Howard sets pace for Europe's mainstream racists

Howard sets pace for Europe's mainstream racists

During question time at a Deutsche Bank function in Berlin on July 3,
two of the four questions asked of Howard addressed Australia's asylum
seeker policy. One was from Silke Weinlich, doing her masters on Australia's
refugee policy at Berlin University. She asked Howard how mandatory detention
and the “Pacific solution” were consistent with the “Western values” he
had talked about in his speech. “We don't like the policy of mandatory
detention”, Howard explained, “but we have no alternative”.

Speaking to the Melbourne Age after the Deutsche Bank
function, Weinlich explained that while the German media focused on Australia's
refugee policy and tended to be critical, there was little or no criticism
of Australia's policy from mainstream political leaders in Europe and lamented
that their policies toward refugees were heading in the same direction.

When asked in a July 1 interview with a German paper if “fortress Australia”
could become a model for “fortress Europe”, Howard merely rejected the
term as a description of Australia's policies. Nevertheless, Australia's
approach is being used by a number of European governments as a model for
their own immigration “reforms”.

Handelsblatt, Germany's leading financial daily, ran an
extensive article about Howard which said: “In today's Europe, flooded
by asylum seekers, even former critics showed interest in the system of
forcible detention.”

While they don't publicly crow about it, Howard and immigration minister
Philip Ruddock are proud of the example they have set for other First World
countries in dealing with Third World refugees; yet there is a widespread
view in Australia that the Howard government's refugee policy is out of
step with the rest of the world, particularly Europe.

During the parliamentary debate in June over the excision of coastal
islands from Australia's migration zone, Greens Senator Bob Brown reflected
this view when he argued that Australia's policy should be “in line with
best practice overseas in countries like Belgium and Germany which do not
deal with asylum seekers as if they are criminals…”.

In fact, the Howard government refugee policy is fully in step with
the policy direction of European Union (EU) countries, which are moving
to close their borders to Third World people fleeing poverty and persecution.

The European Council meeting in Seville on June 21-22 agreed to establish
greater coordination among European Union countries in policing their borders.

Denmark has introduced what is described as the harshest immigration
laws in Europe. New arrivals will have to wait seven years instead of three
for permanent resident permits, and full welfare benefits are denied for
that period. Non-Danes no longer have the legal right to be reunited with
their spouse, and no immigrant under the age of 24 is allowed to bring
a wife or husband into the country.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was asked during a joint press conference
with Howard on July 2 if there was anything Germany could learn from the
Australian experience. He replied that Germany had just passed a new law
that allows a “limitation of the flow of immigration”, referring to a new
quota system similar to Australia's which will regulate the flow of people
based on skills, age and language.

Tony Blair's Labour government in Britain has implemented a number of
anti-refugee measures in recent years, including the requirement for asylum
seekers who fail the first stage of their application to return to the
country they left from in order to appeal that decision. Before the Seville
meeting, Blair was sounding out support for the idea of using warships
in the Mediterranean to send refugee boats back. Sound familiar?

Mainstream EU politicians are whipping up a sense of hysteria about
openly racist far-right parties, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front
in France and Joerg Haider's Freedom Party in Austria. Yet it is the “respectable”
parties which actively promote covertly racist, anti-refugee attitudes
in order to undermine public sympathy for the poor nations of the world,
which imperialist Europe continues to mercilessly exploit.

From Green Left Weekly, July 10, 2002.

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From GLW issue 499