There is an Arab saying, Darabne wa baka, wa saba’ane wa shtaka, that translates literally to “He hit me and cried. Then he beat me to the complaint” (trust that it’s far more poetic in Arabic).
It’s an illustration of the tendency of perpetrators to make the first strike and then pre-emptively play the victim, leaving their hapless target with little recourse to do anything but lick their wounds amidst the unfair blame. In other words, it identifies powerlessness as a strategy performed by the powerful.
I was reminded of this idiom in the dying moments of this week’s Q&A (bear with me briefly here) when guest Diana Sayed, former crisis manager for Amnesty International, challenged her co-panellists on their views of the Uighurs’ persecution by the Chinese government (a key Australian economic partner).
After an audience member asked whether the lives of the million or so Uighurs — a Turkic Muslim minority interred by the Chinese state — should trump our trade relations and propel Australia into some form of official action, the response from most of the panel was uniformly tepid. The Centre for Independent Studies’ Tom Switzer wondered whether being virtuous was worth the expense of being effective. Labor Senator Penny Wong echoed Switzer’s contention that any action Australia took would be ineffective, and Liberal Senator Scott Ryan concurred that any effectiveness would be “virtually zero”.
Sayed, ostensibly given last word on the matter, was the lone voice of dissent. She summed up the other four panellists’ responses as “Muslim lives don’t matter”. This was greeted with a chorus of dismayed sighs as her fellow panellists protested that Sayed — a human rights lawyer and Muslim who came to Australia with her family as a refugee from Afghanistan — had been “unfair” to them. Ryan went so far as to deride her statement as a “bumper sticker”. She then tried to clarify: “This is what I’m hearing”.
Can Australia do more to prevent the systemic violence suffered by Uyghur Muslims in China? Or do trade relations trump our moral conscience? #QandA pic.twitter.com/pTo5RkVVcf
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) July 10, 2019
Rather than address her critique by, say, simply asking her why this is what she heard in their words, all four of the other panellists — whose professional positions betray far more structural power than that of Sayed — positioned themselves as the targets of an underhanded attack. In the end, the final thoughts viewers were left with were not Sayed’s but Wong’s, who, with a look of wounded betrayal, chastised Sayed’s “unreasonable proposition”.
Sayed’s face said it all. She had no time — and I would wager no inclination after this reprimand — to respond again; her expression was that of a person who knows they have no option but to suck it up. At the end of this hour of discussion involving some powerful political figures in the country, it was the lawyer and former refugee, the sole dissenter, who was painted as something of a bully for merely letting this power in her midst know how its words and (lack of) action impacted her.
When we think of power, we tend to envision its more ostentatious forms. War. Surveillance. Police raids. But power is not always so conspicuous. Sometimes power is at its sneakily brutal best when it pretends it simply doesn’t exist, that it is somehow at the mercy of those that it dominates.
This can take place in the public square: at the height of the marriage equality campaign in 2017, Tom Switzer wrote a column branding LGBTIQ activists as “bullies” for refusing to tolerate religious intolerance of their private lives.
It can also occur in the halls of the highest power: in 2015, following criticism from Amnesty International for its treatment of asylum seekers, Peter Dutton wailed that the government was “not going to be bullied” into “watering down” Operation Sovereign Borders. He accused the human rights organisation of trying to “attack Border Force staff [and] naval staff”, before labelling Amnesty International a “disgrace”.
More recently, as Home Affairs minister, Dutton has accused those that he detains in offshore detention of gaming the system and trying to take advantage of Australia… by using the medevac laws to seek urgent medical treatment on the mainland. The government of Australia, if Dutton is to be believed, is little more than the hapless victim of these cunning threats to our way of life.
Strategic powerlessness is also performed to exquisite effect by the most powerful country in the world. Despite the incongruity of declaring oneself simultaneously invincible and under existential threat from “rogue” states such as Iran, US President Donald Trump boasts of his ability to “obliterate” Iran and portrays it as an apocalyptic danger.
After the US struck the first blow by withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal signed with Iran by Barack Obama, Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton summed up the cognitive dissonance perfectly: he warned Iran that any attack (not that a credible attack had been threatened) “will be met with unrelenting force”. Bolton continued, “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack”.
With these words, the Trump administration can now claim that any act of aggression on its part is, in fact, merely self-defence. By positioning itself as a victim, power projects its own transgressions onto others, claims innocence for itself, and ensures the sustenance of the status quo. Darabne wa baka, wa saba’ane wa shtaka.
“I understand your point but I don’t think it was a reasonable proposition to put to us, that somehow certain lives don’t matter,” Wong rebuked Sayed on Q&A. “Well that’s what I’m hearing,” Sayed replied. “That is not what I am saying.” Case closed.
Speaking truth to power is difficult enough as it is. When power insists on performing powerlessness, it becomes all but impossible. Which is, of course, precisely the point.
You nailed it, Ruby. And the screen shot of Penny Wong illustrates your point perfectly. Bravo.
Haven’t watched that bloody awful show for years, but this article has finally created some sensible words that helps describe some of my reasons for dumping it. I watched the video clip, and even with the sound off I just wanted to smash the PC.
I haven’t watched the show for a year or more, but with nothing else being broadcast and a lineup that sounded interesting I watched it. Diana Sayed was totally alone in considering the value of a life. Everyone else took the line that any complaints made to the Chinese would affect our standard of living. Disappointingly, for me anyway, was Penny Wong agreeing that we shouldn’t upset the Chinese just because they are committing a form of genocide. Sayed must have been so distressed that her view was so far away from the money grubbing apologists along the table.
That’s the thing about that sanctimonious clap-trap – this premise+excuse that “Rest assured we’d get on our moral high horse and ride to the rescue of these poor oppressed Muslims* to try and help, if not rescue them, from their plight – but our hands are tied because blah blah blah….”
[* as if ‘we’ give a perfunctory toss about them]
That moral high horse has bolted while we took our eyes off it, turning our backs to take a dump to relieve our conscience.
Well, even when it was the christians who were being suppressed and tortured, we, the west, couldn’t do anything. Assuming we stopped being sanctimonious and our hands were not tied, what would you suggest could be done to bring China to heel.
Start by treating all religions and races as equal – instead of treating some as more equal than others?
Then admit to certain realities – starting with the fact that certain economic priorities outweigh all other priorities?
‘Not all Muslims are terrorists – but all terrorists are Muslim’?
The idoltry of coal/Adani/fossil fuels? What’s that all about?
A religion where lying and cheating stand you in such good stead for the career you’ve chosen – that gets you to the very ‘top’ of that career?
Where going to dinner with Trump is considered an honour? Trump – an embarrassment to the office he has office he’s achieved trashing it while he trades on it’s reputation?
Where does climate change sit in our governmental list of ‘Things to Do’?
Contrasted with something like, say “the persecution of whistleblowers” : that leak the things our leaking-to-advantage politicians wouldn’t?
The reality of live exports before the humane treatment of animals.
That bringing them to heel isn’t one of ‘our’ priorities.
Admit ‘we’ don’t care how China treats it’s own subjects – after all they’re only “Chinese” – as long as we’re making a buck out of them?
Sure but what moral authority does Australia have anyway these days to lecture anyone about human rights, to the extent we ever did?
Manus/Nauru, Immigration Detention, erosion of civil liberties, raiding journalists…
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you.
My partner and I travel to Europe each year, mostly for work, although we usually spend some time with an old friend who grew up with me and returned to the country of her parents birth, Finland, to further her career.
I am always sure that she is now more Finn than her mother.
She never tells anyone that she was Australian because it is too embarrassing.
She tells me that Australia’s reputation has been damaged so badly, by our treatment of the people on Nauru and Manus, that she is not sure that it will ever recover.
The saddest thing is, until these monstrosities were established by John Howard, our reputation of being a kind country with an open heart and help for the people seeking a better life away from war, gleamed and Australia was respected as an honest open and fair society. She has been in and out of Australia and Finland since the “70’s.
And so, no we have absolutely no ground to stand on whilst we run these “concentration camps”, as they are know as in Europe.
ratty that’s the sad part about it our reputation overseas has changed & not for the better our government is happy to either the Chinese or US government…
I would imagine a lot of people will have moved overseas, doing the very same thing as your friend, it’s awful to be associated with such cruelty & evil acts from an immorally bankrupt government whose choices, brought us the concentration camps that Manus & Nauru have become..
At the time we were never given the choice but lied to consistently, even in the last election why do the Australian people still support this madness, have we become so insensitive to those that have had no choice but too flee persecution…
The problem is that China is a large powerful neighbour who wants to ensure it has some control over this part of the world, that Australia is in, the powers that be see that the only way to stay in the good book is to not rock the boat in regards to human rights..
Having said this Hong Kong may yet change the power balance within the Chinese government…
Must be some extraordinarily well-read Europeans you lot are hanging out with who for some bizarre reason closely follow Australian immigration policies.
In reality, the world doesn’t notice and doesn’t care.
I wish. Most Aussies are like you and think we can continue with our disgraceful treatment of refugees and no one will notice. I myself am a believer in soft power and fear we’re almost bankrupt in that regard.
Sayed just sounded like a petulant teenager, wilfully misrepresenting the positions held by the adults in the room.
My sentiments exactly, Phen!
What does she want the Government to do? Go to war with China, which would just guarantee the obliteration of all Uighurs by that country?
There are sometimes situations where, even with the best of intentions, nothing can be done to ‘save’ people, without causing more damage. That doesn’t make it right…that’s just the way it is.
And I find it passing strange that Sayed seems only to talk about saving other Muslims…she mentioned those in Myanmar too. There are many other people in diabolical trouble around the world as well…she should be aware of that with her background in Amnesty. What is SHE doing about them?
And you sound just like them.
Their positions were well summarised in the article. I watched it and was as disgusted as Sayed, but without, perhaps, the emotive element in my response; perhaps she erred a little in saying ‘Muslim lives’. Penny Wong was at her moralistic, hand-on-heart best. Or worst; I’m not even disappointed by her as I’ve never really heard her say anything of any import except about that issue in which she had a personal stake. The four panellists gave substance to the buzzword notion of ‘groupthink’.
Excellent article by the way, Ruby. The whole confected ‘issue’ of ‘religious freedom’ (now, isn’t that what the Uighurs lack, among other freedoms?) is a fine example of your point; the Christian right making themselves out to be ‘victims’ of religious persecution because they can’t discriminate or vilify. What a twisting of the notion of ‘freedom of religion’.
The thing is Chillywinds is that Christianity is very much on the outer these days in the general populous, people often only go to church at Christmas & Easter, (or the occasional wedding) to me those that are still rusted on believers are starting to panic a bit & realize that they may end up as the minority if things continue to go the way they are, which in their eyes is clearly unacceptable..
Though we are living in a sectarian country, (there are people that refute this) that say in Folau’s case, so as to cause a distraction their answer is to attack another minority, (that recently got some recognition) so that he can be seen as a good Christian, by the rusted on minority & show that their lifestyle or belief system is under threat, this is probably why there’s so much more anxiety around the Islam minorities that are already in Australia, by those that cling to their outmoded & outdated Christian beliefs….
The thing is Chillywinds is that Christianity is very much on the outer these days in the general populous, people often only go to church at Christmas & Easter, (or the occasional wedding) to me those that are still rusted on believers are starting to panic a bit & realize that they may end up as the minority if things continue to go the way they are, which in their eyes is clearly unacceptable..
Though we are living in a sectarian country, (there are people that refute this) that say in Folau’s case, so as to cause a distraction their answer is to attack another minority, (that recently got some recognition) so that he can be seen as a good Christian, by the rusted on minority & show that their lifestyle or belief system is under threat, this is probably why there’s so much more anxiety around the Islam minorities that are already in Australia, by those that cling to their outmoded & outdated Christian beliefs….
[The Institute of Ideas] adores grown-ups, and being grown-up, and talks all the time about how important it is to treat each other ‘as grown-ups’. The effect is paradoxical, but predictable. If you talk constantly about ‘grown-ups’ it makes you sound like a child.
Thanks to Jenny Turner : Who are they? in the London Review of Books.
Which position did she ‘misrepresent’? They all clearly said that we cannot or should not jeopardise our commercial relationship with China for the sake of a persecuted Muslim minority. How is that not saying that Muslim lives do not matter (enough to do anything about it)? Now that may well be a valid position to hold; in which case, have the guts to own it.