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The Murugappan family have found themselves in the middle of this nasty tangle, their fates politicised and manipulated.
Deterrence has an inner logic that we can see in Australian treatment of people who seek protection. In the first place it tends to become increasingly brutal. Each breach of policy must be met with a more effective deterrent.
Who’d have thought that during Refugee Week, Australia’s highest court would endorse the Parliament’s view that our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture were now an irrelevance.
With the average length of detention in Australia now at an historic high, it is timely to review how immigration detention is used. It should be a last resort that is used for the shortest practicable time so that people who pose little risk to the community are not unnecessarily deprived of their liberty, and that they are able to contribute to the community.
The present climate offers little encouragement for people anyone who cares for refugees and wants to press their cause. It would be rash to think that things will change soon.
I am a refugee from Afghanistan, and I belong a minority ethnic group, the Hazaras. We have been persecuted for a long time because of our ethnicity, religion and values. In 2012, I was forced to leave Afghanistan. I was 17. Back home, my father was a medical doctor. The Taliban accused him of working with international armed forces in the country at the time. One day the Taliban took him away, and nobody has seen him since.
The young in Myanmar have no personal memory of those events of 1988 and 2007. They are Generation Z, raised on the internet and with new ways of communicating. Their emotions overcome fear. Gen Z meets the deadly threat with humour and creative protest.
What we have is a rare opportunity — in all likelihood a once-in-a-lifetime chance — to shape the future and emerge from the pandemic as a better, fairer nation.
I was just fifteen years old when I was forced to run for my life. I dreamed of seeking a better education in Australia and becoming a pilot. Instead, I became a refugee in Indonesia, which does not recognize my existence and basic rights. I am even refused an education in this country. I have been in limbo for the last eight years.
Stories of volunteers who went to help in foreign crises used to focus on the impact on the people helped. Today they explore how both parties are changed through the experience. That was also true in Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) whose 40th anniversary occurred last week.
The capacity to story our experience is a powerful tool for reflection and understanding. As adults we learn that no story is pure and we are capable of telling ourselves spin, but the shaping of experience into story is the bread and butter of our lives. Narrative, it has been said, is a primary act of mind.
This year Refugee Week has been swallowed by the disruption caused by COVID-19, and by the fracturing of society in the United States. In a world where people naturally turn inwards, those who seek protection from persecution receive little public attention or sympathy. It becomes all the more important to reflect on the world of which refugees are part and why their lives matter to us.
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