Refugees and human rights abuses: we cant pretend that we do not know

Hannah Arendt provides a useful framework to think about the extraordinary statement about torture made by Tony Abbott during his visit to Sri Lanka

Jeff Sparrow Tony Abbott visits the Sri Lanka Navy vessel in Sri Lanka. Australia will expand cooperation between their navies to crack down on people smuggling. hotograph! "inhua#Landov#$arcroft %edia The writer Hannah Arendt noted how& during the refugee crises of the '()*s& the treatment received by those fleeing repression was determined& even when they escaped& by their oppressors. Those whom the persecutor had singled out as scum of the earth+,ews& Trotskyites& etc.+actually were received as scum of the earth everywhere&- she wrote. ./T0hose whom persecution had called undesirable became the indesirables of 1urope. Arendt provides a useful framework to think about Tony Abbott-s extraordinary statement in Sri Lanka! his comment that& though his government 2deplores the use of torture we accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances difficult things happen2. 3n one level& the Abbott 2torture happens2 line might be understood as old4 fashioned realpolitik. $ecause Australia wants to repatriate Sri Lankan asylum seekers& Abbott needs to paint the authoritarian regime there as evolving to democracy 5despite Amnesty

6nternational-s assessment that 2the government is slowly but surely dismantling institutions& including the 7udiciary& that protect human rights2.8 $ecause Abbott seeks co4operation against people smugglers& he-s willing to provide warships to one of the most bloodsoaked militaries in the world. 9et if the claim that extreme circumstances 7ustify extreme measures sounds familiar& that-s because it-s the syllogism upon which the institutionalised cruelty of Australia-s refugee policy depends. Think of Scott %orrison transferring a disabled four4year old Tamil asylum seeker to the isolated and s:ualid detention camp in Nauru on the basis that 2no exceptions2 could be made to the offshore processing of asylum seekers. 26f you are fit enough to get on a boat&2 he said& 2then you can expect you-re fit enough to end up in offshore processing.2 6n difficult circumstances& difficult things happen. Not surprisingly& a similar method produces familiar results. 6n the wake of Sri Lankan civil war& the military ushered thousands of Tamil survivors into notorious detention centres. Some of those who fled eventually reached Australian waters ; where they were ushered into notorious detention centres. To use Arendt-s terms& those designated as 2scum2 by the Sri Lankan authorities are duly treated as such in democratic Australia. To understand the conse:uences& it is useful to revisit the context in which Arendt wrote. $y the late '()*s& the increasingly brutal anti4semitic measures of the Hitler regime had generated a wave of refugees across 1urope. 1ven in distant Australia& the authorities responded with alarm. 2<hile the =ommonwealth will consider sympathetically the applications of thousands of ,ewish refugees seeking to come to Australia from Austria& no mass influx will be allowed&2 reported the Townsville >aily $ulletin on ' April '()?. 21mphasising this yesterday / rime %inister0 Lyons said suitable migrants of $ritish stock would be given preference to aliens2 3n @) ,une& the Hobart %ercury noted! 2No encouragement will be given to the migration of ,ewish refugees to this country. 6t has been decided to admit not more than A** a year in small batches to avoid the setting up of foreign ,ewish colonies.2 A fortnight later& the Townsville paper again took up the issue. 2The inflow of ,ews will be watched closely&2 it explained. 2The government will give first preference to $ritish sub7ects& and will provide every safeguard against immigrants depriving Australians of employment.2 Such was the context for the intergovernmental conference on refugees at 1vian& Brance& in ,uly '()? ; the event at which the Australian delegate Thomas <hite notoriously declared that 2as we have no real racial problems we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging large scale migration.2 The NaCis& of course& knew :uite well what they were doing. As Arendt later noted& 2the official SS newspaper D stated explicitly in '()? that if the world was not yet convinced that the ,ews were the scum of the earth& it soon would be when unidenti4fiable beggars& without nationality& without money& and without passports crossed their frontiers.2 And so the persecution intensified.

No& Sri Lanka-s not NaCi Eermany. Nonetheless& the ongoing atrocities against Tamils are probably better documented than Hitler-s crimes were in '()?. 6n the '()*s& the readers of the Townsville >aily $ulletin might be excused for ignorance about fascism in Eermany. Today& however& you can download directly the FN report that explains how& in the civil war-s bloody conclusion& Sri Lanka-s armed forces killed as many as G*&*** Tamils. 9ou can access Amnesty-s account of how& since the war ended& the government-s repression of civil society has& if anything& only worsenedH you can watch& if you-ve the stomach& ghastly cell phone footage of the battlefield executions. <e can-t pretend that we do not know. 6f& then& we have a responsibility to oppose Australia-s shameful refugee policy& it-s not simply for the sake of asylum seekers caught up in our 7urisdiction& but because of the conse:uences for oppressed people elsewhere. <riting of her era& Arendt explained! The constitutional inability of 1uropean nation4states to guarantee human rights to those who had lost nationally guaranteed rights& made it possible for the persecuting governments to impose their standard of values even upon their opponents. /DT0he incredible plight of an ever4growing group of innocent people was like a practical demonstration of the totalitarian movementsI cynical claims that no such thing as inalienable human rights existed and that the affirmations of the democracies to the contrary were mere pre7udice& hypocrisy& and cowardice in the face of the cruel ma7esty of a new world. The very phrase .human rights- became for all concerned + victims& persecutors& and onlookers alike + the evidence of hopeless idealism or fumbling feeble4minded hypocrisy. That-s precisely what-s happening now.