Ellena Savage | 01 August 2013
The PNG Solution is in
breach of international law. It does not serve the best interest of the asylum
seekers it will affect. And the Department of Immigration and Citizenship is
taking grossly insufficient responsibility for the safety and security of its
detainees on Manus Island. But the PNG Solution is just another in a long line
of 'border control' solutions which are in breach of legality and morality.
There is nothing new about it.
Much has been made of PNG's
poverty and gender-based violence, but even more disturbing is its military and
police human rights record. Evidence of abuses in the form of a military
blockade, massacres, rape and torture during the Bougainville Crisis, the civil
war that spanned the 1990s, are well-documented.
This conflict was sparked
by what local communities saw as profound environmental and economic damage
perpetrated by Rio Tinto's copper mine at Panguna. What began as civil
disobedience quickly descended into civil war, and Rio Tinto was subsequently
taken to a US court, accused of genocide.
In 1990, the island was
subject to a state-sanctioned blockade that lasted six years, during which time
no trade in or out of the island was permitted. This prohibited the import and
export of information (media blockade), energy, medical supplies and clothing.
A generation of young people were denied formal schooling, and preventable
illnesses killed young and old in the thousands.
Councils and organisations
emerged to provide education and natural medicine, hydro- and coconut-based
power was ingeniously created, and radiowaves were hijacked by rebels for
communication. Yet accounts from this time paint a terrifying scene. One
witness wrote that the scarcity of clothes led some elderly people to remain
inside their homes for over a year because they were ashamed of their
nakedness.
'Corruption', which is
well-documented in PNG, sounds empty. But its outcomes are disturbing. State
corruption produces a culture of corruption at every level. People with power
are not held accountable. In times of disaster, people with power who are not
held accountable are liable to perpetrate violence against vulnerable people.
The Bougainville Crisis
made exiles out of many civilians. Some fled to Port Moresby or Australia if
they got out early and had the right resources. Others sought asylum in the
Solomon Islands. In documentation of the conflict, witnesses recall the PNGDF
gunning down Red Cross boats as they smuggled people, clothing and medical
supplies to and from the Solomon Islands. These violations have yet to be
acknowledged by the PNG government. This tragedy happened right under our
noses. What's more, Australian funding was used by the PNGDF to perpetrate it.
This morsel of history
makes two important points. Firstly, that the PNG government is not capable of
caring for its most vulnerable citizens due to systemic corruption. Secondly,
that when human rights abuses occur with our complacent knowledge, we acquire some
moral responsibility.
A few days ago I sat and
listened to an older Aboriginal woman tell stories about her life. Throughout
her childhood, she had been terrified of being stolen from her mum, as her
mother had been stolen from her grandmother. She spoke of her lifelong struggle
to trust people who had not shared her experiences growing up. She said that
her children suffered as a result. The point is that clever, crowd-pleasing
policy that is predicated on the suffering of others today will have negative
impacts for generations.
Bernard
Keane argued in Crikey that the
left's answer to asylum seekers is to 'let them all in' at any cost, and that
this is in contradiction to any reasonable policy outcome. His argument draws
asylum seeker rights as simply vain, empty gestures of the left, rather than
the legal and moral entitlements of survivors of persecution. If it is
culturally impossible to develop policy that is democratic and respectful of
people's right to safety and dignity, then we simply need to give up on the
idea that we live in a liberal democracy.
The management of asylum
seekers in Australia is a question of careful policy, but policy-making is not
a zero-sum game. Do we remember the Stolen Generations as a careful maintenance
of the bottom line?
History will not be kind to
us. The details of mass human rights violations have a habit of coming to the
fore eventually. In the future, perhaps after an inquiry, maybe a formal
apology, our antecedents will wonder: how did they let this happen?
Ellena Savage is a Eureka Street columnist,
arts editor at The Lifted Brow and politics editor at SPOOK Magazine.
She has written about literature, feminism, and political culture for
publications including Overland, Australian Book Review, Right
Now, Arena, and Farrago, which she co-edited in 2010. Her 2012
essay 'A Man Like Luai' won the Tharunka Non-fiction prize. She
tweets as @RarrSavage
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