Australians turn away from bull about boatpeople

The results of a weekly omnibus conducted by Essential Research released yesterday show that the Australian public are on Rudd’s side when it comes to boat asylum seekers.

“45% of people agree with Kevin Rudd’s position that the Australia Government has maintained tough border security and the increase in asylum seekers is due to new global security and economic factors. 33% agree with Malcolm Turnbull’s view that the Labor Government’s immigration laws are too soft and have resulted in more asylum seekers trying to reach Australia in boats”. Essential Research, published at Crikey

In 2001 public opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of a tough stance on on-shore asylum seekers.  68 per cent opposed refugees arriving by boat and said ‘put them back to sea’ (Roy Morgan International 2001). Only 20% said ‘accept the refugees’. Don’t let the boat people get savaged again

Interestingly, it seems that people’s agreement with the two positions tended to follow party lines – 77% of Labor voters agree with Rudd’s position and 69% of Coalition voters agree with Turnbull.

Data from the 2001 Australian Election Study (AES) show that attitudes towards asylum seekers were divided fairly evenly between liberals, conservatives and those in between.

It seems that this time the boats may not be an ISSUE for Australians, but rather just another party line. For which we should all be grateful.

Real boatpeople tell the truth

Why don’t they ‘line up’ in the UNHCR queue?

Do they ‘choose’ Australia because of its immigration policies?

Some answers in stories from ‘boatpeople’:

When ‘x’ left Afghanistan he was 2 or 3 days in Pakistan, and then the smuggler took him to Indonesia. Hi group was in Indonesia about one month – but every 2 or 3 days the smuggler moved them from place to place, from Bali to Jakarta and so on. The people running the hotels watched them, and they couldn’t speak English, so they had no way out.

A Pashtun in Afghanistan told ‘y’ that he would help him. He took him to people-smugglers in Pakistan. The smuggler took his money and made him wait one and a half months until he was taken to Indonesia. The man  knew nothing about the UN and applying for refugee status in Pakistan. Once he arrived in Bali his group had to wait for one month. The smuggler told him that he couldn’t leave the hotel because he would be arrested. Then the group was taken bus to Lombok. The police caught them and took their passports and money and told them they had to wait for the UN.  They waited four months and then the smuggler told the police he would get them out of their hair and take them to Australia if the police returned their passports. The smuggler got their passports and they went to Australia.

‘Z’ was in Jakarta for 11 days, and then 3 different places, like Surabiah, and other names not known.   These moves were made by bus, and  there were about 150 people in the group.   This smuggler’s name is not known. The group stayed in a hotel and ate sliced bread, tomatoes and eggs. The smugglers told them not to talk to anyone, and he did not know where he was. He did not ask for UNHCR because he did not know of this group.

As Andrew Bartlett says: A policy approach to asylum seekers focused only on stopping all boat arrivals, regardless of all the related issues, risks entrenching a view that the victims of major human rights abuses, even in our near-neighbourhood, are someone else’s problem as long as we can keep them out of Australian territory. Is a ‘no boats’ goal all that matters?

Boat people ‘twisted and warped by their boatish ways’

Ben Pobjie at New Matilda writes this funny, funny stuff about “boat people”:

… these are not ordinary people, but “boatpeople”. And boatpeople are different from you and I, twisted and warped by their boatish ways. Often, after many weeks at sea, boat people become more boat than person, which is a disaster waiting to happen should they be allowed on land among real people. Can boatpeople and actual people ever really get along? Perhaps in utopia, but in the real world, it may well be that the best we can do is isolate boatpeople, in order to study them.

For an example of the problems raised by boatpeople, look at the way that, during the Howard years, they kept on sewing their lips together. Horrible, wasn’t it? Aren’t you glad they were locked up safely before they began enacting these bizarre customs? Had they been allowed into the community, who knows what they might have sewn together next? Who can predict the bizarre destruction of the boat-folk? Unless you want to wake up one day with your head stitched to your shoulder and the oppressive smell of falafel all through your house, you should be grateful for those detention camps.

Which is why, of course, it’s so worrying that these boats are once more becoming a flood, a torrent of leaky wood and metal threatening to sink us all in a swelling ocean of sweaty caftans and wiry beards. Why, only this year there have been six boats making their way to Australia, with a seventh now spotted and an eighth believed to be on its way. Should the number reach nine, it will, according to the Constitution, officially put Australia into a state of national emergency, necessitating the mobilisation of the Army Reserve to man the beaches and making Herald Sun subscriptions compulsory.

Last Sunday we published a picture to help you identify these people, and help you to be very very scared. See Boat blast! Asylum seekers: the sequel!

A foul fate for asylum seekers – is Australia responsible?

The Age reports that the Federal Government’s security adviser has been sent to Malaysia and Sri Lanka to negotiate ways to stop the flow of asylum seekers to Australia. Mission aims to stem flow of asylum seekers.

If they are stopped in Malaysia and Indonesia – what then?

Persecuted as illegals in these nations that do not offer asylum?

Return to persecution? If so, which nation would be responsible for the refoulement – Indonesia or Malaysia, or Australia?

(Refoulement means the expulsion of persons who have the right to be recognised as refugees, laid out in 1954 in the UN-Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which, in Article 33(1) provides that:

“No Contracting State shall expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

The principle of non-refoulement does not only forbid the expulsion of refugees to their country of origin but to any country in which they might be subject to persecution.)

Rudd’s boat people policies: To blame for deaths in the Gulf of Aden?

Thirty-five migrants have drowned after a smugglers’ boat crossing the Gulf of Aden from Somalia capsized

Some 387 boats and 19,622 people have arrived in Yemen this year after making the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa, fleeing civil war, poverty and famine. Migrant boat capsizes in Gulf of Aden: UN

“A total of 131 people have died and at least 66 others are presumed missing at sea,” said the UNHCR.

Did Rudd’s boat people policies cause these deaths, too?

Sudan and Cuba join Ahmadinejad in teaching human rights (gasp!)

I reckon the Durban II ‘anti’ racism conference must have been a gasp-fest.

Gasp one – Ahmadinejad’s old-fashioned Jew-hating diatribe

Gasp two -Cuba claimed that “all Cubans, men and women, with no exception enjoy the same rights without discrimination of any kind.” As Corner points out, this may even be true, considering that they enjoy very few rights at all.

Gasp three – Sudan claimed that they reject all forms of racism and discrimination – perhaps they exclude genocide from ‘forms of racism and discrimination’?

Ahmadinejad: an old-fashioned Jew hater

Yesterday was  Yom Ha Shoah, the day of commemoration and remembrance of the victims of the Nazi holocaust.  It was also the first day of the UN anti-racism conference that has been boycotted by Australia, among other nations. See Same old demonization

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave an address that implied that  the genocide was either a half-truth or a complete lie:

“Following World War Two, they (the Jews) resorted to making an entire nation (Palestine) homeless on the pretext of Jewish suffering”. In quotes: Ahmadinejad speech

His virulent anti-Israel statements and comments casting doubt on the Holocaust have prompted fears that his speech could overshadow the primary aim of the conference, to take stock of racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance around the world.

The Middle East Quarterly has an excellent article: Deciphering Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust Revisionism demonstrating that this anti-Semitism is an old hatred, not just something engendered by the creation of the state of Israel.

The rights groups say religious discrimination is widespread in Iran, notably affecting Baha’is, Christians, Jews, Sufis, Sunni Muslims, and other minorities, through arbitrary arrests, intimidation and harassment. Rights groups challenge Iran leader at racism meet

At least Andrew Bolt is speaking out against this disgrace. He quotes this disappointing editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald bemoaning Australia’s decision not to attend:

“Much of the campaign by Israel and Jewish diaspora groups against the Durban Review has been jumping at the shadows of what might happen”.

This is a conundrum of my life – how come I can’t stand Andrew Bolt, but he is always there when it is necessary to speak out against anti-Semitism?

Can the left please separate the Palestinian problem from old-fashioned, brutal Jew hatred?

TPV agony

I have been working on charts and graphs all day, trying to make sense of the arrivals of asylum seekers by boat – how many, is it a spike, if it is a spike is it in any way connected with the end of the TPV – and I have come to the conclusion that the only sane response to all of this is to remember the people whoi suffered so much on  the TPV:

“For many of the men we have been working with, suicide is a very real option. These are people who fled to save their lives, whose will to live is strong but for whom the prospect of death looms large. Their Temporary Protection Visas will soon expire and so too their hopes of remaining in Australia. If forced to return home, they’re convinced they’ll be killed. If their lives are to be lost, most would prefer it to be at their own hands. Many are taking medication to help them sleep at night and treat their depression” (Proctor, 2004).

Boat blast: Asylum Seekers – The Sequel!

(It’s Sunday, and I really need a Funday this week!)

This week we have had our own horror movie:

‘Asylum seekers- the sequel’

Will they drown their children? Will they set fire to themselves and the entire continent of Australia? Watch your media and find out the answers! Bonus scenes: the living dead brought back to life to remind us of the horrors of his migration ministry!

And thanks to Brian McFadden at Big Fat Whale for this Conservative Horror Comic

To view a good ol’ Aussie cartoon take on the Asylum Seeker ‘horror’, go to Crikey

If you need more light relief from this week’s horrors, have a look at these Kick a migrant – it’s fun! and Fun for ‘illegal’ immigrants

Even I can add this up – Don’t be afraid of boat people, Australia!

Numbers: A friend to all boat people

Part 1:Numbers

Number of asylum seekers who arrived last year: 4750

Number who arrived by boat: 179

Asylum seekers found at sea off Australia so far this year: 221

Percentage of asylum seekers who arrive by air: more than 95%

Thanks to Crikey Asylum seekers, the facts in figures

Part 2: Why are the numbers increasing in Australia?

Thanks to Crikey’s Pollytics blogger Why Andrew Bolt should be Sodomised with a Calculator – Part 142 for this graphic representation of the correlation of numbers of asylum applications in Australia and the rest of the industrialised nations – whether or not they have Pacific Solutions or Temporary Protection Visas!

(I am jealous of the figure!!!)