Please read the email I just sent to the Prime Minister and Scott Morrison: Prime Minister and Scott Morrison, I am writing to express my disgust, dismay and abhorrence of the Governments policies in regard to asylum seekers and refugees. Asylum seekers arriving by boat are not illegal. Our country has obligations under the UN Refugee Convention to accept asylum seekers into our country and give them refuge. Your Government is concealing boat arrivals and illegally turning them back to Indonesia. Those refugees that have made it to Australia, your Government is holding in concentration camp conditions in remote offshore locations such as Nauru and Manus Island where you believe Australians will forget about them. Good, just and compassionate citizens of Australia will not forget them. We will continue to stand up for them until they are accepted into our country. You are using refugees as a political means to win votes and appeal to the most bigoted of Australians in a Hansonesque manner. This is unacceptable. You are holding hundreds of children (many unaccompanied) and their families in these offshore concentration camps and you are unable to guarantee their safety. At some stage, and I hope soon, you will pay for your inhumane injustices in the international courts of justice. Refugees should be expediently processed in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. If their claims for refugee status are justified, they should be flown to Australia for settlement. This is the right and just way to stop people smuggling and deaths at sea. I abhor your policies to return Tamils to Sri Lanka and to refoul any refugee who has less than a 50% chance of major harm on return to their country of origin. Their will be more blood on your hands with refugees taking their lives, rather than face return, if you continue with your barbaric policies, and many will lose their lives or face horrific torture when returned. You say your policies are a deterrent. By making the policies a deterrent to refugees coming to Australia, you are making our country worse than the Taliban and brutal regimes that murder and torture their own people. Many of the refugees are fleeing persecution in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Australia sent in troops - some of whom lost their lives - fighting the persecutors the refugees are fleeing from. There is no way you can justify your policies. You claim to be Christian. If this is what Christianity represents, I want no part of it. My question to you is how will you determine who is to be returned to their country of origin under your 50/50 policy and who will be responsible for the decision? As a voting citizen of Australia, and as you were voted in to serve Australians, I request an answer to this question. I would also appreciate an honest response to the other concerns I have raised. Yours faithfully Jeanette Anderson
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 01:48:37 +0000