The following article was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the
Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, October 17th, 2001.
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1. Prison Islands. Govt's inhumane refugee policy
Censored videos of boat people in the ocean; racist slurs by government
ministers demonising asylum seekers; a new Australian refugee prison
camp, this time on PNG - so the Howard Government continues to hold
Australia up to ridicule before the international community, all with
the ringing endorsement of the Labor Party.
by Marcus Browning
The Government has refused to make public the full and unedited video
footage which it claims shows asylum seekers throwing their children off
a boat near Christmas Island. The 220 Iraqi refugees were finally taken
aboard the "HMAS Adelaide" but not before the warship had fired across
the bow of their boat (details of which are also being kept secret).
Prime Minister John Howard, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson,
Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock and Defence Minister Peter Reith
have gone for the jugular with vicious slanders.
Ruddock's statement gives the drift: "One can only assume they did sink
the boat deliberately. These people have behaved abominably right from
the start. The disgraceful way they treat their own children. Any
civilised person would never dream of treating their own children in
that way".
Well, it's certainly true that, as Reconciliation Minister, Ruddock has
had first-hand experience in dealing with the abuse of children, on a
massive scale, being the prime mover behind the Government denying the
existence of the stolen generations of Aboriginal children who were
taken from their families by successive "civilised" governments.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees demanded details of the incidents
involving the "Adelaide", saying that regardless of what had happened it
"does not give any state the right to deny them access".
The Government has given PNG $1 million as the first payment of about
$12 million to process the 220 asylum seekers in a new Australian
refugee prison camp. The transfer of 233 refugees already on Christmas
Island to Australia's Nauru prison camp for processing will cost around
$20 million: in total the Government's policy has cost taxpayers more
than $100 million.
The point about the money involved is that all the asylum seekers could
be processed in Australia in humane conditions at a fraction of the
cost. But this is opportunist electioneering at any cost, monetary or
human. As Greens Senator Bob Brown noted, people jumping or being thrown
overboard is a direct outcome of the Government's policies, which have
made refugees election fodder.
Penal colony
In a letter to "The Age" newspaper last week, Sherron Dunbar painted a
picture of Australia as having become, again, a penal colony. "We have
become a network of penal colonies for asylum seekers of which we, the
Australians, are the administrators:
* In remote areas of Australia we have large "immigration reception and
processing centres" (IRPCs: Curtin, Port Headland and Woomera - all full
of asylum seekers and no one else).
* In Melbourne (Maribyrnong), Sydney (Villawood) and Perth we have
"immigration detention centres". These are full of people who have
breached migration laws. Some of them are asylum seekers.
* In Brisbane and Darwin we have IRPCs built with monies provided in the
1999 federal budget; and more recently, Port Augusta has been suggested
as the next site for development.
* There are asylum seekers being held in state prisons in various parts
of the country.
* In Indonesia, which is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention,
there are a few hundred people who have already been granted refugee
status by the UNHCR, being held in an Australian-funded, makeshift
detention centre that used to be a large, old hotel. That operation is
proving to be extremely expensive.
* On Nauru, also not a signatory to the Refugee Convention but, like
Indonesia, desperately short of cash, there are some hundreds of asylum
seekers housed in hastily constructed detention areas, and a second
facility is now being built there by Australia.
* Kiribati has offered to emulate Nauru's involvement.
* On the Ashmore Reef, Cocos Islands and Christmas Island, there are
potential temporary facilities that can now be used just like the
centres in Indonesia and Nauru.
* Some of Australia's naval vessels, including the "Manoora" and the
"Tobruk", and no doubt others to come, are being used as floating
detention centres, and also to confront little boats that enter
Australian waters and force them back - leaky and unsafe or not - into
international waters.
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