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While Immigration Minister Scott Morrison sits with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and hands over customs vessels to the Sri Lankan Government for use in preventing people escaping Sri Lanka, Australia's High Court is deciding whether a group of 158 Sri Lankan asylum seekers can be returned to the Sri Lankan Government. How did we get to the stage where we are supplying the alleged persecutors with the means of stopping people from escaping and seeking our protection?
On Monday we learned that two boats of Tamil asylum seekers had been intercepted off Christmas Island. Now there are unconfirmed reports that Australia is handing them over to the Sri Lankan navy without assessing their claims for protection. Amnesty warns Tamils face the risk of sexual violence, torture, murder, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance. Since March this year there have been scores of arrests and several deaths.
Amidst a whirl of media interviews and meetings, David Sinclair, professor of genetics at Harvard University and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for 2014, paid a visit to his alma mater: a state school in suburban Sydney. State schools aren't the repositories of children too impoverished or unintelligent for the alternative; they're the living manifestation of democracy, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and ecumenism.
In 2009 Cambodia enacted its own laws concerning refugees. If asylum seekers are found to be refugees they are given a prakas that allows them to stay legally in Cambodia but which is not accepted as a proof of identity by most employers, businesses and banks. The sense of insecurity of those seeking asylum is heightened by the memory of the 29 Uighur asylum seekers who in 1995 were deported from Cambodia to China at gun point.
In the lead up to Refugee Week the attitudes of Australians to people who come by boat to seek protection made sober reading. 71 per cent of Australians believed Australia should turn back asylum seeker boats. That is far higher even than the Prime Minister's disapproval rating. Some might say that 71 per cent of Australians can't be wrong. At Eureka Street we have never been persuaded that majorities always have truth on their side.
Very few Vatican documents on world events are exciting. But some can be helpful when local response to these events is febrile and anxious. The Vatican guidelines on ministry to forcibly displaced persons provide a helpful mirror to reflect the public Australian response to asylum seekers. It offers a long view of Catholic reflection on refugees and a broad perspective on the human reality of having to seek protection.
Australia's cruel arrangement for asylum seekers arriving without a visa cannot be scrutinised by our courts and has never been approved by our Parliament. In the name of democracy, in the name of Australian self-respect, and in the name of human rights protection and the rule of law, it is time this arrangement was presented to our Parliament for its approval by our elected representatives or for immediate ditching. It's a disgrace.
The Government's vilification of people arriving by boat has reached the level where the term 'illegal' features in the Budget documents. Immigration Minister Morrison has insisted on referring to people arriving by boat as 'illegals' for some years, despite the Migration Act using the less pejorative term 'unlawful non-citizen'. This is not just a lawyer's linguistic debate; if it were not important, the Government would not insist on the term.
ANZAC Day is a powerful and worthy ritual. But the tales of our soldiers make up only one of the ongoing chapters in the story of our country. There are many others. On 25 January, let us remember the Indigenous people who once nurtured the land. On 25 February, let us remember those who gave their lives in settling this unforgiving land. On 25 March, let us remember the people who lost their lives migrating to this country.
Both the Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter are exercises in memory. The Jewish child who asks why this day is remembered is told a story of slavery in Egypt followed by deliverance by God. He stands in line with other children who asked the same question during the Holocaust. The devaluation of history and memory has a deeply corrosive effect on society. In our society we can see this in our treatment of asylum seekers.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the Government's treatment of asylum seekers. This wasn't a group of radicals — it was Grandma and Grandpa, Mum and Dad and the kids, making a statement to a callous political elite. Rather than simply asking how we can become more decent towards asylum seekers, it's time to ask: What reserves do we, as a country, have to resist inhumane forces that besiege us?
'Whether or not we have a bill of rights, much of our human rights jurisprudence remains partial, failing to extend rights equally to all. Once we investigate much of the contemporary discussion about human rights, we find that often the intended recipients of rights do not include all human beings but only those with certain capacities or those who share sufficient common attributes with the decision makers. It is always at the edges that there is real work for human rights discourse to do.' Frank Brennan's Blackfriars Lecture
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