Book Launch: The Pacific Solution

Thursday, September 30, 2010 - 18:15 to 20:30

Please join us for the launch of The Pacific Solution by Susan Metcalfe.

RSVP Wednesday September 29

Paper Chain Bookstore, 34 Franklin St, Manuka. Ph 6295 6723.

The Australian Government said frankly, ‘we don’t want to accept you, you are
never going to get accepted’. On the other hand, it wasn’t safe for us to go
back home as well. It’s like you are in space, disconnected from the earth and
the sky, uncertain of having a future.

Between 2001 and 2008, Australia detained a total of 1,637 asylum-seekers in
offshore camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. This Pacific Solution policy
caused undeniable damage to vulnerable people seeking sanctuary in Australia.

An Amnesty International representative described the Pacific camps as ‘a kind
of Dante-like scenario or Fellini-like scenario where you have a lot of people
who are just milling around, dressed up with nowhere to go, just waiting’. The
camps became breeding grounds for relentless anxieties and severe depressions.
Some people took medication, others turned to alcohol, hunger strikes and
self-harm – measures of last resort for those without hope.

In The Pacific Solution, Susan Metcalfe brings together accounts of her own
visits to Nauru, extensive interviews conducted with refugees and advocates,
media reports, long-distance correspondence and new research. Going beyond
labels of ‘illegals’ and ‘queue-jumpers’, she engages with the stories of people
who, after years of exile in Pacific countries, are now our neighbours,
workmates and friends, and for whom Australia is now home.

How, she asks, can we justify what we have done?
We are challenged to ensure that the political policy that underpinned such
trauma remains dead and buried forever.

about the author:

Susan Metcalfe has been involved in advocacy and support for refugees and
people seeking asylum for the past decade and has written widely on the subject.
She made ten visits to the offshore camp in Nauru between 2005 and 2008.