It’s not a surprise that these kinds of allegations are resurfacing again. The government’s failed disappearance of Sri Lankan asylum seekers, and the spate of suicide attempts and self-harm on Christmas Island have prompted intense criticism. But Morrison’s secrecy over on-water matters has the side-effect of muting attention on people smugglers, the villains of the piece that governments and their propagandists have spent so much effort creating. Refugee advocates, it would seem, can now play that role. The present allegations are yet another deception, on which Australian refugee policy has always been sustained – from Philip Ruddock’s notorious lies about children overboard, to Bowen’s scarcely noticed ones about the Malaysia solution. Attacks on advocates snap-fit right into the inverted logic which rationalises Australia’s persecution of refugees in the public mind. State-driven brutalisation of asylum seekers is presented as actually being in refugees’ interests. No matter how horrific its consequences – the murder of Berati, the violence and malaria-laden nightmare of Manus, the lip-stitching, the suicides, the island-sized medical emergency of Nauru, the corrosive despair of bridging visas, the self-immolations, the refoulements – it supposedly “prevents deaths at sea”. This being the case, it becomes necessary to demonise the unequivocal advocacy of Rintoul, the Refugee Action Coalition, and other asylum supporters, all of which directly challenges this narrative. (From the article)
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 05:07:15 +0000
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