Refugees are NOT ok
By Jane Salmon
Having been vilified and blocked for over a decade, asylum seekers needing permanent visas are NOT ok.
The death by self-immolation of refugee activist Mano Yogalingam (on Wednesday 28 August 2024) barely attracted public comment and certainly nothing from the Minister.
There have been several deaths and many trips to hospital for this small cohort this year. The suicide toll for those in limbo across more than a decade is as high or higher than for the most acutely vulnerable Australian citizens.
There are currently 24/7 vigils in 5 capitals. The first began nearly 60 days ago in wintry Melbourne. No one camps outside on cold concrete for fun.
The message of these vigils is clear. Hardworking and deserving taxpayers are forced to wait too long for the permanent visas they deserve. They are tired of paying taxes for, yet still missing out on, access to affordable tertiary study, steady Medicare, bank loans, continuity, permanent jobs. They are tired of Facetiming their children or any remaining relatives instead of hugging them. They want to know when the fear of deportation will finally lift. They would love to be able to get mortgages and look forward to voting.
Refugees can and do offer Australia a great deal. These people feel they have no other safe home. They are dynamic workers, builders, family and community members. They volunteer and donate blood enthusiastically. In return Australia has demanded front line work during a pandemic. What’s next? We start demanding their kidneys?!
Their 24/7 protest camps are well maintained. There is music and good food. Hospitality and fellowship extends beyond ethnicity or language to embrace everyone attending. There is a warmth and courtesy that seems exceptional to anyone lucky enough to be Aussie-born.
But these people are desperate for change. Many of them shirk a medical check up at the GP, in the same way that citizens avoid $5000 crowns or root canals.
All it takes to help them is for Labor to recognise that they are governing now and that it is incumbent upon them to act in the current political term.
On Tuesday 10 September 2024 in Brisbane, tents and even a memorial to the recently deceased refugee Manu were taken down (by shopping centre security) after 23 days outside Jim Chalmers’ office in Logan City. The removal of refugees’ carefully maintained protest and property caused deep distress.
People have invested a great deal in the protests. They have taken long breaks from home comforts to sleep on the ground. They have given up precious time with any children who are here. They have shared resources to secure enough tents, barbeques, bedding, printing, microphones, speakers, transport and food.
For those at vigils, the most elusive resource is hope. The national discourse has been rejecting or downright hostile. (Neo Nazi and right wing bloggers have taunted people at the camp. On 6 September racists were incited to attack the Melbourne encampment, pulling hair and punching heads). Many have run the gauntlet of courts seeking a pathway to permanence.
Live video scenes from the Brisbane camp teardown are hard to watch. I have not seen grown men in such emotional pain for a long time. A woman collapsed. Another person went to hospital for heart palpitations attributed to anxiety.
It is risky to be there. Arrest could lead to deportation.
The real cure for this pain is not moving camp, another anti-depressant or group hug. Nor is it yet another political promise. Any suggestion that Labor will be doing better by this group next term is Labor conceding that they have had and still have no commitment or courage now. If they continue wave the white flag on this issue, it is an admission that they are too weak or too uncaring to govern. Dutton is still the nation’s leader even from opposition. Labor spent 9 years in opposition and failed to change racist narratives.
The time for action is now – not the political never-never.
All it takes is a sweep of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s pen and 10,000 desperate people can be re-connected with their own futures.
It is not ok for Labor to postpone another day.
(R U OK Day is Thursday September 12)
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6 comments
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GL
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Terence Mills
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Khal
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Baby Jewels
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JulianP
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Cool Pete
Return to home pageSimply put: Refugees have always been a convenient political football to be kicked around by both major parties for years and will continue to be so as long as they can get media traction (both positive and negative) out of people who should be treated damn sight more kindly.
The IDF indiscriminate bombing of a refugee tent camp in Gaza in the last twenty four hours dropped SPICE-2000 – 2,000-pound bombs leaving craters up to nine metres deep and killing 19 with 60 people injured, many women and children.
The area targeted in Khan Younis was part of a humanitarian zone that Gazans had been instructed to move to by the IDF.
Washington had suspended the export of U.S.-made 2,000-pound bombs in May, officials said their use could lead to wide civilian casualties and were not needed by the Israelis. Biden administration officials said at the time they were especially worried about the damage that could be done by such bombs in a crowded area with many displaced civilians. One expert said that “Such bombs have the technological ability to be highly accurate, but I consider the use of a munition in a densely populated area, and one designated as a ‘safe zone’ to be disproportionate.”
As a gruesome irony, among those killed were children who had received polio vaccines in recent days.
What more do the ICC require to uphold humanitarian law ?
TM, the Zionist plan is on track. To question them is to question genocide and that is not allowed, just ask them.
Agreed, Terence. And what more does Albanese need to put an end to his support for what is clearly a genocide. As for Dutton, well, he will continue to support anything indecent, inhumane, unfair and preferably, as cruel as possible. Meanwhile today, 70 refugees, dumped in Port Moresby, get thrown into the streets, where they will be in mortal danger. Shame, Labor, shame. I can’t tell you the number of times I wrote to Claire O’Neill about this issue…no reply, of course.
Terence you have rightly drawn attention to the latest atrocity in Gaza, and in doing so you could well be a lone voice – at least in this country; international indifference is really something to behold – and for any person of conscience, difficult to accept.
However, it appears the upholding of humanitarian law is not entirely a lost cause. “United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Monday that other countries must hold Israel accountable for violating international law in its war on Gaza, and its escalating violence in the illegally occupied West Bank,”
[ https://www.commondreams.org/news/volker-turk-israel ]
What happens now is anyone’s guess.
For my own part I stay convinced that the State of Israel remains committed to the wholesale eradication of the Palestinians – whether by a religious war as currently advocated by the religious Zionist class within the government, or by the steady incremental ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities from East Jerusalem and the West Bank – a process greatly preferred by the Israeli military – the difference in approach being merely one of style, not substance.
[ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zionism-vs-zionism-ben-gvir-and-the-acceleration-of-the-collapse-of-israel/ ]
If we go back 28 years, when Hanson came onto the scene, Whittle Johnny Howard was silent because while the media was focused on her, it wasn’t paying him much attention, and because he was just testing the waters. Late in his first term, he went the other way, and labelled Hanson as “bordering on the deranged” and after she was defeated, he adopted her inhumane refugee policies. Then, in 2001, when it appeared as though the public had grown weary of Johnny Howard, the Tampa Incident occurred, and his tough talk on refugees won him a third term.
Labor lacks the ticker to do anything more humane than the cruelty of Tone the Botty because it knows that Potty Boy is Tone the Botty Mark Two and that he will exploit it for his own gain.