SEEKING REFUGE

The outrage over people in boats seeking refuge in Northern Australia seems not to have taken hold.

Inquiring minds (maybe at least one) are asking, why not? It was the variety of barbarism that helped mightily, it may be supposed, in the re-election of the Howard Government, especially when he sent the SAS to board the Tampa. So the simple reason might be there is no Federal Election in prospect in the immediate future, although it is coming up on the horizon.

Of course, no one has seen the film Casablanca, so we know nothing about refugees. Still chances are, that Casablanca, the next stepping stone to Lisbon, may have been a nicer staging post than where ever it is that the refugees bound for Australia are holed up.

The most recent episode concerned the burning boat. ABC News reported:

The Northern Territory’s Police Commissioner, Paul White, says he still cannot comment on what caused the boat blast that killed five asylum seekers near Ashmore Reef earlier this month.

The explosion, which occurred while the boat was being escorted to Christmas Island by two Navy vessels, injured dozens of people and sparked debate about the impact the Rudd Government’s immigration policy is having on people smuggling.

Northern Territory Police are in charge of the investigation but to date have been tight-lipped about what caused the incident.

Commissioner White says 50 people are working full time on the investigation and answers are not expected for weeks.

Then again the war involvement is not quite the same. In retrospect, Iraq does not quite have the same heroic pitch about it, especially when our favourite ally apparently in a pique of hubris (if that is possible) goes in there all gung ho and benevolent, then smashes the places up, walls up Baghdad, foments sectarian warfare, creating a stream of refugees. We are not to understand that action as criminal imperialism, but the nicer positioning statement of counterinsurgency. As the sycophants to the evil ones – “We don’t torture” – there is no moral responsibility whatsoever.

And there is the autonomous category of non-person from Afghanistan. The Australian Army has, we are told, killed an estimated 80 “Taliban“, now a code word for nameless, inhuman enemy but was once more referentially a student, or one seeking knowledge. We are told this is the good war, because unlike Iraq it is been raged with vicious technological murder against the “source of terrorism and terrorist training”.

Al Zareera has a report:

The real rationale for the murder will appear (it is hoped) as if by magic and by happenstance. The problem in Afghanistan, as was beginning to be discovered in Iraq, is that you do not simply just go to war against a civilian population, other surrounding nation states have players in the game. Still what the expansion of the war into Pakistan will do remains to be seen -possibly more refugees.

Still few richer countries are immune from refugees. The thought is: just wait for the climate refugees start moving. We can hope that Professor Ian Plimer and other nature-based scientists are right and the computer-based modellers are wrong. For some reason, refugees from Central America seek refuge in the United States, taking significant risks. In other words they are driven by desperation.

Democracy Now reports:

The Sonora desert along the Arizona–Mexico border is a deadly place. Over the past decade, nearly 2000 men, women, and children died while trying to cross the border into Arizona.

Coalicion de Derechos Humanos keeps a record of the migrants who lose their lives during this journey. Since last October, at least 50 bodies have been found.

No More Deaths is a humanitarian and advocacy organization that was founded in 2004 as a response to the growing number of deaths along the border. They operate along the Arizona-Mexico border providing water, food, and medical assistance to migrants walking through the desert.

Dan Millis is a volunteer with No More Deaths. Last year, in February of 2008, he found the body of 14-year old girl from El Salvador in the southern Arizona desert. Two days later, as he was leaving gallon-sized sealed jugs of water along the same migrant trails, he was ticketed for littering by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He refused to pay the $175 fine and fought the littering ticket misdemeanor charge on the grounds that humanitarian aid is not a crime. A district court denied his appeal last month stating “the Court finds the water jugs, left in the refuge, constitute garbage.”

ELSEWHERE:

You may, or may not, guess that references to evil above were tongue in check. To get some perspective on this subject some of the leading psychological case studies are useful. Emeritus Professor Philip Zimbardo is a good guide given the relevant to Abu Ghraib prison scandal of his prisoner studies. The earlier Milligram experiments showed how far normal people will go along the path of inflicting more pain. Zimbardo argues that the situational factors – the bad barrel – is more instrumental than personality dispositions. We take it for granted that we will be moral human beings in every circumstance, but we have to be aware that is not a given.

The video lasts a hour and contains some graphic violent scenes, which if you are like me you might wish to avoid. Phil, doubtless a great chap, loses it in the end (via Sanford Universty):

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