A refugee problem
Two years ago I attended a forum with Peter Mares (journalist) and Jeremy Moore (activist lawyer) as keynote speakers and bought Peter’s book Borderline. I sat and read that book twice through and have read it a dozen times since.
Throughout the past two years I have come to work with some of the most decent people in this country as they have worked pro bono to release those incarcerated in places like Woomera.
I have read and written millions of words about refugees, asylum seekers, SIEV X, the children overboard affair, Woomera and children in detention and I have a refugee problem.
My first family members came on boats in the 1850s as refugees from the Prussian army, the next wave came in the 1890s as migrants from poverty in England, Wales and Cornwall with the last arriving on a boat from England in 1920. Given that all but the Indigenous owners of this land have similar tales, this is my problem.
What gives us the right to write laws which make it impossible for people with real problems to reach our shores and claim asylum?
There is a reluctance on the part of the nations who wrote the refugee convention to live up to their obligations.
I don’t have a problem with anyone but fellow Australians who use refugees for political gain; who imprison innocents and call it border protection; with those who fail to understand that in the absence of travel documents refugees must have ‘illegal’ transport; and the stupidity of criminalising asylum.
Peter Mares says in Borderline that ‘the more we seek to deter asylum seekers and refugees through harsh treatment, the more Australia comes to resemble the repressive nations from which they flee.’
Marilyn Shepherd
Kensington, SA
Misguided intelligence
Important findings of the parliamentary inquiry into intelligence on Iraq include the following:
Mr Howard cited UK and US documents from which ‘the uncertainties had been removed’ and which relied heavily on ‘new and largely untested intelligence’.
‘Government presentations were in some areas incomplete’, notably in relation to some significant UN information. Not mentioned were judgements that Iraq ‘was only likely to use its WMD if the regime’s survival was at stake’ and that ‘war would increase the risk of terrorism.’
The government argued, ‘Iraq possessed WMD in large quantities and posed a grave and unacceptable threat.’ Yet this is ‘not the picture that emerges from an examination of all the [intelligence] assessments provided to the Committee’.
‘Assessments