Where has our humanity gone?
Shira Sebban
“Were you not refugees all over the world?
… I live here like a dog. Without any rights… And no one treats me like a human
being.” (From “Reflections of a Refugee”
by Yardena Schwartz, http://www.ryot.org/african-refugees-marching-streets-israel/545185)
“How long am I going to stay in here? Five
years, six years … no one knows. Honestly, my life is like a hell in here… it’s
a torture for children … We are looking for freedom … honesty, justice and
safety. We are not criminals. We are same people like you.” (From “Interview
from the Inside” by GetUp and ChillOut, “Out of Sight In Our Minds”, http://outofsight.org.au)
Two brave voices speak out – the first, an
Eritrean asylum seeker in Israel, the other, a young asylum seeker detained by
the Australian government on Manus Island.
As an Australian Jew, I am ashamed by the
treatment of asylum seekers in both Australia and Israel. I watch bewildered as
the two countries I love descend further in what I really believe is a harsh
morass of immorality. Where has our humanity gone? Weren’t many of us, or our
families, refugees once too?
On a trip to Israel in January, we found ourselves
in the middle of a protest march in Tel Aviv, involving thousands of African
asylum seekers. It marked the beginning of a three-day national strike – the
largest such demonstration ever held in Israel (you may have seen it in the
media at the time) – and was really the first time that the plight of African
asylum seekers was brought to national attention in Israel.
Sadly, as an Australian, their treatment is
only too familiar to me, being reminiscent of what has been happening to asylum
seekers who attempt to arrive by boat here – with one difference: Australia
tends to lock up its boat people, who are not free to protest on the streets.
True, the Israeli government is now authorised
under an amendment to what is known as the Infiltration Prevention Law to
detain asylum seekers for up to a year without trial – it used to be three
years until the Supreme Court intervened – in the remote Holot “Open” Detention
Centre in the Negev. They can then be placed in indefinite detention until the
State decides it’s safe to deport them. Detainees have to present for roll call
three times a day and are not allowed out at night.
Nevertheless, the Australian system is more
severe still, with hapless boat people detained in harsh conditions on the now
infamous Manus Island or Nauru, with no hope of ever being settled here. In the
past few weeks, the first asylum seekers to be granted refugee status on Nauru
have been released into the community there and given five year visas, after
which they are to be permanently resettled in a third country, which could end
up being a country like Cambodia – among the poorest in Asia – if a
resettlement deal between Australia and Cambodia is signed as expected.
All officialdom seems to agree that such treatment
is necessary to deter further boat arrivals. Moreover, since December, boats
have been turned or even towed back to Indonesia, and I quote, “when it is safe
to do so”. As a result, our government
proudly proclaims that it is well on the way to achieving its popular promise
to “stop the boats” all together, with the added advantage, it boasts, of
having slashed the number of asylum seekers reaching Indonesia too.
Yet, as pointed out by Indonesian
presidential advisor and former long-time foreign minister, Dr Hassan Wirajuda,
and I quote, “who can guarantee that next year they will not try again because
the root causes, like conflicts, war, poverty, push people to migrate”?
Isn’t that why our families chose to leave
their birthplace too? What about our grandparents or parents, who left Eastern
Europe or North Africa, in quest of a better life elsewhere?
While Australia has now seemingly succeeded
in blocking the arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers, the Netanyahu
Government’s erection of the US$400 million fence on the Egyptian border in
2012 has practically ended the entry of African asylum seekers who, since 2006,
had been making the often harrowing trek from war-torn, dictatorial,
famine-ridden Eritrea and Sudan.
Everyone knows that Israel was founded by
and for refugees and that Australia too has benefited tremendously from their
contribution. True, by world standards, numbers of asylum seekers to both
countries are now low: Israel is contending with about 55,000 African asylum
seekers – less than one percent of Israel’s population – while in 2012-13, just
over 24,000 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat.
Contrast this with the more than 45 million
people worldwide – an 18-year high – forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict,
violence and human rights abuses, including more than 15 million
internationally displaced refugees and close to a million asylum seekers.
Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it
all, it can seem easier to bury our heads in the sand. But haven’t we been
taught that to save a single life is as if we had saved the entire world?
The Australian government claims to be
acting out of kindness: unseaworthy boats have to be stopped to prevent
unscrupulous people smugglers from taking advantage of the desperate, luring
them to their deaths. After all, the statistics are stark: more than 1000
people have perished at sea, while the lives of more than 6000 children have
been put at risk.
Moreover, what about the 13,750 protection visas
– down from 20,000 last year -- on offer to those whose places under
Australia’s humanitarian programs have been “usurped” by “self-selecting asylum
seekers”, those so-called “queue jumpers”, who, or so the argument goes, are
really “economic migrants” with enough money to buy a place via people
smugglers?
The Australian government’s military
“Operation Sovereign Borders” brands such “maritime arrivals” as “illegal”,
just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses African asylum seekers of
being, and I quote, “illegal infiltrators looking for work” – despite the fact
that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia and Israel are both
signatories, clearly recognises the right to seek asylum from persecution no
matter how you arrive (article 31).
Denied legal status, neither country allows
those asylum seekers still able to live in the community, albeit provisionally,
basic civil rights, such as the official right to work. Issued with only
temporary visas and denied any chance of family reunion, a poverty-stricken
underclass is being created under our eyes.
And yet, until recently around 90 percent
of boat people have ended up being recognised as refugees in Australia. In another
cruel move, the government has decided that refugees who arrive by boat will no
longer be eligible for a permanent visa. Meanwhile, in Israel, only 0.2 percent
of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers have been granted refugee status,
despite the fact that many more of their countrymen have been recognised as
such elsewhere.
While Israel’s principle of non-return
prevents sending individuals back to a country where their lives or freedom are
at risk, the Israeli Government has begun using cash inducements to fly asylum
seekers – ostensibly “voluntarily” although with the threat of indefinite detention
hanging over their heads – home or to third countries, notably Uganda and
Rwanda, where there are no clear guarantees that their security and freedom
will be preserved.
Being cruel to be kind? Or rather, out of
sight, out of mind?
Of
course we cannot expect every asylum seeker to end up in Israel, Australia, or
another first world country. Moreover, one day, circumstances may even improve so
they can return home. Meanwhile, however, there must be another option to
indefinite prison or ultimate deportation for those requiring protection. Surely
the ends never justify the means.
Indeed,
a recently released report by the Israeli State Comptroller calls on the
Netanyahu Government to, and I quote, “guarantee adequate treatment of
foreigners and especially the needy and weakest among them”. The report
continues: “This action is also necessary considering the values of the State
of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the Jewish heritage of treating the
underprivileged including the foreigner among us, and the international law of
immigration, refugees and human rights.”
As Jews,
we are constantly reminded not to mistreat strangers because we ourselves were
strangers in the land of Egypt … and Poland … and Algeria ... So why not,
particularly on Shavuot, when we read the Book of Ruth with its central theme of
chesed or loving kindness, work
towards a humane resolution of this global crisis, which respects the inherent
dignity of our fellow human beings and treats others as we would like to be
treated ourselves?
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