New Zealand and refugees
The news that New Zealand has taken a number of refugees from the Tampa and integrated them directly into the community shows up the extreme inhumanity and injustice of the Australian government.
It is also worth remembering that unlike Australia, New Zealand doesn't lock refugees up in isolated detention centres where their rights are abused, but allows asylum seekers to live in the community whilst their claims are being assessed. As a result, there is no problem in New Zealand of asylum seekers rioting, hunger striking, or committing acts of self-mutilation. This reveals Philip Ruddock's claim that the behaviour of desperate refugees in Australian "concentration camps", as the Bishop of Perth called them, is simply "cultural" or a sign of them having "bad characters" for what it is — racist bullshit.
New Zealand's immigration policies are not perfect. They don't have an open borders policy and as a relatively wealthy country could no doubt accept more refugees than they do. But their example in allowing asylum seekers to live in the community rather than in camps is a powerful one, and one activists in Australia can point to. It shows that the policy of mandatory detention is not just inhumane but completely unnecessary.
Stuart Munckton
Canberra
Afghan refugees
There have been assertions by immigration minister Phillip Ruddock that Afghanistan is now safe for refugees in Australia to return to now that the Taliban have been forced out. Ruddock, very callously, is grossly underestimating the danger still apparent inside Afghanistan.
The majority of Afghan refugees being held on the island of Nauru are of Hazara ethnicity. The Hazara people have faced genocidal attacks by the Taliban and by the previous mujaheddin government of Burhanuddin Rabbani. In February 1993, whilst in government, President Rabbani directly ordered the mass killings of approximately 1000 Hazara people in west Kabul.
Amnesty International has documented serious human rights violations including rape, torture, kidnapping and murdering at the hands of the mujaheddin during their period in government.
Now Afghan refugees may have to return to live under a government dominated by the mujaheddin.
What gives Ruddock the right to decide what is safe? The Australian government seems to be a law unto itself — ignoring United Nations reports that Afghanistan is still not safe.
Ruddock is using the defeat of the Taliban as an excuse to remove the burden of Afghan refugees on the Australian people. However, you and I both know that refugees are not a burden, they are simply people in desperate need.
Terrica Strudwick,
Rockhampton
Terrorists
Nine of the 15 Greenpeace activists who were arrested for protesting against a Star Wars missile test at the US Vandenberg air force base last July were sentenced in Los Angeles on January 18. They did not get the six-year jail term they feared because of a deal Greenpeace made with the court.
For the next five years Greenpeace agreed to refrain from breaking the law at Star Wars military bases in the US and the Marshall Islands.
When France committed what New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange called "a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism" by bombing Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior and killing crew member Fernando Pereira in 1985, there was no demand for France to cease terrorism. Secret service bombers Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur were charged with murder and arson but instead of getting the 10 years jail imposed by Auckland's High Court, they went for a three year "Club Mediterranean" holiday on the Hao atoll. When they returned to France, they got a promotion and a hero's welcome.
Why are non-violent activists opposing nuclear terror not treated as well as those who murdered in support of it? Will the airport anti-terrorist security scanners scream when Mafart, Prieur and their colleagues pass by, or are the agents of Western state terrorism immune from detection?
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay NSW
From Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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