How much longer are Australians going to be prepared to put up with the hypocrisy of the politicians whose rantings and ravings get worse and worse every day?
Today, Sunday 28 January 2018, we have the current prime minister raving on about the Holocaust, while his government locks the indigenous people in prisons and areas around the country which are worse than prisons and concentration camps , does the same with asylum seekers who are treated worse than animals - they treat their pets better than the human beings in Papua New Guinea and Nauru - and pontificates abut human rights and what needs to be done in Australia and around the world.
One really needs to carry one's vomit bucket around with one where ever one goes, and to be careful to spill it only on politicians.
HUMAN RIGHTS & EQUALITY FOR ALL,FREEDOM & JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE, ZIMBABWE, BURMA, EVERY COUNTRY SUFFERING FROM WARS, DROUGHTS, STARVATION, MILITARY ADVENTURES, DICTATORSHIPS, POLICE STATES, RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION, HOMOPHOBIA, CENSORSHIP & OTHER OBSCENITIES.INTERNATIONAL ASYLUM SEEKER SUPPORT
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Showing posts with label indigenous Australians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indigenous Australians. Show all posts
28 January 2018
24 January 2016
AUSTRALIA'S DAY FOR SECRETS, FLAGS AND COWARDS - BY JOHN PILGER
22 JANUARY 2016 from CounterPunch
On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.
For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January, “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.
It was sunrise on 26 January so many years ago when I stood with Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians and threw wreaths into Sydney Harbour. We had climbed down to one of the perfect sandy coves where others had stood as silhouettes, watching as the ships of Britain’s “First Fleet” dropped anchor on 26 January, 1788. This was the moment the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants; the euphemism was “settled”. It was, wrote Henry Reynolds, one of few honest Australian historians, one of the greatest land grabs in world history. He described the slaughter that followed as “a whispering in our hearts”.
The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To justify this fiction, mass murder was ordained. In 1838, the Sydney Monitor reported: “It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter.” This referred to the Darug people who lived along the great Hawkesbury River not far from Sydney. With remarkable ingenuity and without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a national secret. In a land littered with cenotaphs honouring Australia’s settler dead in mostly imperial wars, not one stands for those warriors who fought and fell defending Australia.
This truth has no place in the Australian consciousness. Among settler nations with indigenous populations, apart from a facile “apology” in 2008, only Australia has refused to come to terms with the shame of its colonial past. A Hollywood film, Soldier Blue, in 1970 famously inverted racial stereotypes and gave Americans a glimpse of the genocide in their own mythical “settlement”. Almost half a century later, it is fair to say an equivalent film would never be made in Australia.
In 2014, when my own film, Utopia, which told the story of the Australian genocide, sought a local distributor, I was advised by a luminary in the business: “No way I could distribute this. The audiences wouldn’t accept it.”
He was wrong — up to a point. When Utopia opened in Sydney a few days before 26 January, under the stars on vacant land in an Indigenous inner-city area known as The Block, more than 4,000 people came, the majority non-Indigenous. Many had travelled from right across the continent. Indigenous leaders who had appeared in the film stood in front of the screen and spoke in “language”: their own. Nothing like it had happened before. Yet, there was no press. For the wider community, it did not happen. Australia is a murdochracy, dominated by the ethos of a man who swapped his nationality for the Fox Network in the US.
The star Indigenous AFL footballer Adam Goodes wrote movingly to the Sydney Morning Herald demanding that “the silence is broken”. “Imagine,” he wrote, “watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.
“Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.”
Goodes himself had already broken a silence when he stood against racist abuse thrown at him and other Indigenous sportspeople. This courageous, talented man retired from football last year as if under a cloud — with, wrote one commentator, “the sporting nation divided about him”. In Australia, it is respectable to be “divided” on opposing racism.
On Australia Day 2016– Indigenous people prefer Invasion Day or Survival Day– there will be no acknowledgement that Australia’s uniqueness is its first people, along with an ingrained colonial mentality that ought to be an abiding embarrassment in an independent nation. This mentality is expressed in a variety of ways, from unrelenting political groveling at the knee of a rapacious United States to an almost casual contempt for Indigenous Australians, an echo of “kaffir”-abusing South Africans.
Apartheid runs through Australian society. Within a short flight from Sydney, Indigenous people live the shortest of lives. Men are often dead before they reach 45. They die from Dickensian diseases, such as rheumatic heart disease. Children go blind from trachoma, and deaf from otitis media, diseases of poverty. A doctor told me, “I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class of the beginning of the industrial revolution.”
The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”. Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again. On 11 February, an inspiring group called Grandmothers Against Removals will lead a march on Federal Parliament in Canberra, demanding the return of the stolen children.
Australia is the envy of European governments now fencing in their once-open borders while beckoning fascism, as in Hungary. Refugees who dare set sail for Australia in overcrowded boats have long been treated as criminals, along with the “smugglers” whose hyped notoriety is used by the Australian media to distract from the immorality and criminality of their own government. The refugees are confined behind barbed wire on average for well over a year, some indefinitely, in barbaric conditions that have led to self-harm, murder, suicide and mental illness. Children have not been spared. An Australian Gulag run by sinister private security firms includes concentration camps on the remote Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru. People often have no idea when they might be freed, if at all.
The Australian military — whose derring-do is the subject of uncritical tomes that fill the shelves of airport bookstalls — has played an important part in “turning back the boats” of refugees fleeing wars, such as in Iraq, launched and prolonged by the Americans and their Australian mercenaries. No irony, let alone responsibility, is acknowledged in this cowardly role.
On this Australia Day, the “pride of the services” will be on display. This pride extends to the Australian Immigration Department, which commits people to its Gulag for “offshore processing”, often arbitrarily, leaving them to grieve and despair and rot. Last week it was announced that Immigration officials had spent $400,000 on medals which they will award their heroic selves. Put out more flags.
On January 26, Indigenous Australians and their supporters will march from The Block in Redfern, Sydney, to the Sydney Town Hall. The march will begin at 10 am.
On Thursday February 11, Grandmothers Against Removals will address a rally in Canberra. This will start at 12 noon at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, then march to Parliament House.
Australia’s Day for Secrets, Flags and Cowards
On 26 January, one of the saddest days in human history will be celebrated in Australia. It will be “a day for families”, say the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Flags will be dispensed at street corners and displayed on funny hats. People will say incessantly how proud they are.
For many, there is relief and gratitude. In my lifetime, non-indigenous Australia has changed from an Anglo-Irish society to one of the most ethnically diverse on earth. Those we used to call “New Australians” often choose 26 January, “Australia Day”, to be sworn in as citizens. The ceremonies can be touching. Watch the faces from the Middle East and understand why they clench their new flag.
It was sunrise on 26 January so many years ago when I stood with Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians and threw wreaths into Sydney Harbour. We had climbed down to one of the perfect sandy coves where others had stood as silhouettes, watching as the ships of Britain’s “First Fleet” dropped anchor on 26 January, 1788. This was the moment the only island continent on earth was taken from its inhabitants; the euphemism was “settled”. It was, wrote Henry Reynolds, one of few honest Australian historians, one of the greatest land grabs in world history. He described the slaughter that followed as “a whispering in our hearts”.
The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To justify this fiction, mass murder was ordained. In 1838, the Sydney Monitor reported: “It was resolved to exterminate the whole race of blacks in that quarter.” This referred to the Darug people who lived along the great Hawkesbury River not far from Sydney. With remarkable ingenuity and without guns, they fought an epic resistance that remains almost a national secret. In a land littered with cenotaphs honouring Australia’s settler dead in mostly imperial wars, not one stands for those warriors who fought and fell defending Australia.
This truth has no place in the Australian consciousness. Among settler nations with indigenous populations, apart from a facile “apology” in 2008, only Australia has refused to come to terms with the shame of its colonial past. A Hollywood film, Soldier Blue, in 1970 famously inverted racial stereotypes and gave Americans a glimpse of the genocide in their own mythical “settlement”. Almost half a century later, it is fair to say an equivalent film would never be made in Australia.
In 2014, when my own film, Utopia, which told the story of the Australian genocide, sought a local distributor, I was advised by a luminary in the business: “No way I could distribute this. The audiences wouldn’t accept it.”
He was wrong — up to a point. When Utopia opened in Sydney a few days before 26 January, under the stars on vacant land in an Indigenous inner-city area known as The Block, more than 4,000 people came, the majority non-Indigenous. Many had travelled from right across the continent. Indigenous leaders who had appeared in the film stood in front of the screen and spoke in “language”: their own. Nothing like it had happened before. Yet, there was no press. For the wider community, it did not happen. Australia is a murdochracy, dominated by the ethos of a man who swapped his nationality for the Fox Network in the US.
The star Indigenous AFL footballer Adam Goodes wrote movingly to the Sydney Morning Herald demanding that “the silence is broken”. “Imagine,” he wrote, “watching a film that tells the truth about the terrible injustices committed against your people, a film that reveals how Europeans, and the governments that have run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from your people for their own benefit.
“Now imagine how it feels when the people who benefited most from those rapes, those killings and that theft – the people in whose name the oppression was done – turn away in disgust when someone seeks to expose it.”
Goodes himself had already broken a silence when he stood against racist abuse thrown at him and other Indigenous sportspeople. This courageous, talented man retired from football last year as if under a cloud — with, wrote one commentator, “the sporting nation divided about him”. In Australia, it is respectable to be “divided” on opposing racism.
On Australia Day 2016– Indigenous people prefer Invasion Day or Survival Day– there will be no acknowledgement that Australia’s uniqueness is its first people, along with an ingrained colonial mentality that ought to be an abiding embarrassment in an independent nation. This mentality is expressed in a variety of ways, from unrelenting political groveling at the knee of a rapacious United States to an almost casual contempt for Indigenous Australians, an echo of “kaffir”-abusing South Africans.
Apartheid runs through Australian society. Within a short flight from Sydney, Indigenous people live the shortest of lives. Men are often dead before they reach 45. They die from Dickensian diseases, such as rheumatic heart disease. Children go blind from trachoma, and deaf from otitis media, diseases of poverty. A doctor told me, “I wanted to give a patient an anti-inflammatory for an infection that would have been preventable if living conditions were better, but I couldn’t treat her because she didn’t have enough food to eat and couldn’t ingest the tablets. I feel sometimes as if I’m dealing with similar conditions as the English working class of the beginning of the industrial revolution.”
The racism that allows this in one of the most privileged societies on earth runs deep. In the 1920s, a “Protector of Aborigines” oversaw the theft of mixed race children with the justification of “breeding out the colour”. Today, record numbers of Indigenous children are removed from their homes and many never see their families again. On 11 February, an inspiring group called Grandmothers Against Removals will lead a march on Federal Parliament in Canberra, demanding the return of the stolen children.
Australia is the envy of European governments now fencing in their once-open borders while beckoning fascism, as in Hungary. Refugees who dare set sail for Australia in overcrowded boats have long been treated as criminals, along with the “smugglers” whose hyped notoriety is used by the Australian media to distract from the immorality and criminality of their own government. The refugees are confined behind barbed wire on average for well over a year, some indefinitely, in barbaric conditions that have led to self-harm, murder, suicide and mental illness. Children have not been spared. An Australian Gulag run by sinister private security firms includes concentration camps on the remote Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru. People often have no idea when they might be freed, if at all.
The Australian military — whose derring-do is the subject of uncritical tomes that fill the shelves of airport bookstalls — has played an important part in “turning back the boats” of refugees fleeing wars, such as in Iraq, launched and prolonged by the Americans and their Australian mercenaries. No irony, let alone responsibility, is acknowledged in this cowardly role.
On this Australia Day, the “pride of the services” will be on display. This pride extends to the Australian Immigration Department, which commits people to its Gulag for “offshore processing”, often arbitrarily, leaving them to grieve and despair and rot. Last week it was announced that Immigration officials had spent $400,000 on medals which they will award their heroic selves. Put out more flags.
On January 26, Indigenous Australians and their supporters will march from The Block in Redfern, Sydney, to the Sydney Town Hall. The march will begin at 10 am.
On Thursday February 11, Grandmothers Against Removals will address a rally in Canberra. This will start at 12 noon at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, then march to Parliament House.
06 July 2014
AUSTRALIANS IN AND OUT OF PARLIAMENT AND ASYLUM SEEKERS
An article in the Sunday Age of 6 JULY 2014 by Alastair Nicholson, a retired judge is indicative of how many of us are seething with fury at the actions of federal governments in Australia relating to asylum seekers. The article is reproduced from the newspaper underneath my angry article and my petition.
There are 226 people who sit as parliamentarians in the Australian federal parliament in Australia.
150 of those sit in the lower house - the house of representatives (sic).
76 sit in the upper house - the senate.
The Aboriginal or indigenous population of Australia ( according to current statistics) is about 3 per cent of the population of about 24 million as at 2014. So the estimated number of people who consider themselves to be connected to the Aboriginal communities is about 720 thousand.
Translating these figures to the numbers of Aboriginal-identifying Australians would indicate that the proportion in the federal parliament should be 7 people.
At the present time - July 2014 - information is that there is one person of Aboriginal origin in the federal parliament.
Of the total number of 226, some were born in Australia of Australian-born parents, some were born in Australia of overseas-born parents, and some were, themselves, born overseas.
As there are about 24 million people in Australia, of which about 720,000 are members of the First Australians population, this means that about 23 1/4 million people in Australia have origins from other countries.
We thus have most of these people declaiming to the world that Australia will not allow a few thousand desperate refugees into this country because, to quote a previous prime ministerial bigot and his fellow parliamentarians - and what has changed in the last 10 years? - "WE WILL DECIDE WHO COMES TO THIS COUNTRY AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY COME!"
At the moment and at any other given time, statistics indicate that there are enormous numbers of people in Australia who do not have legal rights to be in this country. If the numbers are anything to be relied on, they far outnumber the people who are desperately clinging to sinking boats fleeing from such countries as Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and many other countries where their lives are under constant threat because of the human rights abuses perpetrated against minorities and other groups in their countries of origin.
...........and this in a country where the so-called foreign minister goes to another country of human rights abuses and is ready to lecture that government about human rights.
As they say in modern vernacular - "GIVE US A BREAK!!!!!"
This country is trying to outdo many other countries such as the United States of America, Israel, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Greece when it comes to our treatment of refugees and our increasing population numbers of right-wing, reactionary, bigoted, racist, sexist, and human rights abuses people.
The main stream media aid and abet this travesty of justice and human rights.
It is becoming intolerable and unbearable!
And this is the country that practises apartheid on a scale as grand as Israel's!
CLOSE ALL CONCENTRATION CAMPS NOW AND FOREVER!
Stop Australian Incarceration of Asylum Seekers
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/13/stop-australian-incarceration-of-asylum-seekers/
Target: Australians and International communities
Sponsored by: Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne
Australia is trying to negotiate an off-shore solution to Asylum Seekers coming to Australia in boats which are not seaworthy, and which have already been responsible for many drownings offshore. The latest attempt is the so-called Malaysian solution involving Australia sending 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 2000 refugees in Malaysia.
Both the Australian Government and its parliamentary Opposition are demonising people fleeing desperate situations in their countries of origin, mainly because of Australian military intervention in those countries.
The total numbers of asylum seekers trying to enter Australia is a miniscule number in terms of refugees and asylum seekers around the world, and most of the people in Australia illegally have arrived by plane!
Australia is signatory to United Nations conventions on refugees but is ignoring these UN documents in its political attempts to stop the demonised "boat people" ever setting foot in Australia.
Help to obtain justice for Asylum Seekers in desperate situations.
The situation has worsened with the federal government reopening the concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island.
Get the government to close these camps now.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Alistair Nicholson's article mentioned at the top of this page:
Asylum seekers: my country, my shame
- 31 reading now
Illustration: Matt Davidson.
As a young
person I had never thought, as I do now, that I would be ashamed
to be an Australian. One of the main reasons for that shame, but
not the only one, is our policies towards asylum seekers and
Aboriginal people. Both issues directly affected me in my former
role as Chief Justice of the Family Court, but today I will
discuss asylum seekers.
It was the
Labor government in 1992 that first acted to provide for
mandatory detention of asylum seekers and set up a detention
facility at Port Hedland where we began the appalling process of
detaining asylum seekers and their children.
At the time
that it introduced the policy of holding asylum seekers in
detention and doing so in remote areas like Port Hedland I
accepted an invitation to speak to a seminar on the rights of
children. I criticised the government for setting up what I
described as a virtual concentration camp in a remote area and
in particular, for wrongly detaining children contrary to the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child.
That set up a
media hue and cry with my remarks appearing on the front page of The Australian , which surprisingly
enough, agreed with me. Then-immigration minister Senator Nick
Bolkus was depicted in a cartoon dressed in Nazi uniform outside
of a concentration camp and even Greg Sheridan expressed support
for my remarks. How times have changed.
The government
response was, of course, predictable and I was criticised for
speaking publicly as a judge on a political issue. I took the
view then and now that human rights issues transcend mere
political issues and that they give rise to a duty to espouse
them.
Subsequently in
2001 a case came before the Family Court involving asylum seeker
children where it was argued that the court in its welfare
jurisdiction should order their release from detention in light
of evidence as to their extreme psychological deterioration. The
trial judge dismissed the application on the basis that the
court lacked jurisdiction, but on appeal the Full Court over
which I presided, held that the court did have jurisdiction to
make such an order and adjourned the further hearing to enable
the presentation of further evidence.
Subsequently
another Full Court directed the minister to release the
children. The minister did so but appealed our decision to the
High Court, which unanimously held that we lacked jurisdiction
to make the order.
Normally one
might feel chastened by a unanimous defeat in the High Court but
I think that I can say that I have never been as proud of any
decision that I have made as a judge as I am of that one. I
still think that it was morally and legally correct, even though
the High Court thought otherwise.
A practical
result of our decision was that the children were not returned
to detention and revulsion against the practice of detaining
children gained force to the point where for a time, both major
parties adopted the policy, but not the practice, of refraining
from doing so.
However, this
has now changed markedly. The media has reported the
Gestapo-like tactics of the Department of Immigration in
removing mothers and children sent to Australia for medical
treatment in the early hours of the morning to Christmas Island.
Others are being sent to Nauru in similar circumstances and I
understand that work is in progress to house families on Manus
as well.
Speaking of
such tactics the Abbott government has adopted another practice
of totalitarian regimes of shrouding its activities in secrecy
and applying a false patina of military necessity. What they are
doing is now hidden from the public and the media. Goebbels,
Stalin and similar types would be proud.
This
indefensible policy continues, fuelled by what I believe to be
the immoral attitude of both major parties. The Howard
government's policy of turning around the boats and
reintroducing temporary protection visas was a combination of
refined cruelty and criminal disregard for human life, despite
the crocodile tears shed in Parliament by its proponents then
and now. The revival of the so-called Nauru and PNG solution
that both parties continue to support was a pathetic return to
morally bereft policies of the past.
Let us not
forget that it was under the Gillard and Rudd governments that
this revival took place but it has been enthusiastically
supported and worsened by the Abbott government and its
indescribable Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison. His
hypocrisy was demonstrated once again when he said that the only
Iraqi refugees who would be returned were those who wished to do
so. He failed to mention that the whole policy of his government
is to treat them so abominably that they will have no choice but
to do so.
As for
temporary protection visas, these are also morally repugnant and
designed to act as a deterrent by separating families. Those
promoting them should pay regard to the possibility that boats
such as the SIEV X were so full of women and children because
that was the only chance of them joining their husbands in
Australia. In my view the use of these visas is an evil policy
that has no possible redeeming feature.
It seems that
what both parties really want is to appeal to xenophobic views
rejecting the arrival of these people in Australia when the
solution of receiving them in a humane fashion and processing
their applications quickly and efficiently, where necessary
after their arrival in Australia is so obvious. The calumnies
heaped on the Greens in relation to their immigration policy are
pure exercises in hypocrisy because they are the only party with
a decent and humane policy towards refugees.
I believe that
we must continue to oppose the government and opposition
policies which, taken together or separately, are the real
reason that people find it necessary to expose themselves to the
horrible risks associated with travelling by boat to Australia.
It is also time
that we put the "problem" in proportion. As The Age columnist
Tim Soutphommasane noted in a 2011 St James Ethics Centre paper,
Australia received 15,226 boat arrivals, compared with Greece's
56,180, Italy's 91,821 and Spain's 74,317. These are European
countries in dire economic circumstances in sharp contrast to
ours.
It is more than
time that we got rid of such pejorative and inappropriate terms
such as "queue jumping" and "border protection" and brought some
humanity to bear on this issue. These are human beings, many of
them families with children who are affected so let us stop
talking nonsense about "stopping the boats", and "processing"
people and get on with helping them.
How did we get
ourselves into this state? Australia is rapidly becoming an
international pariah, riding roughshod over solemn treaty
obligations into which it has entered like the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Refugee
Convention and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
It may surprise
you to know that successive governments have been able to get
away with this by never importing these conventions into
domestic law. Thus we show an international face as a good
international citizen while ignoring these conventions and the
rights conferred by them at home and on the high seas.
This is the
height of hypocrisy, which in the past has been justified by
saying that as a democracy applying the rule of law, Australia
would never act contrary to international law in this way. For
obvious reasons this can no longer be said with a straight face.
Another reason
for this situation is that unlike most major democracies in the
world, Australia has never enacted a Bill of Rights. The
conservatives have always opposed it because it acts as a brake
on the power of governments to act as they please. Labor has a
policy of introducing such a constitutional guarantee but has
shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for doing anything about it.
In its absence
we are all extremely vulnerable to the abuse of power by our
governments which have and are engaging in such abuse but
directing it to a small and unpopular minority of non-citizens
that they are able to demonise.
Let there be no
mistake however that legally, there is little to stop our
government treating us in this way as well. The current
behaviour by successive governments to asylum seekers should be
a salutary lesson of the dangers lying in the path of us all.
What then must
we do? I think that we must work together to show governments
that this situation will not continue to be tolerated. I believe
that there is a slow beginning of a groundswell in the community
of distaste for these policies and with the leadership of people
like Malcolm Fraser the wheel will turn, but not before much
human misery will be suffered by some of the most vulnerable
people of all. Perhaps the move against these policies by a
minority of the Labor caucus in the federal Parliament is a
harbinger of change.
We must bring
it home that the people that we are mistreating in this way are
people just like us with the same hopes and aspirations. We must
stand up to the Abbotts, Morrisons and sadly, the Shortens of
this world.
Alastair Nicholson is a
former chief justice of the Family Court, a University of
Melbourne law professor and chairman of Children's Rights
International. This is an edited extract of a speech he gave
last month.
20 June 2014
ASYLUM SEEKERS - THE DISGRACE OF MOST AUSTRALIAN POLITICIANS
In 1992 Paul Keating was Australian prime minister - the Australian Labor Party had been in government for 9 years and Keating had recently ousted Bob Hawke as prime minister.
Keating was concerned about the numbers of refugees seeking asylum in Australia and decided to do the unthinkable - he established the first concentration camps to lock up people fleeing from just such scenarios.
This was the beginning of "man's inhumanity to man" on a scale not seen in Australia since the white British settlers landed in 1788 and started the massacre of the indigenous population of Australia to such an extent that today they represent but about 4.5 per cent of the population.
Were the original inhabitants of Australia such a threat to the newly arriving white men and women from the European shores?
Is this how governments in Australia have seen successive waves of asylum seekers fleeing in terror from their countries of origin as threats to their white anglo hegemonies?
The numbers trying to enter Australia have been tiny in relation to refugee problems around the world and part of the problem has been that some of the refugee situations have been created by successive Australian governments having indulged in war exercises in some of the host countries.
When are Australians going to realise that asylum seekers are not terrorists, are not threats to the "native" populations, and there is a much greater likelihood of home-grown terror than from people fleeing terror in their countries of origin?
Those of us who are not part of the indigenous communities in Australia are all "boat people" of one sort or another and our forebears were responsible for robbing ownership of the country from those to whom it originally belonged.
This petition which I started so long ago is even more relevant than it was then, and I urge you to sign it as urgently as Peter Short's petition on euthanasia which is also on this blog.
Target: Australians and International communities
Sponsored by: Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne
Australia is trying to negotiate an off-shore solution to Asylum Seekers coming to Australia in boats which are not seaworthy, and which have already been responsible for many drownings offshore. The latest attempt is the so-called Malaysian solution involving Australia sending 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 2000 refugees in Malaysia.
Both the Australian Government and its parliamentary Opposition are demonising people fleeing desperate situations in their countries of origin, mainly because of Australian military intervention in those countries.
The total numbers of asylum seekers trying to enter Australia is a miniscule number in terms of refugees and asylum seekers around the world, and most of the people in Australia illegally have arrived by plane!
Australia is signatory to United Nations conventions on refugees but is ignoring these UN documents in its political attempts to stop the demonised "boat people" ever setting foot in Australia.
Help to obtain justice for Asylum Seekers in desperate situations.
The situation has worsened with the federal government reopening the concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island.
Get the government to close these camps now.
Keating was concerned about the numbers of refugees seeking asylum in Australia and decided to do the unthinkable - he established the first concentration camps to lock up people fleeing from just such scenarios.
This was the beginning of "man's inhumanity to man" on a scale not seen in Australia since the white British settlers landed in 1788 and started the massacre of the indigenous population of Australia to such an extent that today they represent but about 4.5 per cent of the population.
Were the original inhabitants of Australia such a threat to the newly arriving white men and women from the European shores?
Is this how governments in Australia have seen successive waves of asylum seekers fleeing in terror from their countries of origin as threats to their white anglo hegemonies?
The numbers trying to enter Australia have been tiny in relation to refugee problems around the world and part of the problem has been that some of the refugee situations have been created by successive Australian governments having indulged in war exercises in some of the host countries.
When are Australians going to realise that asylum seekers are not terrorists, are not threats to the "native" populations, and there is a much greater likelihood of home-grown terror than from people fleeing terror in their countries of origin?
Those of us who are not part of the indigenous communities in Australia are all "boat people" of one sort or another and our forebears were responsible for robbing ownership of the country from those to whom it originally belonged.
This petition which I started so long ago is even more relevant than it was then, and I urge you to sign it as urgently as Peter Short's petition on euthanasia which is also on this blog.
Stop Australian Incarceration of Asylum Seekers
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/13/stop-australian-incarceration-of-asylum-seekers/
Target: Australians and International communities
Sponsored by: Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne
Australia is trying to negotiate an off-shore solution to Asylum Seekers coming to Australia in boats which are not seaworthy, and which have already been responsible for many drownings offshore. The latest attempt is the so-called Malaysian solution involving Australia sending 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 2000 refugees in Malaysia.
Both the Australian Government and its parliamentary Opposition are demonising people fleeing desperate situations in their countries of origin, mainly because of Australian military intervention in those countries.
The total numbers of asylum seekers trying to enter Australia is a miniscule number in terms of refugees and asylum seekers around the world, and most of the people in Australia illegally have arrived by plane!
Australia is signatory to United Nations conventions on refugees but is ignoring these UN documents in its political attempts to stop the demonised "boat people" ever setting foot in Australia.
Help to obtain justice for Asylum Seekers in desperate situations.
The situation has worsened with the federal government reopening the concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island.
Get the government to close these camps now.
23 February 2014
ASYLUM SEEKERS: APARTHEID AUSTRALIA
Australia became an apartheid state on 26 January 1788.
White people from England invaded Australia and the war with the indigenous population - who were black, "savage and heathen" - began.
That war has continued into the 21st century, and despite having reduced the number of indigenous people to now number only about 2 per cent of the population, the numbers incarcerated at any given time exceed those of the "white" populations by thousands.
From 1788 onwards the people arriving in Australia to settle here and build Britain's colonial empire arrived mostly by boat, until in the mid-20th century, air travel became more and more popular and ultimately became the norm.
As Australia continued to be a lackey of the main imperial powers - the UK and the USA - wars which those countries were involved in also became Australia's wars, and this continues today into 2014 and onwards.
Because of these wars, more and more people around the world have become displaced and have been forced to flee from their countries of origin and residence due to various factors leading to their oppression, persecution and murder.
Thousands of people around the world have been seeking refuge and asylum in whatever country they have been able to get to, and to plead for refuge.
Mostly, these refugees arrive at countries which have been involved in imperial wars and caused the exit of terrified people who only want to try and live their lives as they always have, but greed and tyranny and related causes have forced them into decisions which have meant they need havens of refuge which in many cases has been denied them, causing untold misery and deaths on the way to their destinations which are difficult to get to in most cases.
Australia has been the destination of thousands fleeing desperate situations, and many of these have found homes here and managed to build lives for themselves under difficult situations. Most of them have come from countries in which Australia has been involved with imperial wars of various sorts.
In 1992, Australia's then prime minister, Paul Keating, decided that there were many people trying to arrive here for asylum who, in his opinion, were not worthy of becoming "citizens" of this "great" country, so he instituted concentration camps, similar to those which were built by the British in South Africa during the imperial wars being fought there by the British and the South African "white" occupiers who were mainly of Dutch, English and French extraction. These wars were known as the "Boer" Wars.
In 1996 John Howard became prime minister and we were then treated to the hysteria of the "Children Overboard" episode in which minsters of the crown lied through their teeth about the fact that desperate asylum seekers were throwing their children off the disintegrating Indonesian fishing boats as they were sinking, in order to save themselves.
The Australian population, including those who themselves had been "boat people" over the decades, and influenced by the main stream media who have behaved appallingly over the last 30 years in relation to desperate asylum seekers, became politically shrill voices to "stop the boats" because they were sinking and people were drowning, so we had to "stop the boats" to save lives!!!!!
From 2007 onwards we then had Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard trying to outdo each other in their demonising of the desperate people trying to get into Australia away from the countries where Australia troops were fighting the US/UK wars aided and abetted by the rest of the imperialist powers.
So we had to plan for offshore concentration camps to lock these traumatised people where the Australian population would be saved from "terrorist" threats from people who were already unable to say boo to a goose!
Manus Island was re-opened and Nauru became "viable" once more as centres for concentration camp operation.
Lock them up, out of sight, out of mind and - the boats have stopped coming!!! Objective achieved, until the Papua New Guineans had other ideas about the new prisons in their country and attacked the "inmates", killing one and injuring dozens of others. Of course the privatised companies running these concentration camps had nothing to do with any of this, did they???
The scandalous behaviour of the Australian government and many Australian citizens over the business of incarcerating innocent people in camps reminiscent of some of the world's worst prison regimes leaves those of us opposed to the carnage absolutely horrified by this behaviour.
I come from the country (South Africa) where the first concentration camps were established between 1899 and 1902, and in the last few years, post apartheid, some incarceration regimes in South Africa remind us very much of those early camps. South Africa has been flooded with refugees fleeing the brutal regimes in Zimbabwe and other neighbouring countries and the numbers involved are tens of hundreds of time greater than the numbers trying to enter Australia.
Time for the peoples of the world to unite and not allow the bosses to rule the roost which they are damaging more and more on a daily basis.
White people from England invaded Australia and the war with the indigenous population - who were black, "savage and heathen" - began.
That war has continued into the 21st century, and despite having reduced the number of indigenous people to now number only about 2 per cent of the population, the numbers incarcerated at any given time exceed those of the "white" populations by thousands.
From 1788 onwards the people arriving in Australia to settle here and build Britain's colonial empire arrived mostly by boat, until in the mid-20th century, air travel became more and more popular and ultimately became the norm.
As Australia continued to be a lackey of the main imperial powers - the UK and the USA - wars which those countries were involved in also became Australia's wars, and this continues today into 2014 and onwards.
Because of these wars, more and more people around the world have become displaced and have been forced to flee from their countries of origin and residence due to various factors leading to their oppression, persecution and murder.
Thousands of people around the world have been seeking refuge and asylum in whatever country they have been able to get to, and to plead for refuge.
Mostly, these refugees arrive at countries which have been involved in imperial wars and caused the exit of terrified people who only want to try and live their lives as they always have, but greed and tyranny and related causes have forced them into decisions which have meant they need havens of refuge which in many cases has been denied them, causing untold misery and deaths on the way to their destinations which are difficult to get to in most cases.
Australia has been the destination of thousands fleeing desperate situations, and many of these have found homes here and managed to build lives for themselves under difficult situations. Most of them have come from countries in which Australia has been involved with imperial wars of various sorts.
In 1992, Australia's then prime minister, Paul Keating, decided that there were many people trying to arrive here for asylum who, in his opinion, were not worthy of becoming "citizens" of this "great" country, so he instituted concentration camps, similar to those which were built by the British in South Africa during the imperial wars being fought there by the British and the South African "white" occupiers who were mainly of Dutch, English and French extraction. These wars were known as the "Boer" Wars.
In 1996 John Howard became prime minister and we were then treated to the hysteria of the "Children Overboard" episode in which minsters of the crown lied through their teeth about the fact that desperate asylum seekers were throwing their children off the disintegrating Indonesian fishing boats as they were sinking, in order to save themselves.
The Australian population, including those who themselves had been "boat people" over the decades, and influenced by the main stream media who have behaved appallingly over the last 30 years in relation to desperate asylum seekers, became politically shrill voices to "stop the boats" because they were sinking and people were drowning, so we had to "stop the boats" to save lives!!!!!
From 2007 onwards we then had Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard trying to outdo each other in their demonising of the desperate people trying to get into Australia away from the countries where Australia troops were fighting the US/UK wars aided and abetted by the rest of the imperialist powers.
So we had to plan for offshore concentration camps to lock these traumatised people where the Australian population would be saved from "terrorist" threats from people who were already unable to say boo to a goose!
Manus Island was re-opened and Nauru became "viable" once more as centres for concentration camp operation.
Lock them up, out of sight, out of mind and - the boats have stopped coming!!! Objective achieved, until the Papua New Guineans had other ideas about the new prisons in their country and attacked the "inmates", killing one and injuring dozens of others. Of course the privatised companies running these concentration camps had nothing to do with any of this, did they???
The scandalous behaviour of the Australian government and many Australian citizens over the business of incarcerating innocent people in camps reminiscent of some of the world's worst prison regimes leaves those of us opposed to the carnage absolutely horrified by this behaviour.
I come from the country (South Africa) where the first concentration camps were established between 1899 and 1902, and in the last few years, post apartheid, some incarceration regimes in South Africa remind us very much of those early camps. South Africa has been flooded with refugees fleeing the brutal regimes in Zimbabwe and other neighbouring countries and the numbers involved are tens of hundreds of time greater than the numbers trying to enter Australia.
Time for the peoples of the world to unite and not allow the bosses to rule the roost which they are damaging more and more on a daily basis.
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About Me
- Mannie De Saxe
- Preston, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- 90 years old, political gay activist, hosting two web sites, one personal: http://www.red-jos.net
one shared with my partner, 94-year-old Ken Lovett: http://www.josken.net
and also this blog. The blog now has an alphabetical index: http://www.red-jos.net/alpha3.htm