Chasing Asylum: A short history of why it is you need to see this film

Over the past fifteen years I've felt at times furious, hopeful, depressed, exhausted, aghast, shocked, mournful, appalled, sorrowful, despairing - and ashamed- at the depths Australia has sunk to. We alone in the world imprison children for indefinite periods of time. We have the harshest and most inhumane policy towards refugees, even those whose countries we're actively militarily involved in. Our politicians are proud of this. Even when they are refugees at risk of persecution, torture or death, because they, or their family member, translated for the Australian army in Afghanistan. We are *that* country. If you are not ashamed of how we treat refugees then you simply are not paying attention.

Fifteen years takes us back the Tampa and children overboard, the Howard government that wanted us to believe, ludicrously, that refugees somehow loved their children less than Australians did. That they were the sort of people who would hurt their own children, people Australia needed to be 'protected from'. But the people harming children aren't refugees. They're employees and contractors, doing it with the Australian government's blessing and the logic of deterrence.

After that, the shame of ALP bipartisanship, Rudd and Gillard falling over themselves to promise that there would be no hope of a better life for anyone who came by boat. The bodies broken on the rocks of Christmas Island. Instead of seeing that if we'd processed their claims and flown them here safely like we've done in the past,we blamed them for the manner in which they fled persecution. Politicians made sport with their corpses to reinforce that stopping the boats with cruelty, with violence, and with torture was somehow the only ethical choice. We had to stop the boats in the name of compassion, never mind that we were only condemning them to a different death on other shores. Never mind that our message to asylum seekers of the world was being spelt out with the bodies of the ones unfortunate enough to have arrived here to ostensible safety.

Then in more recent years, the deaths of Reza Barati, Hamid Kazai, the Moss report - the children being abused and damaged, the sexual assault of women and children in our care, the UN finding us in breach of an international convention against torture - and Abbott saying we're 'tired' of being 'lectured to'. and the self-immolations Dutton wants to lay at the feet of advocates for asylum seekers. I realised tonight I've been fighting this, one way or another, for more than half my life now.

Fighting for human beings to be treated with dignity and respect. It seems absurd that this could be controversial. We get tiny steps forward towards humanity- we feel something when we see little Aylan, who could be a three year old from anywhere, dead on the shore. We feel something when Germany opens up its arms and shows what compassion and humanity looks like. We promise to take 12,000 Syrian refugees.* ) We surround a hospital to save a child from being sent back into hell. But there are massive retrograde steps, too. Australia deals with revelations about the abuse of children by making it a crime to report the abuse. Fifteen years is a dreadfully long time for something like this to have continued and gotten worse.

I know there are people who are sick of hearing about this. I'd very much love to no longer have anything that needed to be said. We need a solution that is humane, that respects human dignity - respecting the humanity of refugees and asylum seekers, and acknowledging the humanity within Australians. I am tired of having to be ashamed of the human rights abuses my country is perpetrating.

If this was TL;DR, then go and see this film.

If you're sick of hearing about this from me, go and see this film.

If you have ever wanted to know what your tax dollars are funding on Manus and Nauru, go and see this film.

It's not didactic, it's not lecturing, it's not going to do anything more than let you see what is being done in your name. What it does to people, children, families, that are not so very different from your friends, families, colleagues - excepting in what they have already had to survive, and what we are putting them through now.

Go and see this film.
http://www.chasingasylum.com.au/




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* although a better part of a year on, we've actually processed about ten per cent of that cohort- slower even than if they'd come through the normal humanitarian intake, like we're punishing them for making us feel something

Australia Has A Lot of Gay Friends, But...

Dear Local Australian MP,

In the world in which we live, the phrase "I have a lot of gay friends" is almost always a signpost for some form of bigotry. It usually prefaces words like 'but' or 'and', as though the speaker is keen to clarify that while they personally know plenty of gay people, they don't see a need for the political progress that is necessary to ensure that the LGBTIQ members of our community feel the full benefits of community membership and equal rights with their neighbours and friends. It is a peculiar and condescending kind of friendship that sees our friends treated with less respect and as lesser citizens purely because of the people that they love.

My friend Hannah spends long days working with Amnesty International, fighting for the political freedoms of people she will never meet. The Australian government won't let her marry her girlfriend, as though somehow their love is worth less than the love of any heterosexual couple, as though it is less considered, less passionate, less true.

My friend Victoria's parents nearly disowned her when she discovered she was in love with a woman. She faced harassment and bullying at school, a hostile home environment, and a government which sees a lesser recognition of the relationship she has suffered so much to realise and protect as unproblematic. She has always been a very traditional, family-oriented person, and marriage has always been important to her - her realisation that she would never be able to pledge her love and commitment to someone, exchanging rings and vows before trusted friends and family, was something that struck at the very core of her identity. I can't help but think that the hateful things she has heard were somehow made stronger because by not legalising gay marriage, the Australian government implicitly endorses the homophobic sentiments and attacks she has faced.

Another friend lives a life of quiet desperation, scared to acknowledge his longterm roommate as his life partner because he believes the most important relationship in his life is stigmatised in our community. He is a bright, senior and respected man who contributes a great deal to Canberra's community, and he feels that if people knew he was gay he would be respected less. Our Australia hurts him, too, because our government continues to signal to the him, and to our community at large, that there is something wrong with homosexual relationships, that there is something okay about treating the love between two men as somehow lesser. Our governments at territory and federal levels say "We have a lot of gay friends, but"; what we hear is that some loves are more equal than others.

So many Australians have similar stories. So many of us have brothers, sisters, family, colleagues, neighbours, friends - who are injured by the refusal of our politicians to take this necessary step - the simple recognition of gay marriage - to remove another bastion of inequality, another arbitrary barrier that serves only to harm. It is a move that costs so little, but means so much to so many.

Although I am not gay, I have a lot of gay, lesbian and queer friends, colleagues, neighbours. We share classes at university, cubicles at work, smiles on the bus in the morning on the way down Northbourne Avenue. We share a common humanity, we share dreams and aspirations for our own futures, and for an Australia which is fairer and more inclusive - an Australia which says that any dreams I may have of one day meeting someone I may want to marry are no more valid than similar dreams of my gay and lesbian friends.

I have a lot of gay friends, Mr. Local MP, and I'm tired of hearing my political representatives tell me that they personally support marriage equality, 'but...'. This is 2011. It is past time we stop making excuses for not helping our friends, for not protecting the members of our community. It is time our government stops quietly offering legitimacy to the sentiments of homophobes and bigots, and openly recognises that preserving marriage exclusively for heterosexual couples is the denial of a basic freedom which should be open to all Australians. Denying the LGBTIQ identifying people in our community any privilege otherwise open to heterosexual couples is discriminatory policy which belongs to an uglier era.

I trust that you will take these sentiments on board, and look forward to a more inclusive Australia.

Yours sincerely,

Canberran Curmudgeon

[This first appeared on the Letter Amnesty blog, where there are more brilliant, eloquent, poignant and strongly persuasive letters to MPs. It's a good place to start if you're inspired to write to your local representative to tell them how you feel about marriage equality.]