Australia’s, Christmas Island houses the largest refugee detention centre where some 3000 refugees’ men, women and children wait to be processed. The controversial facility continues as the face of Australian harsh policy towards refugees. Earlier this week, forty-one asylum-seekers were picked up by the Australian Navy, and only one man made it to shore alone. It is thought that up to 100 people may have been on the flimsy fishing boat, and with rescue efforts hampered by the mountainous seas and bad weather conditions. The sad incident claimed the lives of at least 27 men, women and children of mainly Iraqi and Iranian origin.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (HAR), the UN’s refugee agency, said the Christmas Island disaster was “a tragic reminder of the danger faced by people fleeing persecution and human rights violations in their home countries, and the desperate measures they will resort to in search of safety”.
The period between November to March with the monsoon season makes it almost impossible for a safe journey. Indonesia is the nearest location for these boats to take off for the Island laden with desperate and vulnerable people. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said Australian border officials must have known the vessel was on its way. “They allowed this boat to head towards Christmas Island, knowing there’s a three to five-metre swell which would make it impossible for such a fragile fishing boat to land safely.”
The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, said: “The government’s focus now is on rescue, recovery and treatment of those injured.” The tropical island became notorious in 2001 after the former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to allow the Tampa, a Norwegian tanker carrying shipwrecked asylum-seekers, to land. It seems that despite the change of Government overtime the policy remains unfortunately intact.
This is not the first tragedy and sadly will not be the last as the world will witness. The scale and the manner in which it has happened have sent shudders down the spine of Australia and the world. Surely we cannot sit idly by while the likes of UNHCR make demands for justice and fairness to play a part in the future of those detained in the processing centre on the Island and ensure future tragedies of this kind are not repeated.
It is very sad to see how the life of refugees has become an instrument to show the Australian refugee policy to deter any future refugee who may plan to leave their countries and head for the sanctuary of Australia.
This inhumane way to enforce a discredited policy that plays politics with lives of innocent vulnerable people of the world. It is a fact that poor countries are more hospitable to displaced people and the developed world has shut the door to them. This cannot be the future in our globalised 21st Century.
Copyright Semra Eren Nijhar – All rights reserved
Semra Eren-Nijhar 