

    Dutton is a murderer.

  33. Angry Old Man

    @Phil

    Well said, mate, I couldn’t agree more. And Eva, thanks for the article.

  34. Cynthia Francis

    Eva, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Well done.

  35. silkworm

    Athena, great article from junkee.

  36. mark

    pc dutton,townsvilleblog,nurses1968,sickofbs,english racists,I bet.mark

  37. Terry2

    There has been a none too subtle change in rhetoric in the last 48 hours.

    First it was Dutton, then Turnbull and now Morrison.

    The people on Nauru and Manus are no longer held in a processing center on these islands pending resettlement : they have been processed and resettled, they are now members of the community in their new homes, they are starting businesses, attending school and getting on with their lives, doing all the things that people do – but still on Manus and Nauru.

    This is the new and gruesome fiction that we and the asylum seekers are being fed. No wonder they are reaching final desperation in what must seem to them like a world gone mad.

  38. Kyran

    It seems odd that so many comments were made that quite clearly demonstrate the commentators either hadn’t read the article and links, or had the comprehension skills of dutton.
    Just to expand on Ms Cripps precis, Hodan Yasin had been flown to Australia in a coma after an accident. It was alleged to have been a motorbike accident, but neither her injuries or her temperament were consistent. For the three days before her ‘return’ to Nauru, she was on suicide watch. She was removed at 3.00 am, kicking and screaming, and put on a plane. Her first attempt at suicide was by ingesting detergent. The ‘doctor’s’ sent her back to her room.
    Words escape me. Disgust, abhorrence and anger have left only a residual of sadness.
    Thank you, Ms Cripps. Take care

  39. James O'Neill

    Bravo Eva. Dutton is a sorry apology for a human being, but does no more than reflect the appalling standards of his fellow politicians which with some honourable exceptions are not much better. Ultimately though, we vote for them and nothing will change while they keep getting re-elected.

  40. abbienoiraude

    Thank you Eva Cripps for your piece.
    Your words speak to and for me.

    Those others in the comments who berate and deride you and your opinion are of no worth.

    In the end we are all here together on this little blue ball whizzing through space. If religion was disappeared it would all be absurd.

    Those who are afraid are not to be followed.

    Those who hold hope and caring sharing visions should be the Leader.

    Dutton did not understand that if we who care about Asylum Seekers, could give them a skerrick of hope then they would not be able to self immolate.
    He gives them none.
    He is to blame.
    The buck stops with him.

    We want to give all those politicised, hopeless, desperate people; (women, children, babies, men) hope so that they may live among us.

    I want our asylum seekers here.
    I have no fear ( as an Atheist) of Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jane, Hari Krishna, or any of those who believe in a Sky Fairy/Imaginary Friend for as Sting once sang:
    “As long as they love their children too”
    Why should I be concerned?

    “Terrorism” have been ever thus.
    Just ask hundreds of women tonight as they hold their breaths and their children close whilst the person who ‘cares’ for them the most rants and threatens and causes fear for them all in the confines of their safe ‘Xtian’ homes…looking for a place to flee….for safety and care.

    THAT is true Terrorism…shared with those who experience uncertainty every night in Manus Is and Nauru.

    We should be better than this…we MUST be better than this…we Can be better than this but for our paltry, faltering and failing Leadership.

  41. russ

    Some of you folks need to travel Europe etc, and see first hand just how countries worse affected than us are copping……..they aren’t, and it’s getting worse. They have extended the hand of help, and now look at the mess. I weep for the children involved, it’s not of their making.
    Some of you folks here that say ” we can do better” etc etc……..go back into your gardens and talk to your pixies…..please. ( it takes 2 to tango, but alas it’s just not happining ) ask ” the other party” …why. Too many arrive without ” the clean slate…..let’s begin a new beginning” they bring baggage most times.
    Germany is now pleading to its citizens to refrain from “reacting” to its now situation.

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