Manus Island: What will it take to shock us?

OPINION

By Julian Burnside

Posted about 3 hours agoFri 23 Jan 2015, 7:23am

PHOTO: Asylum seekers at the Manus Island detention centre have sewn their lips together in protest. (Supplied)

The reports coming out of Manus Island right now should be enough to shock us, but they aren't. What will it take? Barrister Julian Burnside has some ideas.

Reports about what is happening on Manus Island are mixed. According to inside sources, hundreds of asylum seekers are on a hunger strike, many have sewn their lips together, and tensions are high. According to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, security levels have been high, as a precaution, and the hunger strike and lip sewing are the result of urging by refugee advocates. There has been little apparent public concern.

Some of the hunger strikers have said they are willing to die, and want to donate their organs to Australians. The public, in its post-Christmas torpor, was unmoved. Letters sent from Manus have been published, but this has provoked outrage only in that minority of Australians who are concerned about refugees. The public remain unmoved.

In February 2014, Reza Berati was murdered inside the Manus detention facility, allegedly by members of the staff who were supposedly keeping the detainees safe. I have been informed that eyewitnesses to the murder are still being held in solitary confinement. No one has yet been brought to trial for the murder. In September 2014, Hamid Kehazaei died of septicaemia after an infected foot was inadequately treated. Nobody has been held to account for his death in what looks like significant medical negligence.

Public reaction to these things has been minimal.

There are a few facts we all know, or should know. First (and arguably the most significant fact): the asylum seekers held on Manus and in other detention centres are not "illegal". They have committed no offence by coming to Australia seeking protection.

They are held in captivity without charge and without trial, because their conduct in seeking asylum is not an offence under Australian law. The government of Australia, and parts of the media, refer to them as "illegals" because it makes locking them up look faintly respectable. When they arrive in Australia asking to be protected from persecution, Australia takes them forcibly, against their will, to Manus. There they are held in uncomfortable, unhygienic conditions in tropical heat. They wait until their claims for refugee status are determined. Some of them have been there for about two years.

It should shock us to know how comprehensively the government has lied to us about Manus. It lies to us by calling asylum seekers "illegal". It lies to us about the conditions in which they are held. Maybe it would shock us to know that the people who are being mistreated by our government (and at vast expense to the taxpayer) are just ordinary people: human beings who have the same hopes and desires, the same frailties and fears as most of us.

Second: It is very clear that, if you lock up an innocent person in circumstances where they do not know how long it will be before they are released, they fall into hopelessness and despair after about 12 or 18 months. One very well-documented response to this despair is self-harm. Typically, they will cut themselves, or sew their lips together, or try to starve themselves to death.

Third: conditions in Manus are very harsh. In October 2013, the UNHCR reported on conditions on Manus. It noted:

Overall, UNHCR was deeply troubled to observe that the current policies, operational approaches and harsh physical conditions at the [detention centre] do not comply with international standards and in particular ...constitute arbitrary and mandatory detention under international law; ...and do not provide safe and humane conditions of treatment in detention...

There is not much doubt that our treatment of asylum seekers in Manus constitutes a crime against humanity. This is a matter of legal analysis, not political rhetoric. The hard facts about the horrific conditions on Manus Island that I've outlined above may not be enough to shock us, but the one thing that really might shock us is to see Abbott, Morrison and Dutton prosecuted in the International Criminal Court for those crimes. That's a pro bono case I would gladly prosecute.

Western Govts enemy of free speech

Crikey says: Western govts the enemy of free speech Many observers cried hypocrisy when leaders and dignitaries from countries like Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Palestine, Egypt and the Persian Gulf kingdoms -- all of which engage, as a matter of policy, in the persecution, jailing and often torture of journalists and activists -- attended the Paris rally to commemorate theCharlie Hebdo massacre. But the hypocrisy of Western politicians declaring themselves for free speech in the wake of the Paris murders is every bit as great. The US and UK governments are engaged in global-scale mass surveillance programs and have specifically targeted journalists and whistleblowers for harassment and prosecution. And the Australian government is no better. Despite pretending to be a supporter of free speech and a free press, the Abbott government has proven itself a committed enemy of both. Its draconian anti-terror laws introduced last year enable journalists to be jailed for a decade for reporting on intelligence operations. The data retention regime it has proposed ensures that police and intelligence agencies will have a rich trove of information with which to hunt down whistleblowers and the journalists and even politicians to whom they have provided public interest information. The government has attacked the ABC and slashed its funding, and used every power at its disposal to prevent the media from revealing information about its handling of asylum seekers, and freedom of information laws are now routinely abused by the public service. Attorney-General George Brandis approved an ASIO raid designed to intimidate the whistleblower who revealed our spying on East Timor; the whistleblower's passport was also seized to prevent him from giving evidence in an international court; the lawyer representing that whistleblower has been threatened by Brandis and his agencies with prosecution. Like most advocates of free speech, the Abbott government only likes free speech that it agrees with. Its idea of a free press is outlets that support it. Like its US and UK counterparts, it fears and attacks anything that doesn't suit its political purposes.

Reminds me of "Animal Farm".

 George Brandis ordered expensive bottles of Australian wine while dining with an undisclosed number of British arts representatives in London in April. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP Image

Shalailah Medhora

Monday 29 December 2014 13.35 AEST

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Google+

Shares

57

Comments

353

The attorney general, George Brandis, spent $1,100 of public money on a dinner during an official visit to London, freedom of information documents requested by Labor show.

Fairfax media reported that Brandis, who is also the arts minister, ordered expensive bottles of Australian wine while dining with an undisclosed number of British arts representatives at the Massimo restaurant on 4 April.

The dinner cost £627 ($1,119), of which £228 ($407) was spent on alcohol, the documents show.

Brandis’s office could not be contacted for comment, but earlier defended the cost of the meal to Fairfax.

“It’s usual practice for senior cabinet ministers to host dinners for important stakeholders within their portfolios,” a spokesman said. “On this occasion the attorney general and minister for arts hosted key UK senior arts representatives.”

Labor’s spokesman on waste, Pat Conroy, said on his Facebook page the amount spent was “obscene”, especially as it came just weeks before the tough federal budget in which the government introduced cuts to public spending.

 Labor’s spokesman on waste, Pat Conroy, blasted George Brandis’ meal on his Facebook page. Photograph: Facebook

“To spend over $400 of taxpayers’ money on wine is unpardonable, especially at the same time as the government is making people pay more at the doctors and petrol pump,” he told Fairfax.

Brandis paid back nearly $1,700 shortly after coming to office for claiming parliamentary expenses to travel to the 2011 wedding of radio host Michael Smith.

In February, Senate estimates revealed that Brandis spent $15,000 of taxpayers’ money on building a new bookshelf in his ministerial office.

In January 2012, London’s Daily Telegraph gave Massimo a scathing review, saying “such paeans to marble-sanitised vulgarity may be perfect for lobbyists to entertain their prey” but its “mix of the flashy and the desultory had nothing to offer the set-menu diner other than outrageous drinks prices ... confused service and sullen mediocrity”.

Magi and Civil Disobedience

"Many Christians are still unsure about Civil Disobedience," writes Craig Greenfield. "That's why this Christmas season we need to learn wisdom and discernment from some of the first people who sought to worship Jesus: a trio of spiritual gurus from Asia. They were the first of many in the New Testament to refuse to obey the ruling authorities."

Greenfield points out that the Magi (popularly but wrongly identified as three in number, because of the gifts cited), after they had paid homage to the infant Christ, were "warned in a dream not to go back to Herod" and "returned to their country by another route" (Matthew 2.8, 12).

"God told them not to obey the ruling authority", he continues. "This was during a time when disobeying the King was a capital offence, punishable by death. It is the first recorded act of civil disobedience in the New Testament.

"Take a moment to reflect on the fact that obeying the King, whose word was the law of the land, would have meant the death of an infant. Later, it meant the death of hundreds of children.

"The law is not our ultimate moral guide. … Slavery was lawful. The holocaust was legal. Segregation was legally sanctioned. Simply put, the law does not dictate our ethics. God does. So it should not surprise us that the One we follow was executed as a criminal, and that there will be times we are called to break unjust laws.

"As St Augustine said, 'An unjust law is no law at all.' Christians cannot fulfill their role in life without coming into conflict with the world system."

The god who has gone

In Infinitely Demanding, Simon Critchley says:

Anarchy should not seek to mirror the archic sovereignty that it undermines. That is, it should not seek to set itself up as the new hegemonic principle of political organisation, but remain the negation of totality and not the affirmation of a new totality…

In our terms, anarchy is the creation of interstitial distance within the state, the continual questioning from below of any attempt to establish order from above.

Replacing ‘anarchy’ with ‘Christianity,’ what we get is a community that gathers around an absence – the god who has gone – and uses this to continually critique any attempt to reestablish order from above, to reinstate some new god.

Subverting the norm - thanks Drew Sumrall

What do the powers claim to establish?

It is important to remember, that, in order for the powers to retain power there must be an implicit altruistic motive.

In other words, the powers are powerful not simply because they are powerful (holding the most weapons, etc.), as this doesn’t work, for ‘the masses’ can at any point overthrow them (or at the very least, create chaos). 

The powers are powerful precisely because they claim to bring peace and justice.

The battle is thus ideological.

Therefore the key to undermining the powers is demanding what they claim to proffer society, taking the discourse of power more seriously than the powers.

I.e. subverting the norm means radically accepting its ideological presuppositions.

Practising Transgression (thanks Pete Rollins)

Previously I’ve written about how ideology doesn’t merely offer us an explicit set of practices that are acceptable and unacceptable, but also an implicit constellation of acceptable ways to do unacceptable practices.

Ideology doesn’t simply police the borders between the law and transgression, but also offers up ways of transgressing what is acceptable to the law. An ideology thus does not only create the distinction between the category of orthodox and heretic (or sacred and profane), but also offers up ways of being a heretic (profane) that are allowed by the authorities (the sacred).

An interesting example of this can be seen in a recent campaign by the Australian group Love Makes a Way. In protest against the imprisonment of children seeking asylum, various religious leaders in Adelaide engaged in an illegal sit-in at the electoral office of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. For a time this protest was allowed, but eventually the police were called in to remove them.

What we witness here is the slide from an acceptable form of transgressive protest to an unacceptable one.

Initially the act was tolerated. Indeed, if they had simply entered, made a statement, then left this would have been an acceptable transgression allowed by the authorities. It would also have been largely ineffective in making change. But there came a point when the transgression of the protestors was no longer acceptable to the authorities and the police started making arrests.

This wasn’t the first time Love Makes a Way had engaged in such activities. Previously some religious leaders who had been arrested were charged and brought to court. Yet this only caused embarrassment to the Government, for the media covered the story and citizens started to ask difficult questions concerning the unjust policy. In addition, the protestors were acquitted and the Judge commended them for their stance (another serious embarrassment to the Government).

Of course ideological systems quickly adjust to such acts. Hence, those who place themselves in the camp of resistance need to constantly adjust their strategy. In the above example the police quickly learned that they should quietly release the next batch of protestors rather than put them through the courts.

The point here is that ideological systems operate with a subterranean network of transgressive practices, practices that are needed for the smooth running of the system itself. A Government might, for example, champion human rights, freedom and justice, while implicitly engaging in torture, the creation of Black Hole prisons and imprisonment without recourse to the legal system. These subterranean activities are needed by the system to manage a crisis within that system, but the abusive practices cannot be named.

Effective protest involves bringing these unspoken truths to the surface, confronting the system with its own disavowed truth. This can only happen when dissidents refuse to play into the perverse system of acceptable protest (protest endorsed by the system it attacks) and instead find ways of bringing those things into the light of day. Yet, with each move dissidents make, the system will attempt to compensate, adjust, and normalize. Hence new ways of transgressing the norm must be found.