Protecting People not Borders, or Vica Versa?

I had the opportunity recently to see the documentary “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” http://deepblueseafilm.com on its recent National Tour. I found viewing it a confronting experience, with its interviews with asylum seekers in Indonesia, because I had to watch the faces and listen to the voices of real people, whose fate I was to learn at the end of the documentary. At the end of the documentary I wandered out into the sunshine, wiping the moisture from my eyes reflecting on the meaning and moral significance of the term “border protection” in current political debate. Why aren’t we concerned with protecting people rather than borders? Why do “borders” need “protecting” anyway?

There is I know a verbal ambiguity in the phrase “border protection”. In current political rhetoric it carries the connotation that borders protect us, the citizens of Australia, though exactly what we are being protected from is never made explicit. The phrasing suggests that if borders are crossed by people without our prior permission, the border is therefore violated, and we as Australian citizens are vulnerable to some unspecified threat. What damage is done, or threatened by the crossing of the border is never clearly explained, merely hinted at.

This ambiguity in the usage of the term “border protection” has a whiff of the sacred surrounding the phrase. The “border” offers “protection” and at the same time must not be violated and therefore stands in need of protection. The ambiguity is consistent with the attachment of a sacral character. You can’t define the sacred or it will no longer be sacred and lose its power. How are then to ‘protect’ the “border’, and at the same time ourselves?

Lo we have solved the problem, and protected the sacredness of the border from profanation by redefining what counts as the border of Australia for certain categories of persons, specifically those seeking asylum. It has been decreed by the passing of a law that the borders for certain purposes cannot be crossed by asylum seekers, because the map has been drawn to exclude Australia from having a border that asylum seekers could cross, while at the same time the border for all other purposes remains in existence, and is therefore “protected”. Ye verily this is as great a magic as ever has been exercised by the wizards, the defenders of the sacred character of the state, known as lawyers. The border is protected and its sacred character is saved from profanation by those who might seek to cross it in search of asylum from persecution.

Borders are clearly of human invention, though attracting the character of the sacred in political rhetoric, and media commentary. They are without feelings, passions and bodies. Asylum seekers on the other hand are of flesh and blood, capable of being killed, tortured, starved, made to feel fear and pressed to act against conscience with respect to matters of political belief, faith commitment and practice.

Why do we wish to “protect” borders, or be protected by borders, which are when stripped of their sacral character simply legal creations set up to assist human flourishing and well being at the expense of causing suffering to actual human beings by not welcoming those in search of freedom from persecution?

Christians and church communities need to answer this question with reference to the life and teaching of Jesus if they wish to give substance to their identification as his followers.

Who or what would Jesus “protect”? A reading of the Gospels with an eye for this theme makes it abundantly clear that Jesus did not have much time for ‘borders’ whether they were of geographical, legal, or religious character where they were inimical to human well being and healing. Jesus had much to say, of a critical character about the privileging of laws at the expense of human beings under the cover of religion. The Sabbath he observed was made for humanity not humanity for the Sabbath. He commented pungently on the use of legal definitions by the well off to enable them to reinforce that privilege and he regularly transgressed the borders that that were used to keep society “safe” from “dangerous” and “different” people.

For Christians to take a stand on this issue will probably result in our coming put into conflict with a majority of Australians for whom the sacredness of borders overrides other moral claims that arise for Christians from their commitment to following Jesus. The call to discipleship means that we cannot get out of difficult situations by ignoring his teaching.

There is another consideration here that reinforces the point I am trying to make that can be expressed in terms of the primary identity for Christians that arises from their baptism. Baptism inducts us into a community broader than the nation state. The borders of the community into which we enter through baptism are not coterminous with those however legally defined and manipulated of the Australian state. Immigration and refugees admit of no policy package that will solve the problem. The issues are structural and rooted deeply in the dynamics of global capitalism and the exercise of neo-imperial power by a range of nations.

The Christian church has little choice, I would argue, as to what its priority should be if it is to take its transnational character and the expansion of its borders through baptism seriously. People need protection not borders. Baptism, properly understood is a subversion of the borders of the nation state. Christians should be prepared to live out that subversion in refusing to acknowledge the claim to the sacredness of borders at the cost of the lives and wellbeing of flesh and blood people. People need protection, not borders.

Doug Hynd

PS. My thanks to Jessie Taylor, those responsible for the documentary particularly the asylum seekers who shared their stories and to Michael Budde for his collection of essays reflecting theologically on the Christian Church and globalisation, The Borders of Baptism: Identities, Allegiance and the Church (Cascade Books, 2011).

Doing evil to achieve good?Reflections on the moral calculus of the Australian Government’s policy on asylum seekers, or should the Government get into the business of taking hostages?

Christians seeking to find their moral compass in a time of fear created by both major political parties in their race to the bottom as to who can devise the “toughest”, translation “cruellest” policy, need to return to the teaching of Jesus to get oriented. Reflection on the Parable of the Good Samaritan will provide a bracing and challenging point of departure to guide us in our approach to current debates over the treatment of asylum seekers. If we wish to dismiss it on the grounds that it is not “practical” then we should reconsider our decision to describe ourselves as followers of Jesus. In the longer term it may be the most “practical” approach there is. But that’s an argument for another time.

The recent announcements by the Australian Government on the treatment of asylum seekers http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/cb/2012/cb191883.htm and http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/cb/2012/cb191155.htm has been accompanied by much hand wringing over the moral difficulty of needing to be “tough” to save lives and prevent people from risking their lives on dangerous boat journeys and to send a “signal” to people arranging the boat travel, a group otherwise referred to, as “people smugglers”.

The Government policy seems to be directed almost exclusively at the “people smugglers” if you listened to the exchanges on a recent episode of Q &A. If the “people smugglers” would only go away the suggestion is that the “problem” would be solved. And perhaps as viewed by the political parties it would. The continued arrival of refugees is a reminder that there is a world out there that we in Australia are part of. Indeed they remind us, should anyone care to think about it, that Australia is deeply implicated through its involvement in warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan as an ally of the United States in the creation of the circumstances that is the source of much of the flow of refugees. 

Out of sight, out of mind seems to be our motto, and so we can continue the path of denial of responsibility as long as those pesky refugees don’t keep turning up to disturb our bubble of comfort. As Jack Waterford from the Canberra Times observed: What shames me most, I guess, is that a good many of these refugees have fled to places such as Australia only because of the miseries we Australians have heaped upon their countries in the name of liberating them from tyranny. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/leaders-wallow-in-gutter-20121124-2a0qy.html

Leaving aside the reality that policy debate has focussed on a symptom, “people smuggling” rather than the central issue of the humane and effective handling of asylum seekers throughout South-East Asia, the moral assessments of the policy changes need more analysis than they have so far received.

Let me see if I can unpack the government’s logic of deterrence: 400 people seeking refugee status are held on Nauru in detention, that is by coercion, not because they have done anything wrong, but to try and influence the behaviour of people unknown, to try prevent them undertaking an activity that is grounded in international la, seeking asylum. Holding people under duress to try and influence the behaviour of other actors normally falls within the category of an activity that we would normally label hostage taking.

What the Government is saying in its policy of deterrence is that we are going to cause cruelty to people, to try and save the lives of others. So what are the harms that the Government will cause by this policy, and what are the evils that they wish to prevent?

The evil they wish to prevent are the deaths of some unknown proportion of people who take a risky and dangerous voyage to Australia to seek asylum from persecution.

So on the one side of the ledger we have if the policy is successful, a reduced number of deaths in transit. But notice something interesting here; the choice taken by people who risk their lives is their choice, presumably taken with some knowledge of the risks. The Government without knowledge of their specific circumstances is seeking to substitute its judgement as to the balance between the risks of loss of their lives and the risks that they face if they do not take the boat journey. The government is essentially saying, we know better than you how much risk you should take. The government policy is based on a presumption that nothing bad will happen to them if they do not take the risk of the sea voyage. The judgement from an air-conditioned office in Canberra as to what that calculation looks like may be very different from the point of view of a refugee.

On the other side of the ledger we have some information based on experience in recent years as to the harms that will be done by the Government’s policy. We can expect a number of suicides, attempted suicides and mental health problems for those detained on Nauru and Manus Island, that will affect many individuals and their families for the rest of their lives. The inability to work for those on the Australian mainland while waiting for the granting of protection will have similar affects on self esteem and self confidence as well as creating an alienated economically deprived group within Australia over the longer term.

To knowingly cause mental health problems that may lead to suicide and self harm, and to actively prevent by force of law people from exercising their human vocation to work and to contribute to family livelihood and to the community welfare as well as to actively maintain people in abject poverty are all outcomes which are evil. The Government and opposition are both committed to these outcomes as a matter of policy. How do these weigh in the balance against the objective of saving people’s lives? What we are saying to asylum seekers who come is that you must pay the price in your bodies and family lives to try and prevent other people making a choice that might result in the loss of their life.

On its own terms, that is a somewhat doubtful moral position, in that we are putting in the balance certain harm to some people against an uncertain number of deaths that are prevented if the policy is successful in its goals. But what if the policy does not succeed in preventing people from taking the risk? In that case we will have succeeded in being cruel for no possible, even vaguely arguable moral gain. We will not have stopped the deaths of those in transit, and the admitted cruelty to those refugees will have been undertaken without any arguable moral benefit.

What is the evidence to suggest that the policy will be successful? The only study that I can find was undertaken back in 2009 suggested that push factors tended to override pull factors in driving people seeking asylum by boat. The Pacific solution did not stop the boats from coming. The author explains that … it diddled the stats by redefinition. Boats still made the attempt to enter Australia – which is a point worth noting as many of the proponents of Pull Factors cite reducing the risk of death from reducing the number of people attempting the voyage by boat, as one of their key rationales. Yet we know that SIEV(s) 5,7,11 and 12 in 2002 attempted to make the journey and were returned to Indonesia while SIEV(s) 4,6 and 10 actually sank. That was in very late 2001 through late 2002. In 2003 we know that boats were still attempting to make the voyage such as SIEV 14, but were again towed back from whence they came.

The UNHCR estimates that 1600 people were diverted throughout the time of the Pacific Solution, but hard numbers are difficult to come by.http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/10/19/push-vs-pull-asylum-seeker-numbers-and-statistics/

In summary, the policy is an attempt to use a form of hostage taking and causing a range of cruelty and harms to people with the intention of trying to discourage people from making a choice that involves the risk of death in pursuit of asylum. If the policy works we have a situation in which the most vulnerable have borne the burden of the Government’s achievement of its policy goals. If the policy doesn’t work and the odds are against it, then the Government will have caused substantial harm to a vulnerable group of people for no outcome at all. Evil will have been done for no good at all. On any moral calculus you like that is a big risk to take.

In the meantime the implications for Christians of the Parable of the Good Samaritan are pretty clear. We need to get involved in those community groups that will do what they can to act as neigbours to the vulnerable strangers in our midst. We can also begin to conduct a guerrilla warfare of polite, respectful correspondence with our local members and political leaders on the moral and policy incoherence of the policy.

Thinking about "people smuggling" and taking care of our language

I have been thinking a lot about the issue of public policy about asylum seekers and the language in which that debate is being conducted. In the New Testament Christians are enjoined to be careful with the language that they use and that injunction surely applies as much to the language that we use in debate about public policy as it does to the language that we use in personal relationships. The need for honesty, truthfulness and respect are relevant characteristics that follow from this injunction.

The term "smuggling" as it is normally used carries connotations of attempts to conceal the items being smuggled from the relevant authorities. The use of the term "people smuggling" with reference to the activities of sailors bringing boat loads of refugees, seeking asylum, seems to me to be totally inaccurate and misleading as an account both factually and morally of what is taking place when a boatload of refugees arrives at Christmas Island.

Those bringing the people to Australia in those boats do not seek to conceal their arrival from the authorities - the point of their arrival is to bring the presence of the refugees to the attention of the authorities at the earliest possible moment after their arrival, so as to make their claim for asylum.

The use of the term "people smuggling" it seems to me is designed to ensure that the activity is judged to be morally obnoxious before the debate even starts. The moral status of the activity of the people supplying transport to asylum seekers needs some careful analysis. The activity may be illegal, it may be reckless, but that does not automatically make the activity immoral, let alone evil. It is difficult to see how the later characterisation could stand, considering that from the point of view of the law, if a person's claim to asylum is acknowledged by the Australian authorities to be a valid one, the means of entry to Australia is not regarded as illegal.

How the activity of assisting refugees to make a valid claim for protection can be regarded as an evil is something I struggle to understand. The activity may be illegal, disruptive of Australian Government policy, reckless of human life, and disorderly. It may indeed be any, and all of the above. But evil?

The other issue that emerges from paying attention to the language and focus of the public debate, is that we are now not discussing the question of how we can achieve a compassionate and just policy with respect to refugees seeking asylum. The policy debate is now framed almost entirely with respect to the effect of policy decisions on the activities of those termed "people smugglers".

The obsession of the Australian Government, media and public at large with this group of people is indeed amazing to behold. The concern with their activities has so hi-jacked the policy debate that we have lost focus on the underlying realities that are driving refugees to seek asylum.

Giving the attention being paid to this group it seems strange that we do not yet have a "Minister for 'People Smuggling'" because that is what the Minister for Immigration seems to have in fact become.
The national obsession with this relatively small group of people is now bordering on the bizarre, in terms of the actual numbers involved and the impact of their activities on the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia, in terms of both absolute numbers of those who seek asylum in Australia and as a proportion of the total of long term arrivals in Australia under the various immigration programs. We are now spending large amounts of public funds on a range of "non-solutions" that are totally unnecessary.

In such a situation how might Christians respond? We should start with trying to examine carefully the language of public debate and begin unpacking the truthfulness of the assumptions that are embedded in it and the accuracy of the accounts of the policy and moral issues that form much of the media debate around asylum seekers. The call to truthfulness and care in our speech demands no less. Beyond that we can get involved in our local community with groups that seek to meet the needs of asylum seekers and refugees. Get to meet refugees and asylum seekers, listen to their stories, and begin to understand a little of how they see the world.

The tragedy of asylum seekers and other displaced people

I didn't watch the ABC documentary on the Tampa last night because that issue is one of those guaranteed to make me very angry - I feared it would become "a near occasion for sin".

However I did find myself drawn into watching some of the Q&A afterwards. As I thought about the way the questions and responses went it occurred to me that the lack of clarity about the numbers of people who are refugees and the different categories of refugee enabled us, as Australians debating the issues to avoid facing some important questions.

No matter how large the numbers of those seeking asylum are on a global scale, they are nowhere near the total number of refugees across the globe. Many are displaced people within their own countries. Many more are displaced people outside the land of their origin who want to go home.

The moral issue of how we deal with asylum seekers and refugees who seek to come to Australia is important. No question but we need some perspective here. The number of people coming via boats is in the order of 2-3,000 per annum at the moment. The number who seek asylum after arriving in Australia by air is around 9,000 per annum. The fear and anger in the Australian community over this number of people coming by boats is out of all proportion to the numbers involved - contra Scott Morrison.

Surveys have shown that most members of the Australian community think the numbers involved are much larger, 100 times larger and neither of the major political parties have seen fit to get out their and educate people about the facts. Instead we have appeals to fear and prejudice and blatant attempts to de-humanise the people involved. Why we are so vulnerable on this point is an issue that needs thought and self critical reflection that will take us beyond simply using labels like xenophobia as David Marr did last night.


Beyond that the focusing on the relatively small group of asylum seekers coming by boat enables us to dodge consideration of the reality of the much larger groups of displaced people in the world and our implication as a nation or as consumers in helping create the situation that led to that displacement.

For example, our involvement in the war in Iraq helped fuel a massive displacement of people both within and outside Iraq. Our ongoing involvement in the war in Afghanistan implicates us not only in the creation of Afghan refugees but also in the flow over effects into Pakistan and the displacement of people within that country.

On the economic front some of the immense displacement of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and surrounding countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa has been fueled by the push for minerals to sustain our consumption of the goods in which they are incorporated and I won't even go on to discuss the displacement of people in civil warsarising from struyggles for the control of diamonds.

So by all means let us explore thoughtfully the issue of how we are as a nation-state to respond to the claims of the vulnerable and displaced who come seeking asylum. Let us not become so obsessed that we assume that even achieving a relatively just and compassionate policy will exhaust our responsibility towards the displaced people across the globe. We are all deeply implicated in their condition. We are more truly and deeply than we might want to acknowledge our bother's and sister's keepers.

Caring for suffering?

Moria Rayner nails the hypocrisy of concern for animal welfare over cattle exports accompanied by a lack of concern over the welfare of children, young people and those seeking asylum for situations of war, and political and religious persecution.

Does anybody see, other than myself, the dreadful hypocrisy of demanding and obtaining real, inconvenient and expensive interruption to the export of live cattle, and the complete lack of outrage and demand for action to ensure the humane treatment of asylum-seeking, unaccompanied children, and a ban on their being transported to work in the sex trade or enslaved pauperism in Malaysia?
Such disparity in public outrage, such blindness to the sinful (for once, a proper adjective) lack of compassion for those who have no power and no voice, and such incredible hypocrisy about the likely improvement in the attitudes and practices in both of these countries to whom we have given the discretion to exercise our own moral responsibilities, leaves this writer a little short of breath. Eureka Street

Who is saving who from what?

Who is Mr Bowen as Minister for Immigration thinking he is kidding with his media comments that the latest policy initiatives to offload asylum seekers are designed to prevent Australians having to go through the trauma of witnessing the horror of the drownings that occurred off Christmas Island?

Who suffered on that occasion? It was I believe the asylum seekers. This line of argument I find morally degrading and demonstrating a self absorption that is absolutely reprehensible in its moral blindness.

The evidence is clear that the vast majority of Australians are totally uninformed as to the actual numbers of asylum seekers involved in efforts to get here by boat. The fact that it is substantially smaller than the number who seek asylum after they arrive here by air. The unwillingness of the government to get up and defend a policy based on moral principle and actual facts displays a lack of guts and willingness to stand for anything.