BY PETER BOYLE
There is a painful image from East Timor that remains engraved in
my mind. It is the footage of Timorese throwing their children over the
razor wire fence of the UN compound, then scrambling up the side of a hill
dragging their crying children in a desperate flight from the Indonesian
army's paramilitary thugs.
It makes me choke with emotion every time it is replayed. I don't think
it is just because, as a parent, I immediately recognise my most fearful
nightmare. Anyone with an ounce of human solidarity feels the same.
The horrible flight from war, captured in that TV footage, is being
experienced by hundreds of thousands of people around the world — in Afghanistan,
India, Pakistan, Liberia, Aceh, West Papua, Indonesia and many other places.
According to the World Refugees Survey, recently released by the US Committee
for Refugees, some 36.9 million people in 133 countries have fled their
homes, 14.9 million have left their countries. Refugee numbers are at a
six-year high.
US President George Bush on June 1 announced a new military doctrine
of “pre-emptive strike”. He told West Point military graduates that the
US “must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries” (roughly one-third
of the world) and “confront regimes that sponsor terror”. Bush pledged
to “take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst
threats before they emerge ... The only path to safety is the path of action.
And this nation will act”.
The US administration is leaking stories like a sieve that it might
use nuclear weapons.
On June 11 in Washington, Bush replayed the speech before his puffed-up
deputy sheriff of the Asia-Pacific, Prime Minister John Howard. The applause
from Howard and the room full of right-wing politicians from the mis-named
International Democratic Union was deafening.
It is a nightmarish prospect. When the world's biggest arms-dealer and
terrorist-trainer announces a recipe for even more and terrible wars, it
instantly bounces around the globe. Ariel Sharon is listening, his tanks
already have Yasser Arafat besieged yet again.
The ears of India's and Pakistan's generals prick up. They've got a
million troops or more mobilised on their borders. Some have been casually
talking about a seizing narrow “window of opportunity” for a snappy two-week
war before the monsoon season makes it too boggy for the tanks. An Indian
officer assured a journalist from the London Telegraph that there
is only the “slimmest chance” of a nuclear war. “We'll call Pakistan's
bluff”, he added.
While the politicians and generals excitedly discuss pre-emptive strikes,
thousands of ordinary folk are already on the move, fleeing a frontline
that could blow with the wind.
Flash to the party congress of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, where
the party's chief Susanne Riess-Passer congratulated the British and Danish
governments for “following our example” and restricting the rights of asylum
seekers.
Pauline Hanson would be celebrating too if she wasn't too busy fighting
fraud charges. Britain and Denmark still have a way to go to catch up with
Australia's policy of indefinite detention without trial of women, men
and children seeking asylum.
Australia now has a magical border that retreats as leaky refugee boats
approach but quickly advances to snaffle up East Timor's oil and gas reserves.
Refugees bound for the “lucky country” languish in refugee detention centres
in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Howard, immigration minister Philip Ruddock and foreign minister Alexander
Downer's speech-writers have purloined the dusty drafts of speeches made
and unmade by Pauline Hanson to launch verbal assaults at bleeding hearts,
retired politicians with rediscovered consciences and judges who don't
know their place.
They've launched ambitious and expensive renovations on the walls of
“Fortress Australia” even as they cheer Marshall Bush's plans of more and
more war — and more and more refugees. They've voted for Bush's next war
on Iraq even while locking up and locking out Iraqi refugees fleeing Saddam
Hussein's regime.
More war, more refugees, higher walls. It might be good news for corporate
profits, but it's bad news for humanity.
[Peter Boyle is a national executive member of the Democratic Socialist
Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 19, 2002.
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