It’s a complex problem with no easy or perfect solutions – short of utopian aims such as achieving world peace – but a baseline has to be that any solutions that involve pushing people back to imprisonment, torture and death are not solutions that should be
tolerated.
In Crikey’s daily email today, I wrote a piece examining some of the rhetoric regarding asylum seekers that various governments around the world are using.
In short, I was surprised there weren’t ample examples of obnoxious rhetoric from government leaders and Ministers easy to find. No doubt I will now be sent hundreds of examples that I couldn’t find, but the fact one has to search harder for it suggests it is not as widespread as might be assumed.
Either that, or I have been so desensitised by the blatant, calculated demonisation of asylum seekers that came from Australia’s Prime Minister and some of his senior Ministers in the post-Tampa period in 2001 that every thing else seems mild in comparison.
However, examining this matter reminded me that what actually happens to human beings as a result of the policies of turning back refugee claimants is more significant than the rhetoric. Disturbing details about this are very easy to find and provide much more sobering reading.
I’ve written a bit in the past about some of the practices in other countries. Italy is currently the most notorious, with their recent deal with the Libya government to push asylum seekers back to that country undoubtedly leading directly to people deaths. Here’s one example of what Libya does:
Investigations by independent journalists and NGOs have shown that, on various occasions, the Libyan and Moroccan authorities have arrested and abandoned large numbers of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the desert, where many die of hunger and thirst.
Reasons why so many people try to flee right out of Africa are also obvious.
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said Angolan soldiers have raped, beaten and tortured illegal Congolese migrant workers before deporting them across the border.
In 2006 Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said that border security should be stepped up to prevent illegal migrants from destabilising the country.
“We must be mindful about protecting our borders to prevent the entry of foreigners, because the country has become the target of illegal and organised entries that could destabilise it,” said Dos Santos at the swearing-in ceremony of a new interior minister.
Controlling movement of people isn’t just between the western world and the outside either.
The Saudi government has built the Saudi-Yemen barrier, which is a physical barrier along part of its border with Yemen. “ It consists of a network of sandbags and pipelines, three metres high, filled with concrete and fitted with electronic detection equipment.
Saudi Arabia claims the barrier is “a necessary tool in protecting the kingdom from terrorism” and is “necessary for protecting their borders against an influx of illegal immigrants and against the smuggling of drugs and weapons.”
Those “illegal immigrants” include many Somali and Ethiopian refugees.
It’s a complex problem with no easy or perfect solutions – short of Utopian aims such as achieving world peace – but a baseline has to be that any solutions that involve pushing people back to imprisonment, torture and death are not solutions that should be tolerated.
9 Comments
for my part, “irregular migrants” is a new one… it makes them sound like they’re out of the seconds and samples bin… what does “irregular” mean?
Sophie
I think it’s just another one of the many and sometimes tortured efforts to think of a single term to encompass what is really an incredibly diverse set of circumstances and people. The best I’d suggest is that in this context irregular tends to mean ‘outside the norm’ – not automatically law-breaking, but outside the usual migration process.
We get too hung up on the words we use, rather than the meaning we clearly give them when used. If you said “we need to take a realistic and humane approach to illegal immigrants” is that really worse than “we make no apologies for taking a hard line on protecting our borders against irregular immigrants”?
Take for example the recent kerfuffle about Iron Bar’s alleged comment that ‘boat people are terroists’. As much as I’d be the last person to defend Tuckey, if you actually look at what he said it’s pretty hard to make that inference. It wasn’t exactly an intelligent or useful contribution, but the fact that he used the word ‘terroist’ in a sentence vaguely near ‘boat people’ (or whatever term he used) was all that seemed to matter.
This ‘debate’ we are apparently having is completely devoid (at the politician and MSM level) of any content, it’s just a matter of being seen to be using the correct term at the correct time. As long as you are both ‘tough’ and ‘humane’ is doesn’t matter what you actually do.
It doesn’t matter if you refer to ‘them’ as boat people, refugees, illegal immigrants, irregular immigrants, wogs on the waves or whatver, what matters is the words around the term, that gives the sentence meaning, unless like most of our politicians these days you are actually incapable of constructing a sentence with any meaning.
I haven’t looked at rhetoric overseas, but like you I have not found much ‘demonising’ from Australian politicians. The Australian political class is generally pretty careful to avoid inflammatory racial or religious commentary, with the only consistent exception being attacks on Christian groups, particuarly in the context of religious schools (the lack of real examples is why we have the ‘dog whistle’ critique – the absence of textual evidence leads to a search for sub-texts). That leaves occasional remarks about terrorists, criminals, child abuse etc.
The terminology used around the movement of people between countries is not very well defined, especially once you start looking at debates internationally. I’m not sure what can be done about this, but it doesn’t help getting informed debate & understanding.
The terminology is important. Look at one of the comments under Sophie Black’s article “A tour of Indonesia’s detention centres” on Friday. A blogger using the tag “My 2 cents worth” is genuinely under the impression that unauthorised arrivals have committed a crime, so he/she quite reasonably can’t understand why that crime shouldn’t be punished like any other crime.
As Bogdanovist says, place certain words together in a sentence for public consumption, and people will infer certain information. I’d argue that it’s disingenuous then to protest, “Ah, but I didn’t say exactly that.”
I have a question; it’s genuine so please don’t flame me.
I keep reading about how the majority of assylum seekers arrive via plane rather than by boat, and they those who arrive by plane get a better deal than those who come by boat. I also know its cheaper to come by plane. So, why do some come by boat at all? Why don’t they all hop on a plane?
That’s fine Tom. As I noted, the use of terminology is not always consistent, and statements can also be technically true whilst none the less creating a misleading impression. I think this is one of them.
The ‘asylum seekers who arrive by plane’ almost all arrive with a valid visa of some sort (tourist, student, business, sportsperson, World Catholic Youth Day pilgrim, etc). They are let in through customs and immigration clearance like everyone else and sometime later they put in an asylum claim in an effort to be able to stay.
The people who come by boat are very unlikely to be granted a visa – even a tourist visa – as our visa process screens people according to ‘risk factors’, meaning if you’re a young Afghan male, your chances of getting a visa are virtually zero (unless you also happen to be a world record holding athlete, in which case you’re fast tracked to citizenship). That’s assuming they can get anywhere where they could apply for a visa in the first place. If you’re a Tamil civilian having to bribe yourself out of the detention camp you’ve been trapped in for six months, it’s not a good idea to walk into a travel agent – you’ll just end up back on the inside again.
A few people still try to get on a plane to Australia with a fake or dodgy visa and then claim asylum as soon as they land, but very few make it – it’s quite hard to get through all the checking protocols these days, and the airlines get fined a packet if they bring someone who is unauthorised to enter.
In short, you can bet your life (as many asylum seekers do) that if any of the folks on the boats had any hope of being able to get a visa and buy a plane ticket in, the last thing they’d do would be jump on a crowded boat.
Anyway, asylum seekers who claim onshore after having arrived on a valid visa get ‘a better deal’ in the sense that they are not usually subject to any detention, and in some circumstances can also have work rights while their claims is being considered. People who arrive by boat get locked up – often until their visa claim has been finally determined.
Statistically, asylum seekers who arrive by boat are far more likely to be found to be refugees than those who claim after coming here with a visa. That’s just a statistical result though. Each case gets assessed on its merits, regardless of how people first arrived.
It has never made a lick of sense to lock up people because they don’t want to leave though has it Andrew?
When the Indians who try it on have a 1.6% success rate though something smells, and when we continue to lock up Afghans with a 99% success rate something smells even worse.
If people can’t leave danger then they die and no amount of money squandered on border security will change that.
The morons actually have spies and police crawling all over the Asia Pacific rim to “stop people smuggling” which is a sick joke.
They are only having refugees locked up. And I say refugees because they are the same cohort who have had vast success rates here.