Submitted by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Praise from US President Donald Trump has a tendency of tarnishing gold and ungilding matters, and there was something of the muck in his tweet praising Australia for its sadistic approach to refugee arrivals. Operation Sovereign Borders, which commenced in 2013, was the high water mark in an experiment of glacial cruelty: to treat refugee arrivals – those specifically taking the sea route to Australia – as a security, if not military threat. That these people were merely availing themselves of human rights acknowledged in international humanitarian law was given the thickest of glossing overs.
President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn of the White House on June 26, 2019.Carolyn Kaster / AP
A veil of impenetrable secrecy was imposed on the number of boat arrivals, the number of operations, and the entire operational nature of the exercise. To enforce the effort, Prime Minister Tony Abbott created a force outfitted with the sort of dark kit that would have made the goose-steppers swoon and old military orders sigh. The Australian Border Protection Force would be given a separate, higher standing than other agencies, with the slightest fascist lite appeal of uniforms, badges and insignia. (Those cheeky disorderly refugees need only the best the business of repelling can buy.)
By 2016, the Sydney Morning Herald noted that some “20 per cent of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s senior executive ranks are now uniformed, with the majority working within the Australian Border Force.” And such thuggish authority will come with its host of ironies: those figures of sound authoritarian reassurance had donned uniforms made “almost entirely in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and China.”
While the likes of former prime ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott might have been brimming with excitement and pride at the creation of one of the world’s most ruthless gulag-enforced systems to counter “illegals” (this concept is, as with much in the refugee world, anathema and arbitrary), the model remains hard to export. For one, it involes exorbitant, costly measures – the Australian program costs billions, an imposition of cruelty at cost. In another sense, it also furnishes the public with an illusion that borders are secure. The problem is merely deferred and deflected to other states (very neighbourly is Australia on that score). Nor does this halt those seeking aerial routes.
Trump, as he tends to, mines vaults of images for effect. He wanted a particular quarry after the discovery of the bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, found drowned in the Rio Grande on Monday. “The image,” the New York Times suggested, “represents a poignant distillation of the perilous journey migrants face on their passage north to the United States, and the tragic consequences that often go unseen in the loud and caustic debate over border policy.”
An appreciation for poignancy and good grace are not the standout features of the US President. Since being in office, he has conflated the immigration issue with the search for asylum. “The United States will not be a migrant camp,” he promised in June 2018, “and it will not be a refugee holding facility”. Criminalisation has been a strong theme. Parents have been separated from their children. The process for seeking asylum has become one of crawling rather than pacing.
According to Senator Bernie Sanders, “Trump’s policy of making it harder to seek asylum – and separating families who do – is cruel, inhumane and leads to tragedies like this.” Trump’s retort was uncomplicated: the Democrats were preventing him from plugging holes in Fortress USA. “If they fixed the laws you wouldn’t have that. People are coming up, they’re running through the Rio Grande.”
Having scoured a few examples of Australian border force material, he tweeted how, “These flyers depict Australia’s policy on IIlegal Immigration. Much can be learned!”
The flyers were of the standard, blaring variety, with the border authorities condemning anybody daring to make the journey of danger. “No way you will make Australia home,” screams a headline, followed by the boastful assertion that, “The Australian Government has introduced the toughest border protection measures ever.” Another promises that any attempt to journey to Australia by boat will not result in settlement in the country itself.
Much of the gathered material was drawn from a 2014 campaign rich in agitprop, a vulgar compilation of images and text topped by a graphic novel depicting asylum seekers mouldering in despair in an offshore detention centre. The then immigration minister Scott Morrison gave it a certain advertising coarseness, a point he replicated during his election campaign last month for the Australian prime ministership.
Trump’s tweet serves as a statement of endorsement to add to a now vast compendium of admiration from Budapest to Washington; the Australians, we are told, got it right. The Refugee Council of Australia offers a different interpretation. In the assessment of its communications director Kelly Nicholls, “Australia’s harsh policies have come at a terrible cost: 12 people have died; women, men, and children have endured enormous mental and physical harm; Australia’s reputation has been tarnished and all this has cost us more than $5 billion.”
Another assessment, however, is in order. The displaced person enrages rather than encourages empathy. They are, to use that expression Hannah Arendt made famous, the heimatlosen, stateless, deracinated souls plunged into legal purgatory. It was Arendt who urged, in response to the post-Nazi era peppered by death factories and human displacement, the need for “a new guarantee which can be found only in a new political principle, in a new law on earth, whose validity at this time must comprehend the whole of humanity while its power must remain strictly limited, rooted in and controlled by newly defined territorial entities.”
Such entities of control and compassion have yet to be established. We are left with traditional ones dedicated to brute force cemented by a distinct disregard for the dignity of the human subject. The rootless remain objects of disdain and, for politicians, a golden currency for re-election.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Trump ban Google and other companies that don’t share their technology with Huawei. So Huawei develop its own operating system but now google think that this gonna be a security threat to America. Google, apple, Facebook etc don’t think that their software apps and devices are not a little threat to other national security.
Its better for all world countries that completely ban US companies products for own security. Don’t use products like Apple, Facebook, android, Chromebook, WhatsApp, Skype etc etc. Also ban US weapons and other all products for security reason.
I wish i could but there are no options. Name them and i will do so. Greedy fcks in all Nations have allowed the Yankers to have a total technological monopoly so far.
Use Chinese products with Chinese software. Use Chinese weapons. Use AMD microprocessors instead of Intel and so on you can keep yourself safe from US morons.
Only choice is huawei ,no other big Chinese tech occurs here. Now my country has stopoed Huawei 5g as has Google etc. Chinese are powerless to stop it . Sothe onky way for me to accessChjnese is if i buy it illegally and then? It will probably be useless as state techonolgy will make the tech not work; maybe via jamming etc.
Lol what is this emotive rambling claptrap?
Almost everything in this is false the boat invasion wasn’t hidden in fact it was massively publicized by the Liberal government who made great political strides in doing so. The open door policy from the former Labour government was the reason so many attempted arriving by boat resulting in many deaths the Libs stopped the boats and in doing so saved who knows how many that would drowned attempting to arrive illegally.
Im not a fan of either party but as a witness to the events as they occurred feel at the very least the actual facts should be presented.
Im not sure who this writer is or what their agenda is but its a joke of an article and im very surprised to see something this poorly written and unfactual presented on Southfront.
Initially it was in the media, but the laws have changed and now it’s a total media blackout.
I think it might be as an example of globalist academic articles that deplore border controls and slate anyone who can reduce refugee/immigration flows as worse than nazis. It’s the marxist narrative masquerading as liberal left.
The article does not go far enough and neither does Kell. Many people are against such immigration and not just far right voters. The Liberal government is responsible for the mess for allowing in so many migrahts but slyly only talks about and shows the sweaty ,hairy boat arrivals. The facts are that the Liberal gov has been allowing educated foreigners in by the aeroplane -load,-taking jobs,and adding to their voting bloc.The Labour gov are just Conservative Lite. Rudderless at present as they are crewed by rejects who are dull clones of the Libs.
A root and branch change is required in Australia; less globalism ,less devotion to Yankers and less foreigners comin in.
– “Australia has a firm deterrence policy when it comes to asylum seekers and refugees. It has essentially outsourced its asylum-seeking process to Nauru and Manus Island, where migrants are being left to rot in conditions that are, to put it bluntly, completely inhumane. According to a recent MSF report, the mental health situation for Nauruan and refugee patients is as bad as torture victims, showing similar levels of mental illness far worse than other MSF projects seen around the world…..
……if Australia really does not want to help those people in need and is going to be quite open about its blatant disregard for human rights, it needs to seriously stop its humanitarian façade…… It is also quite telling that at the end of the day, the only migrants Australia has genuinely held a helping hand to were white South African land-owners escaping what some have questionably dubbed a “white genocide.” I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, Australia was basically founded on this type of mass human mistreatment and racism. It would appear that nothing much has changed. (Australia hates accepting refugees, but appears to love creating them, Darius Shahtahmasebi, 20 Dec, 2018)
– Australian violations against refugees is in violation of the refugee convention – “A traumatologist described conditions on Nauru and Manus as the “worst atrocity” he had ever seen, while the former chief psychiatrist on the islands said the camps were “inherently toxic” and akin to torture.” (Refugee camp company in Australia ‘liable for crimes against humanity’, Ben Doherty and Patrick Kingsley, Guardian, 25 July 2016), etc…..
The many crimes of the Western bloc (involving Australia) are well documented. For example, Australia was also a key advocate of the economic strangulation of Iraq through ‘sanctions’ even after it was revealed the resultant deaths were in excess of 500,000 (a large number being Iraqi infant deaths). Despite various U.N. officials describing the sanctions as conforming to genocide, Australia maintained its support for the sanctions. Similarly, it continues to support such collective punishment policies through allied sanctions against various other nations despite the resultant suffering and deaths. The cruelty (and crimes) associated with various Australian policies and actions expose hypocrisy as such behaviour is incompatible with their rhetoric of championing ‘human rights’ as their violations of international law (particularly involvement in successive wars of aggression) are incompatible with their claims of championing a ‘rules based order’.
This behaviour not only qualifies as sociopaty but evil.
Note: “Between 1 million and 1.5 million Iraqis have died from malnutrition or inadequate health care resulting from economic sanctions, said Halliday…… the United Nations Security Council member states … are maintaining a program of economic sanctions deliberately, knowingly killing thousands of Iraqis each month. And that definition fits genocide,” Halliday said.” (Former UN official says sanctions against Iraq amount to ‘genocide’, By Mark Siegal, Cornell University Chronicle, October 1, 1999)
References: 1. Australian support of Israeli war crimes and violations of international law:
– “Israeli [Operation Protective Edge] killed over 2000 Gazans, including 551 children and 299 women. There were 6000 air strikes in that Operation (Gaza has neither an air force nor air defences). More than 18,000 housing units were destroyed, as were 22 schools with a further 118 damaged, and 24 medical facilities were either damaged or destroyed. The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Yet, on the occasion of Netanyahu’s visit the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull opined in an op-ed in The Australian (22 February 2017) “our people’s are bound together first and foremost by the values we share- a mutual commitment to freedom, democracy and the rule of law.”….
……. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop gave an interview to the Times of Israel, published on 15 January 2014. The article was headlined: “Australian Foreign Minister: Don’t Call Settlements Illegal Under International Law.” Bishop was further quoted in the body of the article as saying “I would like to see which international law has described them as illegal.” This is an astonishingly ignorant statement by a Foreign Minister and former lawyer. It is difficult to believe that she and her department are entirely oblivious to, inter alia, the various Conventions to which Australia and Israel are a party; the facts on the ground (after all there is a steady stream of Australian parliamentarians visiting Israel) and in particular the ruling of the International Court of Justice on 9 July 2004. The ICJ ruled that the Palestinian Territories were “occupied” by Israel; that the settlements were a breach of international law; and that Israel was bound by the international humanitarian law embodied in the 4th Geneva Convention. (Australian Foreign Policy and Israel: An Enduring Disgrace, by James O’Neill, March 3rd, 2017)
2. Australian involvement in wars of aggression:
– “In 2007 General Wesley Clark revealed previously secret US plans to topple seven Middle East and North African countries in a five year period. Those seven countries make revealing reading in the light of recent events: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Iran. Five of the seven have been or are currently being attacked, occupied, and/or destroyed by the US and its allies, including Australia.” (Verdict First, Evidence Later: How the Australian Media Misrepresent Geopolitical Events, James ONeill, 11/04/2017)
3. “Australian firms have signed military contracts to provide weapons to Saudi Arabia, despite the regime’s ongoing war in Yemen that has killed over 12,000 people since March 2015. The Australian Department of Defense has secured four contracts to export weapons to Riyadh in the past year and Canberra has led the push for more arms sales…… Last week, Amnesty International condemned the US and UK for their “shameful” weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia, saying Washington and London were fueling the serious human rights violations and war crimes in Yemen committed by Riyadh. ” (Australia selling arms to Saudis amid war crimes in Yemen, PressTV, Mar 25, 2017)
4. Australian military operations in Syria are in violation of international law:
– “The “collective self defence “ justification was also used by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop [to] explain the legal basis for Australia’s announced intention of intervening in the Syrian war. Her answer then was identical to that of Dunford. Neither of them was correct. Article 51 of the UN Charter does provide for collective self-defence in tightly defined circumstances. The ICJ has stipulated what those circumstances are. It requires as a minimum that a State is attacked by another State, and that the party being attacked requests assistance. It does not apply in the case of attacks by non-state actors. Manifestly, neither applies to either the US or Australia in the case of Syria. The legitimate sovereign government of Syria has not sought the help of either country. Both are operating in Syria in contravention of international law. Both the US and Australia are quick to invoke the ‘rule of law’ or the ‘rules based international order ‘ when it suits them but are singularly incapable of applying those same principles to their own conduct.” (The Situation in Syria Just Became More Dangerous, James ONeill, 10/07/2017)