Why people get on boats and why we should help them

Gerry Georgatos

192 YEAR WAIT

There are no displaced or persecuted peoples' offices in places like Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan therefore the only choice is to flee.

These people would not 'get on boats’ if we actually offered them resettlement options. Therefore we leave people desperately needing to leave immediately and with other choices.

Very few countries in our region are signatories to the Refugee Convention. Asylum seekers who arrive in countries that have not signed the Convention, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, can be subject to anything from neglect to abuse, torture and indefinite incarceration. Only 0.5% of the world’s 15.37 million refugees had access to a queue in 2011 and similarly will be the predicament during 2012. With only around 80,000 places allocated each year for resettlement, if all of the world’s refugees were to join a queue, the wait would be 192 years.

DE-CRIMINALISE THE PEOPLE SMUGGLERS

People smugglers, who should not be confused with traffickers, perform the job that the Australian government should be doing which is rescuing asylum seekers from persecution and safely resettle them. Australia does not offer resettlement to people who are getting on the boats – people from such places as Iraq, Iran, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan – therefore there is no ‘legal’ means to travel here apart from literally getting on a boat. They have to bring their humanity face to face with us and hope that the common good can be tapped into.

No-one owns this earth however many act as if they do. People have a right to freedom of movement, to liberty, to the prospect of a good life.

If the government was truly worried about people losing their lives by getting on boats they would firstly remove the need for them to get on the boats by offering the best resettlement policies and by de-criminalising people smuggling so that the voyages can be planned safely. It is by criminalising people smuggling that we increase the danger of the journey.

The boat organisers, who others call people smugglers, should be able to openly plan a voyage, be able to secure navigational equipment and beacons for their boats. We need to find ways to ensure that all boats have such equipment and beacons with them.

The boats used by people smugglers upon arrival to Australia are impounded, and people lose their livelihoods for doing a humanitarian service. The fees charged cover journey costs, cover replacement of boats for those who lose them, cover the payment to various officials to assist in the journey's 'permit' and cover protection payments for them to keep on doing what they do (however these protections are without guarantee). Many of the organisers, and there are not a great many of them, are refugees who feel they need to help others - they do not work clandestine, are easily identifiable, and do what they do in the face of the great risk of imprisonment and in the face of the predicament that they may never be able to unite with families in for instance Australia. They have become truly stateless.

Until the government removes the need for people smugglers it would be hypocritical to condemn them, because they are the ones saving the lives of people we partake in the abuse of.

SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka was victim to a bloody civil war between the ethnic minority of Tamils and the ethnic majority of Sinhalese, a war that has lasted for over 26 years. The Tamils were consequently defeated in the civil war, by 2009 – 300, 000 Tamils were held in concentration camps controlled by the Sri Lankan army. Conditions within the camps included shortages of food, water and medical supplies. The squalid conditions resulting in a death rate of several hundred per month.

The conflict began long before the civil. More and more government legislation was being introduced to discriminate against Tamils by removing their citizenship rights and declaring Sinhalese the national language, making it a pre-requisite for jobs in the public service. The Tamils responded to this with Gandhi-like civil resistance methods but these were met with violence and arrests by the Sri Lankan army acting on orders from the government. After 35 years of peaceful resistance and struggle using methods like demonstrations, sit-ins and parliamentary participation, Tamil youths formed an armed resistance.

The government employed such methods as massacres of Tamil civilians to incite terror and deter the armed forces. Tamil civilians were among the largest victims of the civil war and were left with no where to flee or escape to.

Towards the end of the civil war, the UN estimated that up to 20,000-40,000 Tamil civilians were killed during an all out offensive by the Sri Lankan army where camps, hospitals and schools were bombed in an attempt to completely eradicate all remaining LTTE (Tamil Tigers) members.

Tom Allard from the Sydney Morning Herald conducted an interview by telephone from a boat of Tamil asylum seekers. The man he was interviewing – ‘Alex’ “said most [on the boat] were from the city of Jaffna where, he said, the Sinhalese-backed Government was abducting Tamils, putting them in camps, then torturing and killing them.

”There’s not a person on this boat who has not seen someone they know killed or tortured…There are kids here who have seen the legs of their fathers cut off in front of them.

They are taking people out at night, stripping them and shooting them. Five people every day, sometimes 10. Women are being tortured and raped.”

“He said the 253 people on board, including 27 women and 31 children, had hidden in the jungles of Malaysia for a month while waiting for their boat to take them to Christmas Island.”

There are no winners in any war, only suffering and further divisiveness. May someday Sinhalese and Tamils live side by side and as one, however that day is not today and we need to recognise this if we are to argue the unfolding of a human rights language and of the march to the common good. During the last couple of years I have been supporting three Tamils who still languish in immigration detention, in Darwin, they also spent one year in WA's HAKEA prison, where I visited them, presumed as the crew of a boat of 29 Sinalese who arrived at Christmas Island after a 27 days direct journey from Sri Lanka. Charges were finally dropped after a long and exhausting campaign - one had tried to kill himself while in prison, not understanding why he was there and arguing his case that he would be killed in Sri Lanka if returned. Why does our government try to tell them otherwise. Since July they have been released back into immigration detention and their refugee status accepted however more than two years after their arrival they still continue to languish - such are the failures of the Australian detention systems.

AFGHANISTAN

Hazaras are an ethnic minority originating in Afghanistan. According to the World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples ‘they were once the largest Afghan ethnic group constituting nearly 67% of the total population of the state before the 19th century. More than half were massacred in 1893 when their autonomy was lost as a result of political action. Today they constitute approximately 9% of the Afghan population.”

Hazaras have been persecuted for many, many years as a result of their religious beliefs and a difference in ethnicity. They have for generations been sold into slavery, discriminated against, denied services and had their lands pillaged and seized.

The government continually tries to propagate that Afghanistan is safe to return to but accounts of people being deported back there speak otherwise.

Cynthia Banham reported in The Advertiser of how an Afghan asylum seeker had his claim rejected under the Howard government was deported back to a Southern Province of Kabul.

“The man, Mohammed Hussain, was thrown down a well by gunmen, believed to be the Taliban. Then in front of onlookers including members of his family, the killers threw a hand grenade down the well and he was decapitated.”

With the forces of the Taliban and international military presence, Hazara’s face severe persecution and oppression, this is why many of them are forced to flee and why it is unsafe for them to be sent back.