Refugees detained indefinitely on Manus Island and Nauru have caught the world’s attention in the wake of the disastrous Trump-Turnbull phone call. The BBC ran the story on the detained pregnant woman with complications who has finally been allowed to come to Australia.
Reuters UK ran with the story of the Iranian man who was sent back to PNG after he managed to get to Fiji. The agency said he was terrified he would end up back in a PNG jail, which he probably will.
The Times (London) took a more long-term approach to familiarise its readers with the reality of the life of an Australian detainee in Papua New Guinea:
“Every afternoon for 3.5 years Walid Zazai, 23, has stood at a chain-link fence and stared at the ocean beyond. ‘I wonder what we have done wrong,’ he said. ‘Are we animals to be held in a cage all this time?’
“One of 900 asylum seekers being held illegally on the island of Manus in Papua New Guinea, Zazai is almost 6,000 miles from his home in Afghanistan, which he fled in 2013 after the Taliban threatened to kill him for working on an American military base.
PBS reported on the story with a picture of Reclaim Australia protesters.
Euro News expanded on how this situation has come to pass:
“Australia’s own immigration policy has been condemned by many as harsh and excessive, and it makes little distinction between refugees and migrants.
Invoking the need to fight against people traffickers and save the lives of those wanting to make perilous ocean crossings, Australia has imposed a hardline policy, pushing back boats packed with people that manage to get anywhere near Australia’s shores …
“Until the 1960s, Australia gave a preference to white immigrants and it was in that decade that the Australia’s indigenous peoples were finally classed under the law as people and not part of the continent’s flora and fauna.”
In the Middle East, opinion writers took the opportunity to shine a light on Australia’s immigration history but also on the racism in Australian society.
Even Turkey found time to condemn Australian offshore processing.
Closer to home, Radio New Zealand took the line that all this political back and forth over the fate of the refugees could lead to riots and violence if they were kept in limbo much longer. — John Martinkus
The world is watching because they want to do what we do.
bullshit
Not one Australian needs to read BBC, Reuters or The Times to understand how this Nation treats refugees.
Both sides of Australian politics is forthright, indeed proud of how physical abuse, mental health degraded, and prolonged agonised death facilitated via neglect and withheld medical treatment in extremis. Witness Hamid K and in-camp murders. Just as Hitler presented to the world his solution . . . so does past and present Immigration Ministers’ trumpet their refugee solution to a frightened peoples and their governments worldwide.
How about making this non paywalled? I want to share it …
Dennis, you may be correct on what the world would like to do, but it doesn’t make this horrible process any more acceptable. It needs repeating that Australia back in the 50’s was one of the founders of the UN’s asylum seeker policy which allows ANYONE to come to Australia by whatever means and claim refuge from claimed persecution or danger. The Aus. gov. is bound by that agreement to investigate the claims to establish the validity of refugee status. Off shore detention is in direct contravention of the treaty that was signed by us. I’m fed up with the bullshit justifying this inhumane treatment. FFS why don’t the political arseholes just ‘unsign’ the treaty and sent the asylum seekers back if they are so frightened.
We are, as a nation, blessed with politicians who never cease to tell us that this or that, by virtue of being Oz, is the best in the world.
Morriscum continues this loathsome tradition by claiming that, having been trend setters & world leaders in cruelty to asy,um seekers, we are now being copied by the rest of the world.
An especially ugly phrase to fall from his snarling lips was “Catching Up” with our nastiness.
Take a bloody bow, you boorish buffoon.