BY PAMELA CURR
The Tampa woke Australia and the world to the savage brutality and unprincipled cunning of the Howard Government. Before the Tampa, concern for asylum seekers was found mainly amongst the usual miners canaries — those people in the community whose religious, political or ethical values enabled them to smell the poison of racism and persecution in the air before the rest of Australia admitted that human rights were under assault.
Post-Tampa, people from a broader section of the community have joined in deep concern and disquiet at the actions of both the Coalition and Labor parties.
This feeling of disquiet has grown among those of us who value justice and human rights as an essential component of our society. Many of us are in despair at the malevolence of the Coalition government's treatment of the refugees and heartsick at the complicity of the ALP opposition.
Each week has brought new horrors — our government fighting for the right to continue imprisoning children and their families; the secret sudden deportations; the threats of removal and separation of families; not only the beatings and abuse by guards in isolated camps but the refusal of the police to investigate, even when witnesses have volunteered; the pain and despair of our friends in the camps and the uncertainty of those in the community on temporary protection visas — all this is breaking our hearts.
Our society stands at a precipice — political representation from the major parties has forsaken integrity, ethics, respect for law or care for human beings. The "Tampa Affair", the "Pacific Solution" — paying Pacific Island nations to become prison camps and denying people access to legal processes — and the lies told to win an election demonstrated this.
Meanwhile, never before have so few of us fought so hard and with such determination. We know that what the government and Labor opposition are doing to the people in the camps today is what they will do to us tomorrow. Our fight for freedom for the refugees is also a fight for ourselves. Our liberation is tied up with theirs — this is a fight that we must win-our future and our freedom depend on it.
[Pamela Curr is the Greens refugees' rights spokesperson and an activist for refugees' rights.]
From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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