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
