Well, it’s not very hard to find stories about Australia‘s detention regime that completely stomp your faith in humanity into the dust, but this one surely taps into some heretofore unknown vein of horror.
It’s long been the government’s line that our punitive border regime is important because it prevents drownings at sea – the widely exposed incidences of sexual abuse and torturous conditions in our overseas facilities is obviously just an unfortunate side-effect of a very important humanitarian mission.
Well. The Guardian has more deets on the refugee who was reportedly deported from Melbourne to Nauru in the middle of the night last week. Turns out he did arrive in Australia by boat – but it was a cruise ship. He arrived in Australia in 2014 on a ship on the understanding he had a valid visa.
The man, who is believed to be from an African nation, later applied for asylum. He was immediately recategorised as an illegal maritime arrival and send to Villawood detention centre, before being transferred to Nauru via Darwin. He has since returned to Australia three time to receive medical treatment, and has been taken back to Nauru each time – the most recent event being the aforementioned deportation last week.
“It’s not an illegal boat,” he told The Guardian from Nauru. “You can’t get on a cruise ship if you don’t have a visa. It is a legal boat […] I came here because I have a problem.”
Because the man is considered an illegal maritime arrival, the fact that he’s been deemed a legitimate refugee doesn’t mean much. Government policy holds that illegal maritime arrivals can never settle in Australia.
Daniel Webb of the Human Rights Law Centre says that this event really exposes the fact that the Government don’t actually give much of a shit about deaths at sea – it’s all about border protection:
Punishing a man who arrived on a cruise ship exposes the lie that the government’s policies are some sort of humanitarian crusade. If this was really about safety, then the government would focus on developing safe and orderly paths to protection for people seeking asylum instead of needless punishing them.
Welp. Important to remember that while America frets over a nativist border protection fanatic in Donald Trump, we’re the ones who are actually doing it.
Source: The Guardian.
Photo: Getty Images.
