This year many people will celebrate Refugee Week as a wake. During the recent election the hopes of many people seeking protection and supporting them in different ways were raised by the prospect of a change of government. Although their hope may well have been disappointed by a new government, people on Nauru and Manus Island and those languishing in Indonesia, or living in Australia on temporary protection visas, have been bitterly disappointed at the prospect of three more years of harsh treatment.
For those of us who share their pain it is time to reflect more broadly on the situation we now face. The continuing mistreatment of people seeking protection in Australia is not simply local. It is part of a world-wide trend to reject people who seek protection, submit them to humiliating and punitive conditions, expel them summarily to places where they claim to have suffered persecution, and arm public opinion against them. We need to think only of the campaign against Central American refugees in the United States, the detention practices in the United Kingdom, the fences built and the influence of anti-refugee movements in Europe.
Throughout the developed world politicians no longer defend, nor citizens share, the understanding that nations should share the burden of people fleeing persecution and war. Many governments boast of seeking only their narrow national interest. Voices of leaders like Pope Francis are not attended to. In this climate the cause of refugees can be expected to have only minority support in coming years. People who support them and work for their just treatment must be prepared to hang in for the long haul in the realistic expectation of only thin returns.
Although animus against refugees always causes them great harm, it is not always animated by ill will. Many people who lack sympathy for those who seek asylum in Australia are motivated by the perceived unfairness of giving them precedence over people held in refugee camps or over the needs of neglected Australians in a time of growing inequality. In society there is a well of compassion, but many are locked out from it.
It is clear, too, that little can be expected from political parties, politicians or bureaucrats. In the absence of an ethical framework that commands respect for the human dignity of people who seek protection and other minority groups, politicians will continue to use their ill treatment as a means to political