Struggling for human answers following yet another tragedy for asylum-seekers - desperate people, desperate measures, looking for refuge in the nations that have provoked the situations of their desperation. Desperate locals on shore trying to help, against impossible odds. This number of people drowned was too many to hide but there have been others - for example, 5 people near the Cocos Island in April this year (see my earlier posting). Governments, in particular Oz, pretending the solution is to attack 'people-smugglers', that is, the profiteers. Who are they kidding? Why not the war profiteers, the political profiteers, making money or position from the happy circumstance of conflict ? Old old patterns of capital and nations misbehaving. The policy of 'no recourse to public funds' expanded. Survivors of the drownings still placed in detention centres. It does not have to be this. What if instead the 'borders' were really opened? What if this Prime Minister reached out a welcome to the seekers of refuge? Helen Clark did this in the Tampa years: New Zealand didn't implode. Of course these state crimes have not only happened on Julia Gillard's watch - think John Howard, think Vietnamese 'boat people', think Arthur Calwell, think Chinese migrants during 19C gold years. To twist a phrase - I am not a nationalist but ... something in this still insecure post-colonial society creates the scene. I fear Australia Will implode if it doesn't assert compassion, beneficence, humanitarian justice, and a pleasure in the strangers on our shores.
More info: www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/201012/s3097612.htm
www.australiaforum.com/.../asylum-seekers-perish-tragically-at-sea.html
http://www.newsroom.immi.gov.au/media_releases/881 [this is the only release to date re this disaster on the DIAC website]
