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The Forum > Article Comments > Asylum seekers: the uncertainty and the separation > Comments

Asylum seekers: the uncertainty and the separation : Comments

By Susan Metcalfe, published 22/10/2009

Australia should not be deliberately causing further harm to asylum seekers under any circumstances.

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runner,
I agree with you. The bleeding hearts on the matter of the illegals aliens falsely try to portray themselves as compassionate. But in reality they are cold and ignore the genuine refugees that desparately need help.

It is pitifull to see them supporting the actions of the liars and cheats that bribe and buy their way into Aus.
Posted by Banjo, Thursday, 22 October 2009 4:18:34 PM
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Bloggers should know certain facts about these Tamil asylum seekers.
1) They lived in a tiny island state called Sri Lanka.They were accepted cordially by the Sinhalese people and accorded equality and citizenship which they have enjoyed for centuries without any thought of demanding a state of their own.Tamil politics led to a movement for Elam independence, or a separate land for themaselves. So much for gratitude and inclusivity offered by the people of Sri Lanka. They proceeded to tearthe island apart to achieve their goal. Now that they lost the war they feel that Australia should offer them asylum.We had nothing to do with the history of Sri Lanka and owe them nothing.
2) Guess where the Tamils originate from?
INDIA !! They are people from Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India.There they have friends and relatives. They've been coming and going to Tamil Nadu all these years as they've been assisting in manpower and money to help the Tamil Tigers.. It should be only natural that they turn homewards for help and protection through asylum. The crossing from Jaffa is a mere 50 + km and very much safer than trying to cross the treacherous Bay of Bengal in those leaky boats in the hands of snake heads. Why do they do it?
Could it be that there's no Centrelink and medicare there and no decent education, too?

Why are the other Tamils happy enough to stay on? There are thousands of them in government employ and business. Some are even in the Sri Lankan armed services. Why arent they being persecuted and interned. They are quite happy to be a part of Sri Lankan society.Not this lot!!

socratease
Posted by socratease, Thursday, 22 October 2009 4:30:13 PM
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I am all for hearing an alternate. I do think we have strong obligation towards those from Afghanistan as we are occupying there so hold joint responsibility for the security of it's people.

However if people make a choice to utilise unseaworthy vessels and engage criminals to transport them the government would be high on the negligence front to turn a blind eye. If they do and a boat sinks they are responsible. The boat itself is really the illegal part of this debate. Plane arrivals therefore present no such dilemma. Airlines have appropiate safety measures, insurance and professional operators and take the responsibility for the safety of passengers.

So should we allow them to cross the ocean and take their chance and watch them drown, again? Is this the suggestion? Or should we go pick them up if their story makes the news but don't bother if it doesn't.

Not getting any real sense of people would find acceptable on this website. Reads like well, I do not want to be blamed for anything so I will just say everyone else is inhumane and blamed. Easy cop out.

btw I live in a dengue prone area, never been fogged and deet is only rarely distributed, immediate area when confimed cases have occured only. This is Australia.
Posted by TheMissus, Thursday, 22 October 2009 5:01:37 PM
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hello Susan,

look you make the comment, 'While it is important that Australia maintains control of its borders ...'

Would you mind expanding and telling me exactly what this should involve when in relation to people arriving on boats.

From your comment it is fair to assume you'd not be prepared to welcome 10 million refugees. So at what point would your border protection scheme 'kick in' so as to effectively limit boat people arrivals? ... and since none of us know the likely numbers I think that a fair and reasonable question.
Posted by keith, Thursday, 22 October 2009 6:54:22 PM
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“…caused great suffering to genuine refugees, damaged our standing around the world and created dependency and division in the poor countries we bribed to hold people.”

The ‘Pacific Solution’ stopped people trying to get into Australia illegally. Any suffering to ‘genuine’ refugees was caused by their arrogant assumption that it would be alright for them to come, illegally and uninvited, to Australia. The ‘division in the poor countries we bribed to hold people’ has got me stumped. Places like Nauru were only to happy to get the money from Australia. The ‘divisions’ Metacalfe can’t explain, apparently, but it sounds good.
“Such little concern was held for the welfare of asylum seekers and refugees that people taken to the Pacific Solution camp in PNG in 2001 were placed at great risk”, claims Metcalfe.
What? Greater risks than those they claim to subject to in the countries they sneak out of? Greater risks than their ‘dangerous journeys on leaky boats’?

Metcalfe also drags up the Tampa incident again. Rudd has said that his information was wrong but, not being a left-wing twit, he will never be forgiven for that. The behaviour of the illegals themselves towards Australian troops more than cancelled out that misunderstanding anyway.

I wonder if Metcalfe’s mates have decided that the illegals who were rescued (unnecessarily) by Australian in Indonesian waters did not really drill holes in their boat.

“In 2005 a group of 25 asylum seekers in Nauru were so badly traumatised that the Coalition Government had to bring them onshore to try to fix the damage caused by the Pacific Solution policy” is another of Metcalfe’s claims. If they were tough enough to take on a rigorous and dangerous boat journey (we are continually told how terrible that is), why did they turn to cream puffs just sitting about on an island that the locals seem happy enough to live on? Well, says Metcalfe, they were mental cases before they got there. Now, aren’t they just the sort of people we need to come here illegally!

Continued
Posted by Leigh, Thursday, 22 October 2009 7:58:08 PM
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Continued,

And, of course, one was suicidal, it is claimed. I’d wager that had the prospective suicide been left on Nauru, he would still be alive today. How many of these people have to indulge in self-harm (as in Baxter) and threaten to kill themselves or sink their boats before non-thinkers like Metcalfe wake up to the blackmail tactics of country-shoppers!

Temporary visas were NOT ‘designed to punish genuine asylum refugees…”, another wild accusation from Metcalfe. These people should have been turned back, but the Howard government, like the current one, didn’t have the bottle to do that, making it quiet clear that any ‘punishment’ handed out by a weak Australian government is a figment of the author’s imagination.

And, the fate of 353 women and children who perished on SIEV X is firmly down to adult passengers and crew of the ship. How anyone can turn the spotlight onto our government when parents are actually cause the death of their own children is beyond me to understand.
Just imagine the hue and cry if Australian parents took their kids to sea in a clearly unseaworthy boat and caused their deaths.

“Many of the people we have damaged are now living among us with the problems we gave them.”

The problems ‘we gave them’. What absolute rubbish. They had no business coming here in the first place; and the blame should rightly be sheeted home to the illegals themselves.

Metcalfe persists in asking what the Opposition wants, and insists on blaming them for what they did when they were in government. The current lot doesn’t get a mention. We now have a Labor Government which has to make the decisions. If Metcalfe and her kind want to cry crocodile tears over people who have brought their woes on themselves, she should be giving some thought to the fact that, if Rudd had not dropped Coalition measures to stop illegal entry, then the boats would not be coming, and she would have nobody to blame. More about politics than the compassion claimed.
Posted by Leigh, Thursday, 22 October 2009 7:59:54 PM
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