BY SARAH STEPHEN
It's now common knowledge: the federal Coalition government lied to win the November 10 election. Prime Minister John Howard and his ministers continued to maintain, long after they knew it wasn't true, that in October some refugees had thrown children overboard as their boat approached Australia. The Coalition parties' election strategy was based on the demonisation of a handful of desperate asylum seekers, seeking to transform them into a perceived threat to Australia's borders on par with an invading army.
Howard, then defence minister Peter Reith and immigration minister Philip Ruddock worked the lie in the media for weeks to convince Australians that "these sort of people" could not be allowed into the country. They condemned the actions of asylum seekers as disturbing, intimidating, planned, premeditated and uncivilised.
There is now no question that Reith lied. A report commissioned by Howard's department included an account of a conversation between Brigadier Michael Silverstone and Reith. According to the brigadier, he said: "Minister, the video does not show a child being thrown into the water." The minister replied: "We'd better not see the video then." The video wasn't released until November 8, two days before the election.
In the days following the incident, Reith released photos to the media that showed asylum seekers in the water, claiming they were evidence of the government's claims. In fact, they were taken after the boat had sunk and depicted a navy officer rescuing refugees who had jumped into the water.
Some mainstream journalists now admit that they questioned — privately — the truth of the claim that children had been thrown overboard. But it didn't stop corporate newspaper editors publishing sensationalist front-page coverage that accused asylum seekers of trying to "morally blackmail" the government into rescuing them and allowing them into Australia. The implication was clear: asylum seekers are willing to sacrifice their own children to take advantage of our humanity, a humanity they don't share.
A Senate inquiry has been established to further investigate the incident.
What really happened? According to the asylum seekers involved, children were held up to make the navy aware that there were children on board so as to prevent the vessel being fired upon or rammed.
Lies
Many media commentators describe the "children overboard" episode as merely a poll-driven gimmick that the government's strategists thought would help Howard win votes from those who support a government that is "tough on illegal immigrants".
This doesn't adequately explain why the Howard government is compelled to use lies to bolster its refugee policy. By accusing asylum seekers of inflicting harm on family members and sacrificing their children, the government seeks to make it impossible for ordinary Australians to sympathise with asylum seekers and to understand their suffering.
The children overboard claim hasn't been the government's only lie: it lies about asylum seekers being "queue jumpers" as though queues exist that refugees can and should wait in; the government lies when it describes asylum seekers who arrive by boat as being wealthy, when entire families have gone to great lengths to make sacrifices to help just one person escape; and the government lies about the conditions in Afghanistan, declaring it safe for people to return.
There is another lie which has recently been exposed. In the midst of the Woomera detention centre detainees' hunger strike, and prior to the South Australian election, Ruddock and SA human services minister Dean Brown held a press conference to condemn parents who, it was alleged, had forcibly sewed their children's lips together. Asked on January 25 if the forcible sewing of children's lips represented "child abuse", Howard replied: "Of course."
To give weight to the allegation, the government removed several children from the Woomera detention centre and placed them in foster care in Adelaide. Two reports released in early February confirm that there was no evidence to back Ruddock's and Brown's allegation.
A report by Brown's own department found that there was no evidence that parents had sewed children's lips. The initial "evidence" had been based in part on a statement by a local doctor who had unstitched the lips of three teenagers that they "probably wouldn't have done it themselves".
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) released a report which also confirmed that no detention centre staff had seen any coercion during the hunger strike. Anecdotal reports indicate that teenagers sewed their lips voluntarily after watching their parents sew their own.
Sympathy grows
Exposure of the treatment of children in detention has made many Australians begin to see asylum seekers, not as a terrible threat, but as vulnerable human beings, with similar hopes, fears and emotions as themselves. As this understanding becomes more widespread, the government's treatment of refugees is becoming indefensible.
For example, even Sydney's usually anti-refugee Daily Telegraph seems to have suddenly changed tack on the refugee issue. A February 8 opinion piece contained the most moving, and appalling, examples of refugee children's suffering. "Can you imagine a young mother, handcuffed and roughly escorted with her two small children to a cell, not let out to go to the bathroom — at all — for two days, so she uses a plastic supermarket bag as a toilet?", the article asked.
"This is government-sponsored child abuse, and if something is not done soon, John Howard, Philip Ruddock, and all of us who do nothing — all of us — will have blood on our hands. Children's blood", the article concluded.
The government's anti-refugee policy relies on lies and deception. But the lies are unravelling, a very dangerous turn of events for the government.
The government's denial of media access to the detention centres is not about protecting the privacy of those inside, as Ruddock argues. It is to stop asylum seekers telling their stories, to prevent the media revealing their faces and voices.
On February 11, Channel Nine's A Current Affair aired a report, which included video footage smuggled out of the Port Hedland detention centre. It presented the stories of asylum seekers and expressed their anguish at being locked in the desert prison for years. The report also showed footage from a riot at the centre in May last year.
At the time of the riot, ACA ran a beat-up story about the "senseless violence" of asylum seekers, designed to "intimidate" the government into releasing them. While ACA on February 11 did not apologise for its earlier demonisation of the asylum seekers, the program did set the record straight, detailing the events which triggered the riot.
Official footage leaked to ACA showed a young Iraqi man being put in a headlock and handcuffed by guards, while they removed his father. Riot squad officers were seen storming into families' rooms, causing petrified screams from the small children. After numerous acts of provocation, detainees began to fight back, and a riot started. A guard could be heard giving directions for the use of tear gas: "We'll fire it up and fucking straight into their faces."
It speaks volumes that such a sensationalist television show with such a notorious reputation for misinformation about refugees would now judge it appropriate for such a program to be aired. The mood is shifting more firmly against the government every day.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, February 20, 2002.
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