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Wednesday, 25 February 2015 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Sri Lankan asylum seekers who were sent back by Australia cover their faces as they wait to enter a Magistrate’s Court in the southern port District of Galle, 8 July. The Australian Government agreed not to criticise Sri Lanka’s alleged human-rights abuses in order to secure cooperation on stopping asylum-seeker boats headed to Australia, Sri Lanka’s new Prime Minister said – Reuters
By Justin Glyn
www.eurekastreet.com.au: There is a myth that labelling an issue as one of ‘national security’ somehow removes it ‘beyond politics’. Salus reipublicae suprema lex, the safety of the state is the supreme law, as the old Latin tag has it, and all must rally to the flag.
Nothing illustrates the shallowness of this fiction better than Monday’s story by Amanda Hodge in The Australian.
In it, she quotes the new Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as claiming that Australia’s silence on Sri Lanka’s appalling human rights record was the price for Sri Lanka taking extra measures to prevent people fleeing the country.
In particular, the claim was that the Rajapaksa Government agreed to curb the involvement of parties linked to that Government in assisting that flight and that Australia had cultivated relations with the Government to the point where Abbott refused even to meet a major Opposition leader on his visit to the country last year.
Problematic on many levels
This is problematic on many levels. Australia, as a party to the Refugee Convention, has an obligation to grant protection to those fleeing persecution, rather than collude in preventing their flight. At a deeper level, though, it illustrates some of the major problems of seeking to remove human rights issues by reframing them as national security ones.
By describing the prevention of asylum seeker arrivals as a national security issue (recall ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’, the militarised anti-asylum seeker drive and the secrecy which attends it, on ‘operational grounds’), the Government has sought to wrap what are, effectively, political prejudices – even if they are shared by both main parties – in the cloak of national security. Who seriously believes that sheltering those genuinely at risk of persecution is a threat to national security or that the resulting lack of scrutiny is not very convenient for the Government?
If the answer is said to be that this is too cynical and that such measures are necessary because there could be ‘terrorists’ hiding among those fleeing, a robust and fair refugee determination process should surely be the best defence.
Art. 1F of the Refugee Convention denies refugee status to those who have committed a ‘crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity’, ‘a serious non-political crime outside the country of refuge prior to his admission’ or are guilty of ‘acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations’.
This clause is specifically designed, and has been used to, deny refugee status to those guilty of war crimes or attacks on civilians. ‘Terrorists’, assuming the term refers to people actually guilty of something, need not apply for refugee status. (Admittedly, they – like everyone else – have the right not to be sent somewhere which will torture them.)
This clearly illustrates how very political the decision to frame an issue as one of ‘national security’ is. As the old saying has it, ‘one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.’ The fact that Australia has chosen to turn a blind eye to Sri Lankan Government abuses of political and ethnic minorities in order to protect its own anti-asylum seeker program illustrates this point very neatly.
Cost of these political choices
The cost of these political choices can be high. In this case, the first cost is direct and comes in the form of damage to diplomatic relations when the political wind shifts. The same article in The Australian, scarcely a left-wing voice on refugee issues, notes that now that a new
Government is in power, one which is seeking to ‘punish those who illegally profited under the Rajapaksa regime’s “crony capitalism”’, Peter Dutton would be ‘unlikely to get the warm welcome received under the previous government’.
The second cost, particularly where human rights issues are concerned, is less tangible. Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers has long been the subject of international criticism. As has been pointed out elsewhere in Eureka Street, our disregard for human rights in our offshore detention centres has made it difficult for other countries to take us seriously when we advocate for the protection of our own citizens. That includes the nations we kowtow to. The latest revelations about the Government’s dealings with Sri Lanka are scarcely likely to help in this regard.
(Justin Glyn SJ is a Jesuit presently studying for the priesthood. He has previously practised law in South Africa and New Zealand and has a Ph.D in administrative and international law.)
