(I wrote this in the brief of the night, past midnight, tired, without proofing, having attended a Report Back of those who ventured, as I did with them, to the Curtin Detention Centre, April 21 to 26, where we were denied our right to visit our Asylum Seekers, where our Asylum Seekers were lied to that we were not coming and denied their full suite of rights, denied the right to human contact. During the Report Back by the Refugees Rights Action Network members I listened to hope and hopelessness and was moved by both, however saddenned that here we are once again following Woomera, Baxter, Port Hedland, etc., and here are we some of us twenty and thirty years resisting and fighting racisms and discrimination and inhumanity that we had thought we had in part put to rest... However the words of one Sarah Ross, 18 years old, eloquently captured the pain of the struggle, that it 'it is our duty to resist'. I am not a great listener however I will forever remember every word of Sarah's profound guidance, to the end of my days, as she sent my mind's eye wavering through time and distance and it is words like hers which hurt me and saddenned me, which made me inherently question the struggle which however these words to the contrary will continue to inspire and spur me and others to flourish my efforts into the struggle, yes to the end of days if need be...) I have this story to share:
The philosopher Nietzsche, someone who challenged madness because of his disgust of his experiential witness of the world's 'humanity', argued the "Herrenmoral" principle, where the ruling classes, or the wealthy otherwise then known as the 'aristocracy' could be kind and compassionate in terms of the welfare of their own (the aristocracy) however cruel to those who they deemed as their inferiors, therefore most of the rest of our humanity.
As our human rights language continues to unfold and as a result we articulate more and more layers to what defines humanity we in effect posthumously understand and misunderstand our predecessors and our ancestors. We try to factor in a collectivised consciousness that judges our ancestors. As a result of the increasing vocabulary to our human rights language we perennially find ourselves on the frontiers, which are always ugly and scary, past, present and even future. We view humanity through fresh eyes, new minds, a lens with a visual acuity that may never have been till now.
We try to understand our predecessors' and our ancestors' perceived and known inhumanity, for instance slavery, servitude, gender slavery, the Stolen Generation, Apartheid, genocide, one war after another, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contemporary exploitations. We seek truths which are hard to look for let alone find - the ability to discover the truth is outstripped by our ability to manifest deceit.
We ask ourselves why does autocracy flourish, why does militancy flourish, why do we pile nuclear weaponry, why do we terrorise one another, why do we build divisive national identities, why do we allow for two thirds of humanity to live in abject and chronic poverty? We ask ourselves why do we act as if freedom is a property of people and that therefore people can own people? Schelling and Heidegger argued that freedom is not the property of people however people act as if they own people. They argued that at best people are (or should be) the property of freedom.
The world is enduring a crisis with refugees. We have at least 17 million refugees, with thereabouts ten million trapped in UNHCR camps or affiliated auspices of the UNHCR while at the same there are also 27 million displaced peoples throughout the world. The reality is that there are many millions that have not made the audit into the statistics. Throughout our world there are millions that die each day that are forever unnoticed by those of us who enjoy an incredible comfort zone in the minutiae of the separatist western world.
Most of those who are in the refugee camps will never make it out, the term of their natural lives will ensure their bones are finally laid to rest in nearby shallow graves. Globally, we are working in snail like paced piecemeal ways to resettle those who have nowhere else to go but to these refugee camps. I have met people who have lived the most part of their lives in these camps. There are camps in Kenya where people have spent ten years, eleven years, twelve years and up to twenty six years in these camps. Imagine that? Can you? Well imagine that most people who enter these camps don't leave them, they die in them or if they do leave them they resettle somewhere nearby so difficult in terms of harsh and barren environment and scarcity of usable resources and opportunities that there is almost little difference to the shanty town like camps. Imagine being born and bred in these camps, and imagine having lived your whole life there, to have been born in and died within these camps, to have known of nothing else.
People left the Chad, the Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, fleeing famine, wars, persecution, lawlessness, losing family along the way to starvation, to bullets, to machetes only to spend the remainder of their lives in these camps. The lucky ones, who are the minority, who have spent far too many years may make it to countries like Australia. These camps are the so-called queues. However as I have described for the majority there are no queues from these camps, they will die in them.
Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan have engineered the horrific Malaysian Solution, where they claim they will take 4,000 refugees from their each year, who have already been 'processed' however at the expense of 800 Asylum Seekers who need to be directed from Australia to the Malaysian camps so as to be punished for daring to to risk their lives in the enveloping vast seas for a hope at freedom, life, liberty, advancement. We should be taking many more thousands than just 4,000 from the Malaysian camps, and the Indonesian and African camps and without sending anyone there obviously to live and in all likelihood die there. Gillard and Swan in their sell out of humanity hope this punishment of Asylum Seekers will act as some sort of deterrent to others who may consider Asylum Seeking by venture of the seas to our shores. The desperate, the persecuted, the brutalised do not understand such deterrents when by staying they have either lost everything or have nothing to gain other than to die in hovels, to watch their families endure hopelessness for more hopelessness. We may have little right to understand our ancestors in the ways we do, other than to be aware of unfolding, however we have every right to be engaged actively in what is contemporary, in what we are part of.
Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan and the quiet following that makes up the ALP are prepared in order to secure ultra conservative votes to send people to the Malaysian camps where 1,400 people have died in these camps since 2002, where many thousands have died in them since inception, where most people trapped there have little chance of resettlement. Malaysian officials brutalise this humanity by the flesh tearing thrash of the rattan, by a scarcity of food and commodities, by virtual imprisonment, and by persecution where people dare escape or attempt it.
In my heart lives a doctor who surrendered his youth near after graduation from medicine and dedicated himself for eleven years to aiding and tending the suffering decimated souls in the refugee camps that marked the sub-Sahel. He believed that humanity would slowly come to these people's aid, however other than Geldof and Jackson, other than songs like Heal the World, no-one has come. Schopenhauer argued that the truth however close is always just afar. The UNCHR tends as many as it can however it has not been able to resettle the majority. Nations have closed their borders, they have turned against humanity by degenerating to the mentalities described by Nietzsche in the "Herrenmoral" principle. They displace their confusion and anger on refugees by accusing a majority of them that they are 'economic refugees' - which is really a projection of the belief that they believe that these people may hurt their social wealth and impact upon a misplaced sense of their perceived national and cultural identities. This is about possessives, ownership as abstract as they are.
This doctor tended the emaciated, the dying, those begging to have their spouses or children saved from imminent death. One day one victim of abject and chronic poverty, who had traversed the Sahel from Chad through Sudan and onwards to Kurma in Eritrea, while being tended by the doctor asked him why he bothered... "Why do you bother, why do you bother my brother? Do you know how many people die under this sun each day? Do you know you are only one raindrop and one droplet will never save us? Do you know there is no point my brother? No point to saving my body, no point in saving my children, because my brother we have no hope, we have nowhere to go, nobody wants us and nobody will help us. You save us only for us to suffer longer my brother. You should go home my brother and you should rest your hands and you should live for all those who will never live as we do. My brother there is no justice under the sun. What one man does to us, so will another..." The doctor stayed on for years but never forgot the words, because they were true. The UNHCR, Amnesty, the Human Rights and Helsinki Watch all describe that at current rates of resettlement that most will not be resettled and they will die caged in nothingness, tormented to the end, denied the right to live alongside whomever they choose, denied of the right to go to wherever they want in this world. Problem with the world is that people not only think they own people however they also think they own the land, however the land and the waters belong to everyone, there are no borders, we are not born territorial and however without borders, however tell that to others...
The doctor kept on till the Rwanda genocide broke his spirit and he drifted to places, becoming a hermit of sorts, leaving his profession behind for good.
However he has never given up... when wherever racism reared its ugly head with Woomera, Baxter, and the moral dilemmas we now endure as a society he speaks up, and that's what we all need to do.
Our moral and political convictions cannot die, even when others try to kill them, we must resist, it is our duty. It is our duty, it is our whole purpose, it is our meaning. It is our duty to rise.
We must believe that each of us matter and not just some of us. There is always enough to go around. People do not deserve to die alone, or their bones laid to rest in shallow graves, such as often this doctor alongside so many others dug in the relief of the Sahel's nights.
Our brother maybe dead, who knows, however we must believe in hope, for all hope is in hope, and if we do not believe in hope then all we have left is hopelessness. Put nothing between yourself and what is right.
Gerry Georgatos
PhD Law Researcher in Australian Deaths in Custody
Convener of the Human Rights Alliance
At best people are the property of freedom. Azadi, Eleutheria, Freedom!