Anyone who was touched by the picture of Tharnicaa and Kopika Murugappan on Christmas Island before she was taken to hospital will be delighted that Tharnicaa is now out of hospital and that the family are together in Perth, with parents Nadesalingam Murugappan and Kokilapathmapriya Nadesalingam and Kopika being issued three month bridging visas. Many have been less pleased by the minatory tone of government ministers — the reports of Tharnicaa’s illness may have been exaggerated and she will remain in community detention, that the family have no guarantee of returning to their friends in Biloela and must continue to live in uncertainty and anxiety.
The contrast between the tenderness of the children and the impersonal power of the government was marked. To me it recalled the story of Perpetua’s third century death at the hands of the Roman authorities. She and other young Christian women were hauled before the crowd, scourged by gladiators, and then set upon by wild animals. Perpetua was gored by a wild cow, and then killed by a gladiator. The contrast between the courage and powerlessness of Perpetua and the grizzled implacability of the Roman justice system is echoed in the case of the Murugappan family.
In both stories an outside observer cannot but ask how it came to this. What made the Roman authorities and Australian ministers see their actions as a normal part of their daily business? What made Perpetua and the Murugappan family endure humiliation, isolation and the threat of death rather than recanting their claims of conscience and of need?
At stake in the difference between the parties were different understandings of humanity. Underlying the claims made by Perpetua and the family is the understanding that each human being is unique, precious, with an inalienable dignity. They command a respect that forbids us from them as means to our other ends. That understanding might make someone be prepared to accept execution rather than violate their conscience. It is also enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights to which Australia was a signatory. Behind the story of the Murugappan family is the progressive abandonment of respect for human dignity by Australian governments of both sides in its refugee policy, and the inevitable ethical corruption that has accompanied it. By corruption I mean the lack of empathy and the weakness of will that make bad actions seem unexceptionable.
The original sin in this process was the decision taken by the Labor Government following the arrival by boat of Cambodian people seeking protection. It legislated the mandatory detention of people who arrived by boat without a visa. Although the High Court limited its use to administrative detention, politicians defended it on the grounds that it was needed to deter others from arriving by boat. Deterrence involved punishing an innocent group of people to achieve broader policy ends.
Deterrence has an inner logic that we can see in Australian treatment of people who seek protection. In the first place it tends to become increasingly brutal. Each breach of policy must be met with a more effective deterrent. To deter non-citizens from subversive behaviour the Romans employed increasingly dehumanising forms of torture and killing.
People who seek protection, however, do so because in their own nation they face threats of torture, death and violation of their conscience. They are unlikely are to be deterred by lesser threats. As a result, when crises drove increasing numbers of people to seek protection from Australia they faced successively harsher punishments to deter others. They could be given only temporary protection visas, could be deprived of support for living in the community, denied rights to work, endure decisions on their applications be delayed, returned to detention for minor breaches of rules, their boats be turned back, be sent to Manus Island or Nauru for processing, and be forever denied residence in Australia. In the logic of deterrence the mental illness, suicide and despair of people who were detained were to be welcomed. They provided both testimony to the effectiveness of the deterrent and publicity that would increase its effectiveness.
'Yet the logic of deterrence and the untroubled acceptance of its implementation demanded the myth of a threat so serious that even a single case of compassion or one arrival by canoe would fatally undermine the effectiveness of the policy. The real threat was to the self-respect of those responsible for the policy of deterrence.'
To win public support for deterrence and to anaesthetise the conscience of those who administer it, the logic of deterrence also requires that the punishment involved must be seen to be merited. The innocent have to be found guilty of personal or collective fault. In the case of people seeking protection from persecution, they were accordingly redescribed as economic immigrants who wore expensive wrist watches, people of Middle Eastern appearance (i.e. Muslims), terrorists, bearers of physical and moral disease, or threats to border and national security. As a result they were no longer seen as persons entitled to respect for their humanity but as representatives of a hostile class. They then deserved the treatment they received. The regime of detention described by Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island have both dehumanised persons and have provided justification for treating them as less than human.
The logic of deterrence inevitably creates a tension between its increasing brutality, the lack of evidence for its effectiveness, and its acceptance by people not responsible for it. Like high pressure gas a regime of deterrence needs to be held in a sealed and leakless container. Otherwise recognition of its inhumanity and lack of logic will seep through. The container is the insistence on its absolute necessity. The threat against which deterrence is deployed must be held to be sufficiently pressing and implacable if it is to be judged as absolutely necessary in the face of all contrary evidence.
In the case of people who sought protection by arriving in Australia, the interdiction of boats and the restrictions on residence evidently removed the risk of large scale influx. Yet the logic of deterrence and the untroubled acceptance of its implementation demanded the myth of a threat so serious that even a single case of compassion or one arrival by canoe would fatally undermine the effectiveness of the policy. The real threat was to the self-respect of those responsible for the policy of deterrence.
The problem with any unethical policy is that it corrupts ethical sensitivity and brutalises society. That was true of the Roman treatment of non-citizens and it is true of Australian policy towards those who seek protection from persecution. The lack of respect for human dignity, the vilification of people who are different, the acceptance of brutality as necessary, and the embarrassed shutting of eyes from corrupt behaviour inevitably corrode the moral sensitivity of those involved. They then naturally spread to other areas of public life: to the collection of debts, to making executive action non-transparent and non-reviewable, and to the demonising of other groups.
Policies of deterrence shape a murky world in which silence envelops the brutal things that are done in the dark. The white dresses of Kopika and Tharnicaa as the elder sister kissed and comforted the younger, were a symbol of respect that revealed and shamed the justifications offered for deterrence as the soiled rags that they are.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: Cartoon Fiona Katauskas