For eight years I’ve served Australia. The racist hate and disgusting abuse still crushes me
“You are not really Australian, Mehreen. Why don’t you fuck off to the cesspit you came from?”
“Piss off back to your shithole of Pakistan, ya maggot.”
This is not something I expected to hear – ever, let alone in Australia. Yet from day one of my public life, I have felt pummelled and beaten almost every day by this unrelenting demand to go back to where I came from. I feel the heavy weight of this hate physically bearing down on me, crushing me, squeezing the air out of my lungs until I feel suffocated. This has only got worse with time. For the first time, I have started to question my belonging in this place I call home. For the first time since arriving in Sydney in 1992, I’ve started to doubt my decision to migrate from Lahore.
No matter what I say, my motives are constantly questioned. Whether I’m advocating for stronger animal welfare laws, for abolishing fees for university and Tafe education or for more funding for public schools or women’s rights, or speaking out against racism, the disgusting abuse thrown at me by my detractors is always the same. It’s echoed on my social media accounts, in emails and in phone calls to my office. I can provoke this reaction by simply opening my mouth.
Why are you even here?they ask.
You weren’t born here. What right do you have to tell us what to do?
Your country is shit. Why are you bringing that filth here to our country?
You don’t belong here. You should be deported. Go back.
Go back.
Go back.
Being born a person of colour outside Australia is a permanent mark that is used to render me, and people like me, irrelevant and voiceless in whitecolonised countries. This rule doesn’t apply to white politicians who were born overseas and migrated here, like Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott.
Perhaps I should feel powerful in my ability to poke the proverbial bear without even trying. I don’t.
Plenty of people have extended a hand of support, and I am grateful for this. The reality, though, is that however well-meaning they are, they cannot understand the personal toll that such abuse takes – on me, on my family and on my staff.
My daughter, Aisha, was 16 when I came into the public eye. Just a couple of years after that, on a Saturday night, we were walking along the bridge on the beautiful Brisbane River, enjoying the view and an increasingly rare moment of catching up. I casually tweeted some photos of this lovely scene with my daughter. A short time later an anonymous Twitter user responded:
Up until then, I had chosen to ignore the xenophobic messages sent my way, but this one really ate away at me. It felt so malicious and full of hate. I decided to expose it on my Facebook page. What followed was a seemingly endless stream of racist and offensive communications.
I was told that white Australia was the real victim, not a “whingeing” Muslim. People called my office to harass my staff, demanding to know how many Anzac Day dawn service ceremonies I had attended. An image of my face was photoshopped on to a flagwaving Islamic State militant and then spread online. One person even created an online petition calling for evidence that I had renounced my Pakistani citizenship.
My daughter was so burned by the experience that for years afterwards she did not want to discuss politics or my work at all.
Vicious insults and abuse hurt. So does advice to stay silent in the face of such vitriol. “Helpful” advice
like “they’re just trolls” or “just ignore them” rings hollow when it comes from people who haven’t had to worry about their own safety or that of their family. “Trolls” are real people sending hate-filled messages to other real people, who then have to live with the consequences. I’ve had days when I’ve wanted to crawl under the doona and never get out. Ever.
It took me a while to understand that the horrid, hateful backlash pitched at me is about who I am, and not necessarily what I stand for. The loathing always boils down to my identity as a migrant Muslim woman.
I did not expect this of Australia.
The relentless demands for me to prove my Australianness, while ridiculous, do hurt. I’ve dedicated the last eight years of my life to serving the people of New South Wales. I’ve given up my birthright to do this. I’m no longer a citizen of the country where generations of my family have lived, a country for whose independence they had fought. This was not easy. After filling out the forms to renounce my Pakistani citizenship, the papers sat in my desk drawer for many days. I could not bring myself to sign on the dotted line. I know it was only a piece of paper. But signing it had symbolic as well as actual implications.
I can see why so many would not do it. Why should we have to? Why should we be forced to extinguish ties with our roots, to deny who we are just to satisfy a misplaced sense of loyalty? This makes no sense in a country where almost one-third of us were born overseas and almost half of us have a parent born overseas. This only alienates people from engaging with democracy. How does forcing someone to renounce their citizenship of their country of birth guarantee their loyalty to their adopted country anyway? Surely it’s their track record, their integrity, their work that should be up for scrutiny and judgment. I know people who would make great representatives but don’t want to give up their ancestry. For me, sadly, even giving up my birthright isn’t enough. I’m still harassed constantly to prove my Australianness.
To those who question my Australianness: when you abuse me, that reflects on me, my family, my community, my heritage and migrants as a whole. We are not here to be insulted or marginalised if we don’t fall into the narrow conception of what you think it means to be “Australian”, or tolerated if you deem us to be Australian enough. You can’t whitewash a country with Black foundations.
I am made in Pakistan. I am proud of my roots. I’m even prouder of my heritage. Now Australia is my home. Yes, Australia did give me the opportunity to be changed and now to fight for change. That’s great, but don’t expect me to be eternally grateful and stay in the corner you’ve created for migrants, where you pat us on the head if we fit your notion of what an Australian is – but vilify us, silence us and try to hound us out of our homes if we don’t. My husband and I have worked hard to be where we are now. We are proud and upstanding citizens of this country and we make Australia a better place.
You can call me names. You can call me a maggot, a whore, a cockroach, a cow. You can demand I fuck off back to where I came from. Sorry, not sorry. This is my home. I’m not going anywhere. You will not grind me down. You will not shut me up. I’m not a maggot, a cockroach, a whore or a cow. I am a migrant. I am a Muslim. I am a woman. I am an engineer. I am here to stay.