Bombing creates more refugees
IMAGINE the experience of Europeans this year receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees from war-torn Syria and North Africa ( C-M, Aug 28).
The war in Syria with ongoing bombing by all parties, leading to a breakdown in the supply of food, shelter, medical aid and education for its people, is the leading reason for this mass exodus.
The Government has manipulated us into thinking we have been called on to bomb “targets” in Syria. Bombing will lead to even further destruction of people and their homes.
What needs to be addressed urgently is an end to the wars through a political solution.
It is time to consider what keeps these wars alive, such as the availability of weapons, financial aid and the role of significant powerbrokers. The situation in the Middle East threatens not only the people of the region but world peace. Annette Brownlie, Camp Hill A GOVERNMENT achievement it may be, but it is hardly a success when Australia’s navy is used to turn back refugee boats to Indonesia, where more than 13,000 desperate asylum seekers and proven refugees are languishing, waiting years for UNHCR assessment of their need for protection from persecution, and for eventual resettlement in a safe country.
By cruel political decree, Australia has chosen not to resettle any refugees from Indonesia since July 2014.
It has ratcheted up the punishment for all who came by boat, still torturing over 2000 men, women and children with appalling and inhumane detention conditions. It has sentenced some 30,000 to indefinite second-class life in limbo here, most of them missing close family, all of them denied permanent settlement in this lucky country.
Is this really what Australians want? Frederika E. Steen, Chapel Hill