What’s the difference between a terrorist and a terrorist? And when is a terrorist deemed a genuine refugee who doesn’t pose any threat to Australia?
Victor Rajakulendran, secretary of the Australian Federation of Tamil Associations, provides some clues. He acknowledges that there are members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam aboard the Australian Customs vessel Oceanic Viking, landing in Indonesia with its cargo of 78 asylum seekers.
Rajakulendan was quoted in The Australian as saying:
The ex-combatants are in danger in Sri Lanka so they will have to flee somewhere. They have to be rehabilitated. They are not going to be fighters here. They were fighting for a cause, even if some of the tactics are unacceptable, they were fighting for a cause. They are not going to fight for a cause here. They are not like Islamic terrorists.
Did you spot the difference? You can be an ex-combatant who may be fighting for a legitimate cause. You may have used tactics that could be described as unacceptable. For instance, you may have been part of an organisation that has undertaken more suicide terrorist attacks than any organisation on the planet. You may have been part of an organisation that taught groups such as Hamas and Taliban how to use the suicide vest. Your victims may have included a large number of heads of state, politicians, etc.
But as long as you are not an Islamic terrorist, you pose absolutely no risk to the country. You may have fought for an organisation that taught Islamic terrorists just about everything they needed to know about how effective suicide terrorism is. But so long as you aren’t deemed to belong to the wrong religion, you’re fine in Dr Rajakulendran’s books.
Indeed, Rajakulendran doesn’t regard the LTTE as a terrorist organisation at all. Instead, he describes it as being “involved in a bloody armed struggle for more than two decades to liberate the Tamil-speaking people living in the north-east of the island from the oppressive Sri Lankan Singhalese-dominated governments”.
Crikey spoke to Rajakulendran this morning. He confirmed he didn’t regard the LTTE as terrorists and claimed most Tamils agreed with him. He said he didn’t believe senior LTTE leaders would be on the boat but rather youths. He also said that the LTTE were different to “Islamic terrorists” because the LTTE had established a state and showed the ability to govern in the interests of Tamils.
I put to him that some “Islamic terrorists” (e.g. Hamas, Hezbollah and Taliban) made similar claims. He said that these groups were in this respect similar to the LTTE though some had “gone too far” and “lost their way”. I asked what he proposed should happen to young Afghan asylum seekers who were found to be Taliban fighters at some stage. “It depends. If the local Afghan community can work with the government to rehabilitate these people, why not let them in?”
It’s true that many former LTTE fighters may not have been terrorists. They may have been forcibly recruited or press-ganged into military service. The Taliban did the same thing in Afghanistan and continues to do it on both sides of what has become known as the “AfPak” border. Even armies carrying the legitimacy of a democratic state can force young men to fight. Sometimes these men are forced to use terror against persons they are told are terrorists. That’s the nature of war.
Anyone who can flee from this kind of madness and has the guts to jump on a boat and risk their lives crossing the ocean deserves to go through the usual refugee application processes. Whether they’re Tamil or Islamic or Callithumpian is irrelevant. But if they pose a threat to Australian citizens, they’re best not settled here. Again, whether they’re Tamil or Islamic or Callithumpian should be irrelevant.
These issues are a bit of a minefield, but here goes!
Anybody with a history of involvement in armed insurrection is not going to be our first choice for a model immigrant. However there are Tamils and Tamils, just as there are terrorists and terrorists.
Although there are serious allegations against the Sri Lankan government of violating the rights of Tamils, very serious allegations have also been laid against the LTTE of gross violations of human rights, including the forcible recruitment of children: http://documents.nytimes.com/u-s-state-department-report-on-sri-lanka#p=1
However, the most dangerous terrorists from our point of view are terrorists who define Western countries in general, and Australia in particular, as the enemy, because of our involvement in Iraq & Afghanistan.
On this basis Islamic terrorists are the greatest risk to us.
We need to keep them all out, of course (I mean terrorists). But this is no particular justification for declaring war on boat people. As many have pointed out most refugees arrive by plane, and so do most terrorists (excpet for those that are home-grown)! Nor will anything be gained by targeting Islamic people in general.
The authorities will need to continue screening for arrivals who have any kind of a history of involvement in armed conflict or hate groups, with a sub-set of those with a history of involvement in Islamic jihadi groups being the worst of the worst from our point of view.
Behind Victor Rajakulendran’s atrocious choice of words, there may be a valid point. What he should have said was that the cause LTTE fighers have been fighting is relevant only within a distinct geographical area and LTTE have not, as a rule, targeted innocents to publicise their cause.
There are Islamist freedom fighters, as opposed to Islamist terrorists, who similarly have only targeted their specific enemies. I think the use of the word “terrorist” for any Muslim person with a bomb is naive and fudges the meaning of the word “terrorist”.
To see whose fault that is, start with Yassir Arafat, who pioneered the art of prime time reality TV snuff movies with explosions.
But genuine Islamist terrorists appear to be pursuing a global agenda. I’m not sure if their target is the Western infidel countries as a lot of people assume. I find George Friedman’s argument quite compelling, that their real target is the Islamic lands wavering between Islamic purity and “moderacy” which means whoring for the trappings of Western decadence.
Either way, killing all over the world, especially wherever least expected, seems to be part of the Al Queda methodology. LTTE fighters are not on that sort of mission.
Using MichaelT’s reasoning, former fighters for HAMAS and Hezbollah don’t really pose a threat to Australia. Neither do ex-Ba’athists from Iraq or former members of the GIA or FIS of Algeria. None of these groups have ever really posed a direct threat to Australia, nor is attacking Australia or the West part of their agenda. The same also applies to LeT which is really only a threat to India.
In terms of whether their purpose in coming to Australia would be to infiltrate and attack it? No, probably not.
Hezbollah is a viciously anti-semitic organisation so many of its members should be excluded from here on those grounds alone. Then again, there are also doctors who join Hezbollah to work in hospitals run by the organisation, so writing off all members gets a bit complex.
The Ba’ath Party is a sort of Arab fascist movement, some members of which might target the peace-loving Arabs who live here, trying to bring them under its control. But of course, like the German Nazis Party, there are many who joined Ba’ath just so they could get a government job.
I don’t know about the other organisations.
Most fighting forces, including the include their share of psychopaths and sadists. Investigators don’t just ask “what cause did you serve?” but also “what did you do for your cause?”. You also find such people in national armies. There are ex-KGB officers among us who probably did things that could give you nightmares, and I once met a former British soldier whose army mates said he was a specialist in field questioning, including torture. (He was a very nice, charming fellow.) You can’t include or exclude them all just because of their affiliations.
The idea that terrorism is the biggest security threat in our time is a pile of garbage. The whole point of terrorist methodologies, by definition you could say, is to arouse psychological response out of all proportion to the actual damage done. I realise that’s not much comfort to the thousands killed by terrorists, but they are outnumbered by victims of the world’s lethal muggings and rapes and of drunken gun-wielding berserkers.
A more important test of those with a history of violence and violent affiliations is whether they were motivated by hate or not. But it’s not much good asking them that question directly. They all say they do it for love.
“Hezbollah is a viciously anti-semitic organisation so many of its members should be excluded from here on those grounds alone.”
I suggest you read some Tamil Tiger propaganda, including stuff written in English. You’ll then conclude that the Tigers are a viciously anti-Singhalese organisation. Should we exclude them also? Or are Singhalese people less worthy of being protected from racial vilification?
(And no, I am not Singhalese.)