My thoughts on Injustice and fear.

Well! It has taken me quite a while to get this far in writing a new post! My “muse’ had temporarily abandoned me – I experienced what I assume is “writer block”. I know that my one loyal reader will have been very disappointed but during the last month or so I have tried to write about any number of topics but stopped after a few paragraphs.

I am not sure if it is age creeping up on me or the fact that it has taken me quite a while to adapt to retirement; to the fact that I had little regularity in my day to day activities; that I had to, as it were, entertain myself. Now I have never been frightened of being alone and I enjoy my own company – as long as I can read, listen to music and can, when so inclined, go out and re-join the world and engage with people. I – we all – need the company of others of our kind to keep our sense of identity and to maintain our humanity but I prefer to choose when I do so.

This talk of people brings up a topic which has always – since I was child – engendered a sense of outrage: injustice. Injustice leads on to fear and these two – fear and injustice - inevitably have corruption as a third “ingredient”. Whether corruption causes injustice and fear or whether fear causes the other two is immaterial. The result is suffering, human grief and pain (emotional and physical) and also, I might add, the same for other sentient beings that inhabit this planet with us.

It is the mental aspect of this suffering that concerns me more than anything else. I mean just imagine the suffering that refugees, the alleged “boat people” suffer, particularly females. They would have lived in a violent society – where ever their “home” may have been. Maybe I should use another word rather than “home” with its connotations of peace and respite – possibly this place should be referred to as “their place of birth”. Whatever, they have suffered and now have an earnest desire to move to a safer place, as would I if the situations were reversed.

I am outraged at the shrill calls for the “boats to be turned back” or for the conditions made so unpleasant – waiting their “turn” in the queue that these unfortunate people would be glad to return to their place of birth. This well documented tactic, to dehumanize prisoners (for that is effect what these refugees become) then blame the victims for their sorry condition is unworthy of a country like Australia. These tactics were used by the Nazis, by Stalinist Russia and are still used by the Chinese, North Koreans, the Americans (see Guantanamo Bay Prison) and I am sure there are others that I cannot recall at the moment.

For God’s sake Australia was founded upon the inhuman and degrading policy of transportation of prisoners from England! This current “victim blame” is abuse pure and simple. 

At the very least Australia is in breach of the Declaration of Human Rights (see the following Articles of the Declaration):

Article 9

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 14

(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

These refugees having suffered sufficiently to force them to find a safe haven (Australia) then suffer a horrendous and dangerous journey only to be intercepted by Australian Customs or Border Patrol Authorities and then transported to either Christmas Island,  Manus Island or Narau for “processing”. This process can take years.

Such a process is not only degrading, it is unjust (see Declaration of Human Rights Articles above), it may cause fear and abuse of process – corruption.

Treat these unfortunate people as human being in distress and need of succour. There is no alternative to treating people the way you would like to be treated in similar circumstances.