Complaints about hypocrisy are rarely edifying. They are usually made to draw attention away from the harm we are doing by pointing to the bad things our critics are doing.
But Pierre Martinus’ charge made in Saturday's Jakarta Post, that ‘Canberra is merely trying to save their own “subject bodies” from the firing squad, while slowly disposing of “abject bodies” it does not want through inhumane detention camps or returning them to foreign regimes that will probably finish the job for them’, is not so easily dismissed.
He rightly deplores the brutality both of Indonesian and Australian treatment of drug traffickers and asylum seekers respectively. Both are based on the logic of deterrence – of potential drug traffickers and of people who seek protection from persecution.
Pragmatically, it must be admitted that deterrence works. Manus Island is its showpiece. The camp on Manus, with its isolated and claustrophobic location, long delay in processing applications, and best option of an uncertain residence in PNG, is a gold-standard deterrent. No one would cheerfully choose to end up there.
Deterrence, like execution, is a transaction between human beings. So it is important for us as Australians to look beyond the language of policy with its antiseptic formulations of push and pull factors, unlawful boat arrivals, transferees, migration zones and security of borders, to reflect on how the deterrent value of Manus Island and of execution is played out in human lives. Only when we have weighed this will we be in a position to applaud the effectiveness and wisdom of our policy or deplore its inhumanity.
Manus Island is an effective deterrent because people who seek protection from persecution can imagine from personal experience what life on Manus Island may be like. They have lived in fear, are familiar with prisons and licensed callousness, know what it is like for all relationships and projects to be put on hold. Because they seek freedom, hospitality and the opportunity to begin a new and productive life in a generous society, they can imagine the despair of being rejected by that society and being transferred to a prison without trial, with no access to law and no guarantee of any future anywhere. Manus Island will surely make them think again.
But few of us can imagine the effects that the passing of time in detention has on the spirit. As Patrick McGorry famously said, detention centres are factories for producing mental illness. When people, often already traumatised by the past experiences of persecution and flight, have infinite, idle time to feel guilt because they can do nothing to help their families, to feel dread that they may be returned to danger, and to feel frustration that they must live in total dependence and passivity, they naturally feel prey to depression and rage. In an environment like Manus Island that they perceive as hostile, this distress is exacerbated.
Of course what potential asylum seekers do not see and cannot easily imagine will not be an effective deterrent. But mental illness often finds public expression in destructive activity. In enclosed and isolated situations it leads to self-harm and to aggressive behaviour. These increase the anxiety of officers responsible for keeping people locked up in an orderly way, and are often met by further restrictions on their liberty. This can escalate to organised protests and to their forced suppression.
Where there is no access to independent information, Government spokespersons minimise the incidents, blame them on the people who seek protection and on their supporters in Australia, and reiterate their determination that no one from Manus Island will settle in Australia. Accounts given by the people themselves of what has happened to them necessarily lack context, and are discounted as self-serving and hysterical.
In Australia these incidents and the response to them pass without much notice. But they constitute an effective deterrent. People who might seek protection from Australia will notice the lack of serious attention given to death, injury and arbitrary imprisonment, the implacability of the Government and the impotence of its critics.
Most recently the sending of people involved in the protest to a PNG jail without trial underlines the powerlessness and imputed worthlessness of the people imprisoned and their lack of recourse to law. It also focuses the minds of others who may seek protection in Australia on the fate that may await them in PNG if they are found to be refugees. Together with pushing back the boats, in Manus Island Australia has devised a very effective deterrent.
These are the human considerations that must be taken into account when we judge whether or not to applaud or condemn the policy of which Manus Island is the emblem. Deterrence, the keystone of the policy, rests on using the suffering of innocent people there to deter others. Supporters of the policy will argue that such a cost is acceptable. I disagree - human beings should never be subject to such a calculus.
But those who agree that the cost to asylum seekers is acceptable will find it hard to argue that the lives of two young, reformed Australians are an unacceptable price for deterring others from trading in drugs.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.