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The
Australian Government's war against asylum seekers The Tampa Affair
by Dr. Lynette Dumble -- -Medical and Environmental Scientist and International co-ordinator of the Global Sisterhood Network
According to the Howard Administration, the Australian
Government has a "decent, generous and compassionate" track record
when it comes to accommodating a share of the world's refugees. Events of
recent times tell otherwise, with daily reports of mental illness, hunger
strikes, self-injury, and suicide amongst inmates held within the country's
mandatory detention centres for asylum seekers. Fenced off with barbed wire
in the middle of the South Australian desert, the former air force barracks
at Woomera is seen an a concentration camp for refugees who have managed to
flee some of the world's most murderous regimes. On this background, the
events of August 29, 2001, bear testimony to the Australian Government's
fervor to deter displaced men, women and children from seeking refuge inside
the nation's borders.
Three days beforehand, on Sunday August 26, the
Norwegian freighter MS Tampas responded to an Australian Coastal
Surveillance alert that a boat was sinking 140 kilometres north of the
country's west coast - the precise location situated inside of Indonesia's
sea rescue zone, but closer in distance to the Australian territory of
Christmas Island. Saving 460 chiefly Afghan asylum seekers from a watery
grave, the Tampa's captain Arne Rinnan then sought to deliver his human
cargo to their preferred destination of Christmas Island. Prime Minister
Howard's response was swift, refusing the Tampa entry into Australian waters
because the rescued had been picked up in Indonesian waters.
In the days which followed, Howard remained steadfast
that Australian doors were closed to what his Minister for Immigration,
Phillip Ruddock, had repeatedly referred to as "illegal
immigrants". While making it clear to Rinnan that none of his asylum
seeking cargo could put a single foot on Australian soil, both Howard and
Ruddock declared that responsibility laid with Indonesia, the location to
where the hapless pawns in the turmoil had first been trafficked to begin
their ill-fated voyage on August 24 aboard an unseaworthy vessel. As an
alternative, Captain Rinnan was advised that he could take his human cargo
back with him to Norway. Authorities in Indonesia and Norway disagreed,
leaving Rinnan to contemplate the misery of those whose fate had fallen in
his lap.
On the morning of Wednesday August 29, Immigration
Minister Philip Ruddock set the scene for a new chapter of the war against
asylum seekers, when he came close to calling Rinnan's human cargo
terrorists "I don't want to liken this to a hijack in an aircraft but
you know the sorts of practical issues that are addressed when people try to
hijack aircraft"! Yet there was not a scrap of evidence that a single
one of the 460 asylum seekers rescued from their leaking boat by the
Norwegian freighter on August 26 was armed, as neither had Arne Rinnan
hinted that any amongst the refugees had threatened his authority as the MS
Tampa's captain. But, as is his trademark, Ruddock failed to define exactly
what "sorts of practical issues" he was referring to.
Fearing for the survival of several of his rescued
cargo, the vast majority traumatized by the conflicts which had driven them
from their motherlands, most battered by the elements after traveling the
high seas, and a number in desperate need of medical attention, Rinnan then
issued two medical mayday calls. Both went unanswered, and in defiance of
the Howard order not to enter Australian waters, Rinnan headed the MS Tampa
for Christmas Island. When within a few nautical miles of the ship's
forbidden destination, Rinnan was denied permission to dock. Soon after the
MS Tampa was stormed by an Australian military unit, which after taking
control of the vessel ordered Rinnan to "turn around and sail
away"!
By late evening of August 29, both Howard and Ruddock
had appeared on national television to dismiss claims that a number of
asylum seekers were in need of urgent medical care. Rinnan remained firm in
his refusal to move the MS Tampa out into international waters. And 460
desperate men, women and children remained in limbo, held in six empty
freight containers, one of which served as their toilet, on the deck of a
vessel anchored in heavy seas, and licensed to carry only 50 passengers.
In a last ditch effort to retrospectively legitimize
the military invasion of the Tampa, the Howard Government introduced
emergency legislation, referred to as the Border Protection Bill 2001. In
the main, the legislation sought to enable an officer of the Prime Minister
to direct any ship away from Australian waters; prevent such a direction
from being challenged in any proceedings in any court; and to ban the
protection visa application of any individual aboard a ship when such a
direction was given. By this stage, the only good news in the face of
Australia's bullying came with the Labour Party's Lower House opposition to
the Government's ploy. Debate continued in the Senate into the small hours
of Thursday August 30, with Labour members holding onto the party's
rediscovered humanity to join forces with the Democrats and the Greens and
block the Bill's enactment.
Prior to the MS Tampa rescue, Howard's spin doctors
had successfully hoodwinked the public into believing that asylum seekers
are largely a bunch of uncivilized invaders - criminals, queue jumpers,
disease-ridden, and a burden on the taxpayer. Sparse attention, much less
sympathy, was accorded the more than 20 million human beings, 16 million [80
per cent] being women and children, displaced from their motherlands by
conflict. According to figures from the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees [UNHCR], 456,473 people from around the world applied for refugee
status in the year 2000. Taking into account those driven from their homes
by the extremes of political or religious intimidation, the number is far
greater. More than 100,000 Tibetans, driven from their China-annexed
homeland, can be found in Dharamsala, India. Some 4 million displaced during
the war of attrition between the Taliban and the Ahmad Shah Massoud-led
United Front in Afghanistan have fled to Pakistan and Iran. For Afghans not
to escape elsewhere means ethnic discrimination, rife unemployment for men,
the well-documented torture of women in the name of the Taliban's version of
Islam, and a life expectancy of just 45 years. For the past two decades ,
the experience of Afghans in their homeland complies with the definition of
refugee ["a person with a credible fear of persecution"], laid
down in the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees.
Educated Afghans departed long ago. Those exiled in
Pakistan, if they survive and manage to save $5000, have the option to seek
a life in Europe away from the squalor of refugee camps. For those able to
save anything less, Europe is not an option, but they can bribe their way
into Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia, and have sufficient left to pay people
smugglers for a boat passage to Australia.
Australia's annual intake of some 16,000 immigrants on
humanitarian grounds is a significant but small contribution to the global
tally of asylum seekers, barely justifying Mr. Howard's boastful perception
of Australia's "decent, generous and compassionate" refugee
record. More realistically, the Howard Administration has imposed harshly
definitions of refugee status to disqualify asylum applicants. Likened to
the 1939 Voyage of the Damned which saw 937 Jews on the German liner St
Louis prevented from disembarking in Cuba, the MS Tampa affair is another
chapter in a heartless war against refugees. Chris Sidoti, spokesman for the
Human Rights Council of Australia, identified the parallels between the
Howard Government's treatment of the Tampa's human cargo, and the manner in
which most of the West responded to the Jewish people before and during
WWII. Valid comparisons can also be made with events of 1888, when the
Australian states of Victoria and NSW blocked the entry of Chinese
immigrants, effectively paving the way for Australia's infamous White
Australia Policy of exactly one hundred years ago.
But the Howard Administration underestimated the
impact of external highly respected voices: UNHCR High Commissioner Mary
Robinson, speaking from Durban on the eve of the World Conference against
Racism, deemed that the Australia Government had breached the UN Convention
on Refugees: "The Convention provides that they should be accepted at
the nearest port and I think the issue is a very serious one. They should be
admitted, they should be treated in an appropriate human rights way":
Speaking from Oxford, Europe's leading authority on refugees Professor Sir
Michael Dummett condemned the Tampa affair as "a disgrace which had
shamed Australia before the whole world". In response, the tide of
public opinion turned. For the first time, opinion polls indicated a fall in
public approval for the Howard Administration's war against refugees. In the
space of the 48 hours, public approval for the Government's latest
anti-refugee strategy fell from 80 per cent on August 28 to 50 per cent on
August 30. With a federal election due, Mr. Howard may pay dearly for
underestimating the morality of the electorate, but at this point in time
the average Australian, also for the first time, is more intent on demanding
a fair deal for refugees like those on board the Tampa, and whose only crime
is to seek a new life downunder.
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