The Australian PM goes to Sri Lanka and acknowledges past human-rights infractions but, essentially, sweeps them under the carpet for seemingly political and expedient reasons. The Australian Government has even announced a gift of 2 patrol boats to Sri Lanka. Meanwhile even the Brit PM accuses Sri Lanka of having committed human rights abuses - as has the UN.
Good enough? Not all says Jeff Sparrow in an excellent analysis in an op-ed piece in The Guardian.
"The writer Hannah Arendt noted how, during the refugee crises of the 1930s, the treatment received by those fleeing repression was determined, even when they escaped, by their oppressors.
Those whom the persecutor had singled out as scum of the earth—Jews, Trotskyites, etc.—actually were received as scum of the earth everywhere,’ she wrote. ‘[T]hose whom persecution had called undesirable became the indesirables of Europe.
Arendt provides a useful framework to think about Tony Abbott’s extraordinary statement in Sri Lanka: his comment that, though his government "deplores the use of torture we accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances difficult things happen".
On one level, the Abbott "torture happens" line might be understood as old-fashioned realpolitik. Because Australia wants to repatriate Sri Lankan asylum seekers, Abbott needs to paint the authoritarian regime there as evolving to democracy (despite Amnesty International’s assessment that "the government is slowly but surely dismantling institutions, including the judiciary, that protect human rights".) Because Abbott seeks co-operation against people smugglers, he’s willing to provide warships to one of the most bloodsoaked militaries in the world.
Yet if the claim that extreme circumstances justify extreme measures sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the syllogism upon which the institutionalised cruelty of Australia’s refugee policy depends.
Think of Scott Morrison transferring a disabled four-year old Tamil asylum seeker to the isolated and squalid detention camp in Nauru on the basis that "no exceptions" could be made to the offshore processing of asylum seekers. "If you are fit enough to get on a boat," he said, "then you can expect you’re fit enough to end up in offshore processing." In difficult circumstances, difficult things happen.
Not surprisingly, a similar method produces familiar results. In the wake of Sri Lankan civil war, the military ushered thousands of Tamil survivors into notorious detention centres. Some of those who fled eventually reached Australian waters – where they were ushered into notorious detention centres."
Continue reading here.
Good enough? Not all says Jeff Sparrow in an excellent analysis in an op-ed piece in The Guardian.
"The writer Hannah Arendt noted how, during the refugee crises of the 1930s, the treatment received by those fleeing repression was determined, even when they escaped, by their oppressors.
Those whom the persecutor had singled out as scum of the earth—Jews, Trotskyites, etc.—actually were received as scum of the earth everywhere,’ she wrote. ‘[T]hose whom persecution had called undesirable became the indesirables of Europe.
Arendt provides a useful framework to think about Tony Abbott’s extraordinary statement in Sri Lanka: his comment that, though his government "deplores the use of torture we accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances difficult things happen".
On one level, the Abbott "torture happens" line might be understood as old-fashioned realpolitik. Because Australia wants to repatriate Sri Lankan asylum seekers, Abbott needs to paint the authoritarian regime there as evolving to democracy (despite Amnesty International’s assessment that "the government is slowly but surely dismantling institutions, including the judiciary, that protect human rights".) Because Abbott seeks co-operation against people smugglers, he’s willing to provide warships to one of the most bloodsoaked militaries in the world.
Yet if the claim that extreme circumstances justify extreme measures sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the syllogism upon which the institutionalised cruelty of Australia’s refugee policy depends.
Think of Scott Morrison transferring a disabled four-year old Tamil asylum seeker to the isolated and squalid detention camp in Nauru on the basis that "no exceptions" could be made to the offshore processing of asylum seekers. "If you are fit enough to get on a boat," he said, "then you can expect you’re fit enough to end up in offshore processing." In difficult circumstances, difficult things happen.
Not surprisingly, a similar method produces familiar results. In the wake of Sri Lankan civil war, the military ushered thousands of Tamil survivors into notorious detention centres. Some of those who fled eventually reached Australian waters – where they were ushered into notorious detention centres."
Continue reading here.
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