Sold rations for dignity
NEW suits and immaculate clothing was not what I expected when I met refugees bound for Toowoomba at the Brisbane Airport in the early 2000s.
Somebody quick to judge might have rushed in with an “Armani Refugees” quip ah la Super Minister for Border Protection Peter Dutton last week. Minister Dutton’s comments related to the first group of people resettled from Manus Island and Nauru to the United States.
As I did some quiet and polite inquiries I was humbled to find the background to the stunning standard of fashion on these new arrivals in the 2000s.
My suited friends had lost more than I could imagine. Their home villages had been destroyed. Their land had been taken. They had lost many of their family members.
They were “non people” in their own country - without citizen rights, without the right to freely practise their religion or to participate in the economy.
Almost everything had been stripped from them – except one thing, their dignity. Everything they owned in this world was held in one bag.
But they had their pride. The dream of a new life had been realised and they were not going to start their first day in a new country appearing to be bedraggled and poor and less than human.
So where did these people find the money for a suit? They had sold their rations in the camp to cobble together enough money to buy clothes to shine in.
Some had not eaten for days and their first meal was on the Plane to Australia.
Mr Dutton knows full well that the state of somebody’s dress, the sunglasses they wear or the amount of money they used to escape their country of origin has nothing to do with the validity of their claims to be refugees.
The definition of a refugee is whether you face persecution or death in your country of origin based on your religion, your politics, your nationality, your race or your membership of a social group.
There’s nothing there about money or state of dress, or indeed method of transport. You might have escaped your country and made it to the shores of a signatory of the Refugee Convention in a flying saucer. It is irrelevant.
It’s what I like to call the Von Trapp Measure. In the film, The Sound of Music, the Von Trapp family face certain persecution because of their public stance against the Nazi regime.
They had money, they probably had no valid papers and probably wore the latest fashions as they crossed the border out of Austria.
But this is not a quaint film we are watching. The group described as “Armani Refugees” by the Super Minister were found to be refugees back in 2014.
In their first interview in the United States, two of the refugees speak with gratitude of the opportunity the US has given them.
They mention the hurt caused by Mr Dutton and the gifts of clothes they received which have now been used as a smear.
A resettlement agency last week described the damage that has been inflicted on these men who have spent four years in prison-like conditions for committing no crime.
As I put this piece together reports have emerged of another death on Manus Island. That takes the total to six deaths on Manus and the second suicide in two months.
Mr Dutton’s comments were worse than dog whistles to those who see refugees as somehow less than human.
They risk the tenuous deal that was struck with the United States to resettle people from Manus and Nauru.
President Trump was probably right – it was a dumb deal – but anything that brings to an end this sordid chapter in our history has to be for the good.
Heroic Coalition backbencher Russell Broadbent is right – we are at the cross-roads and need to end this cruelty now. To finish on a positive. I know football is probably the opiate of the people and may not bring about world peace.
But I found myself nodding in agreement with Andrew Bolt’s piece on the Richmond Tiger’s win in yesterday’s The Chronicle.
Anything that can bring about an occasion where Mr Bolt and Mr Waleed Aly are cheering for the same side has to have something to recommend it. Well played Tigers!