Dumble

According to the Howard

Administration, the Australian Government has a "decent, generous and

compassionate" track record when it comes to accommodating a share of the

world’s refugees. Events of recent times tell otherwise, with daily reports of

mental illness, hunger strikes, self-injury, and suicide amongst inmates held

within the country’s mandatory detention centres for asylum seekers. Fenced off

with barbed wire in the middle of the South Australian desert, the former air

force barracks at Woomera is seen an a concentration camp for refugees who have

managed to flee some of the world’s most murderous regimes. On this background,

the events of August 29, 2001, bear testimony to the Australian Government’s

fervor to deter displaced men, women and children from seeking refuge inside the

nation’s borders.

Three days beforehand, on

Sunday August 26, the Norwegian freighter MS Tampas responded to an Australian

Coastal Surveillance alert that a boat was sinking 140 kilometres north of the

country’s west coast – the precise location situated inside of Indonesia’s sea

rescue zone, but closer in distance to the Australian territory of Christmas

Island. Saving 460 chiefly Afghan asylum seekers from a watery grave, the

Tampa’s captain Arne Rinnan then sought to deliver his human cargo to their

preferred destination of Christmas Island. Prime Minister Howard’s response was

swift, refusing the Tampa entry into Australian waters because the rescued had

been picked up in Indonesian waters.

In the days which

followed, Howard remained steadfast that Australian doors were closed to what

his Minister for Immigration, Phillip Ruddock, had repeatedly referred to as

"illegal immigrants". While making it clear to Rinnan that none of his asylum

seeking cargo could put a single foot on Australian soil, both Howard and

Ruddock declared that responsibility laid with Indonesia, the location to where

the hapless pawns in the turmoil had first been trafficked to begin their

ill-fated voyage on August 24 aboard an unseaworthy vessel. As an alternative,

Captain Rinnan was advised that he could take his human cargo back with him to

Norway. Authorities in Indonesia and Norway disagreed, leaving Rinnan to

contemplate the misery of those whose fate had fallen in his lap.

On the morning of

Wednesday August 29, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock set the scene for a new

chapter of the war against asylum seekers, when he came close to calling

Rinnan’s human cargo terrorists "I don’t want to liken this to a hijack in an

aircraft but you know the sorts of practical issues that are addressed when

people try to hijack aircraft"! Yet there was not a scrap of evidence that a

single one of the 460 asylum seekers rescued from their leaking boat by the

Norwegian freighter on August 26 was armed, as neither had Arne Rinnan hinted

that any amongst the refugees had threatened his authority as the MS Tampa’s

captain. But, as is his trademark, Ruddock failed to define exactly what "sorts

of practical issues" he was referring to 

Fearing for the survival

of several of his rescued cargo, the vast majority traumatized by the conflicts

which had driven them from their motherlands, most battered by the elements

after traveling the high seas, and a number in desperate need of medical

attention, Rinnan then issued two medical mayday calls. Both went unanswered,

and in defiance of the Howard order not to enter Australian waters, Rinnan

headed the MS Tampa for Christmas Island. When within a few nautical miles of

the ship’s forbidden destination, Rinnan was denied permission to dock. Soon

after the MS Tampa was stormed by an Australian military unit, which after

taking control of the vessel ordered Rinnan to "turn around and sail away"!

By late evening of August

29, both Howard and Ruddock had appeared on national television to dismiss

claims that a number of asylum seekers were in need of urgent medical care.

Rinnan remained firm in his refusal to move the MS Tampa out into international

waters. And 460 desperate men, women and children remained in limbo, held in six

empty freight containers, one of which served as their toilet, on the deck of a

vessel anchored in heavy seas, and licensed to carry only 50 passengers.

In a last ditch effort to

retrospectively legitimize the military invasion of the Tampa, the Howard

Government introduced emergency legislation, referred to as the Border

Protection Bill 2001. In the main, the legislation sought to enable an officer

of the Prime Minister to direct any ship away from Australian waters; prevent

such a direction from being challenged in any proceedings in any court; and to

ban the protection visa application of any individual aboard a ship when such a

direction was given. By this stage, the only good news in the face of

Australia’s bullying came with the Labour Party’s Lower House opposition to the

Government’s ploy. Debate continued in the Senate into the small hours of

Thursday August 30, with Labour members holding onto the party’s rediscovered

humanity to join forces with the Democrats and the Greens and block the Bill’s

enactment.

Prior to the MS Tampa

rescue, Howard’s spin doctors had successfully hoodwinked the public into

believing that asylum seekers are largely a bunch of uncivilized invaders –

criminals, queue jumpers, disease-ridden, and a burden on the taxpayer. Sparse

attention, much less sympathy, was accorded the more than 20 million human

beings, 16 million [80 per cent] being women and children, displaced from their

motherlands by conflict. According to figures from the United Nations High

Commission for Refugees [UNHCR], 456,473 people from around the world applied

for refugee status in the year 2000. Taking into account those driven from their

homes by the extremes of political or religious intimidation, the number is far

greater. More than 100,000 Tibetans, driven from their China-annexed homeland,

can be found in Dharamsala, India. Some 4 million displaced during the war of

attrition between the Taliban and the Ahmad Shah Massoud-led United Front in

Afghanistan have fled to Pakistan and Iran. For Afghans not to escape elsewhere

means ethnic discrimination, rife unemployment for men, the well-documented

torture of women in the name of the Taliban’s version of Islam, and a life

expectancy of just 45 years. For the past two decades , the experience of

Afghans in their homeland complies with the definition of refugee ["a person

with a credible fear of persecution"], laid down in the 1951 UN Convention on

Refugees.

Educated Afghans departed

long ago. Those exiled in Pakistan, if they survive and manage to save $5000,

have the option to seek a life in Europe away from the squalor of refugee camps.

For those able to save anything less, Europe is not an option, but they can

bribe their way into Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia, and have sufficient left

to pay people smugglers for a boat passage to Australia.

Australia’s annual intake

of some 16,000 immigrants on humanitarian grounds is a significant but small

contribution to the global tally of asylum seekers, barely justifying Mr.

Howard’s boastful perception of Australia’s "decent, generous and compassionate"

refugee record. More realistically, the Howard Administration has imposed

harshly definitions of refugee status to disqualify asylum applicants. Likened

to the 1939 Voyage of the Damned which saw 937 Jews on the German liner St Louis

prevented from disembarking in Cuba, the MS Tampa affair is another chapter in a

heartless war against refugees. Chris Sidoti, spokesman for the Human Rights

Council of Australia, identified the parallels between the Howard Government’s

treatment of the Tampa’s human cargo, and the manner in which most of the West

responded to the Jewish people before and during WWII. Valid comparisons can

also be made with events of 1888, when the Australian states of Victoria and NSW

blocked the entry of Chinese immigrants, effectively paving the way for

Australia’s infamous White Australia Policy of exactly one hundred years ago.

But the Howard

Administration underestimated the impact of external highly respected voices:

UNHCR High Commissioner Mary Robinson, speaking from Durban on the eve of the

World Conference against Racism, deemed that the Australia Government had

breached the UN Convention on Refugees: "The Convention provides that they

should be accepted at the nearest port and I think the issue is a very serious

one. They should be admitted, they should be treated in an appropriate human

rights way": Speaking from Oxford, Europe’s leading authority on refugees

Professor Sir Michael Dummett condemned the Tampa affair as "a disgrace which

had shamed Australia before the whole world". In response, the tide of public

opinion turned. For the first time, opinion polls indicated a fall in public

approval for the Howard Administration’s war against refugees. In the space of

the 48 hours, public approval for the Government’s latest anti-refugee strategy

fell from 80 per cent on August 28 to 50 per cent on August 30. With a federal

election due, Mr. Howard may pay dearly for underestimating the morality of the

electorate, but at this point in time the average Australian, also for the first

time, is more intent on demanding a fair deal for refugees like those on board

the Tampa, and whose only crime is to seek a new life downunder.