Australian government tells Myanmar nationals they won’t be forced to return
The Australian government has sought to reassure more than 3,300 Myanmar nationals in Australia that it won’t force them to return when their visas expire.
But despite mounting calls to provide greater reassurance to Myanmar nationals in Australia, Canberra has stopped short of across-the-board visa extensions or offers of asylum, insisting the issues will be dealt with on a caseby-case basis.
Australia’s immediate past ambassador to Myanmar, Nicholas Coppel, told Guardian Australia the government needed to provide more security to visa holders, saying they were in “in limbo” and should be offered a pathway to permanent residency as “this crisis shows no signs of ending”.
With hundreds of civilians killed by security forces in Myanmar since the 1 February military coup, the Australian government has been urged to grant visa extensions similar to those given to
Hong Kong nationals last year.
There were 3,366 visa holders from Myanmar in Australia at the end of February, government figures show, about half of them students.
Senior Labor frontbenchers have written to government ministers to say: “No one should be involuntarily deported to Myanmar if they don’t want to go back.”
In response to questions from Guardian Australia, a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs said Myanmar citizens who wished to remain in Australia “should contact the department to ensure they are aware of the range of options available to extend their stay and remain lawful”.
“Australia is not considering removals given the current situation in Myanmar and the restricted travel options caused by Covid,” the spokesperson said.
Australia provided protection to individuals consistent with international human rights obligations, the spokesperson added, and “does not return individuals to situations where they face persecution or a real risk of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary deprivation of life or the application of the death penalty”.
The spokesperson said individuals who wished to seek Australia’s protection “may be granted permanent protection provided they are also able to fulfil the relevant visa criteria, which includes the health, character and security requirements that apply to all Australian visas”.
“However, each case is assessed on its individual merits and protection visa decisions are not based on broad assumptions about the safety in particular countries,” the spokesperson said.
April Khaing, a representative of the Global Movement for Myanmar Democ
racy, said the government needed to offer Hawke-government style amnesties and asylum to visa holders.
“This will ensure those currently residing in Australia are not required to return to Myanmar where they will face the violence and oppression of the military junta,” she told a parliamentary hearing in Canberra on Tuesday.
“We urgently request these amnesties to be extended to the immediate families of those already here to join them.”
Coppel, who served as Australia’s ambassador to Myanmar from 2015 to 2018, said Australia should move quickly to give the small number of Myanmar nationals in Australia security over their futures.
The former envoy said an immediate announcement on the extension of all temporary visas held by Myanmar nationals should be followed by the establishment of a pathway to permanent residency, and said other countries had moved far more swiftly to reassure Myanmar nationals.
“There is a clear humanitarian argument: we cannot push these people to return to Myanmar,” Coppel said.
“But this crisis shows no sign of ending, we don’t know how or when it might end, and in the meantime, Myanmar nationals here are left in limbo. They can’t establish lives here, their employment prospects are limited, they need certainty, and I think it makes sense to establish a pathway to permanent residency for those who want it.”
Australia, too, Coppel said, needed to be more forceful in its advocacy for the release of Australian economist Sean Turnell.
He said Turnell was not a victim of hostage diplomacy: Myanmar was not looking to leverage Turnell in a dispute with Australia, but that the Myanmar military “totally wrongly” suspected Turnell of wrongdoing because of his close association with Aung San Suu Kyi.
“The Australian government should not be shy about being stronger in its calls for his release,” Coppel said.
“This is a brutal regime, they are bullies, the idea that quiet diplomacy, that softly, softly is going to be effective is laughable, the only thing they understand is brute force and very strong statements.”
Australian government officials have argued their response to the coup has involved “active, engaged and sustained diplomacy”.
Ridwaan Jadwat, who is in charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s southeast Asia division, brushed off criticism that a phone call between an Australian defence force leader and Myanmar’s deputy commander in chief had been used by the regime as a propaganda tool.
Jadwat said the call was made to express concern about Turnell and “there were elements of that call” that resulted in some additional contact with the detained Australian.
“But in no way are we seeking to legitimise [the military regime] and we will not ever do that. We will try to use our lines of communication with the regime where needed in a limited fashion to prosecute our national interests,” Jadwat said.
school. This was how you knew he was a good guy: just a donkey for me, thanks. It was the late 1990s, I was younger than 10, and South Africa’s democracy was brand new. The country’s flag was brand new and we felt like we were the first children getting to draw it.
Outside of school I watched a show called Kideo: like a rainbow nation Sesame Street, but the characters were an anxious tortoise, Molly Metronome, and a donkey named Mr Chinwag. (In 1996 it won third place in Germany’s Prix Jeunesse, beating Sesame Street). Mr Chinwag was ever cheerful. He wore a green hat decorated with vegetables and operated a fruit stall shaped like an apple.
But there was Eeyore too, I suppose. And this was a better preparation for the lesson donkeys teach: gloomy and resigned to your fate. “It’s all for naught”, says Pooh’s companion. The Philosophical problem “Buridan’s Ass” imagines a hungry, thirsty donkey needing to choose between a bale of hay and a bucket of water. It dies.
I listened to Adam Curtis talking about his documentary Can’t Get You Out of My Head recently. It is about individualism, feeling helpless and the very state of the world. He described the internet as a modern ghost story: the algorithms determined to show you things based on your past behaviour and the past behaviour of others – so you are haunted by these previous clicks and word searches, and it is impossible to escape. Doomed, doomed, doomed. The ass hee-haws from its paddock. It is the pitiful, wretched cry of a beast that can grow so sick from mourning the loss of a companion that it dies. Benjamin in Animal Farm: “Life would go on as it had always gone on - that is, badly.”
Even Christ’s donkey, GK Chesterton imagines, turns bitter in its old age:
Everything is terrible. Even the donkeys might be terrible. They hold a strange power over people. A 2003 story in the Guardian reported that the UK charity Donkey Sanctuary “took in £13m” in a single year. “In donations, it receives more than Age Concern, Mencap and the Samaritans.” In 2017 it was £38.3m. Then again, who can blame these donors, when here is a donkey foal wagging its tail as it rocks in a hammock.
In Lebanon I once stayed at a centuries-old house that had a retired donkey living in the garden. It lay in the sun like an old dog and wore a light blue collar decorated with small flowers made from beaten tin. And there were those ears. Those hopeful, ridiculous ears, with their tuft of fur in the middle.
We have been riding on donkeys’ backs for 5,000 years. “No donkey can cart / what weighs down your heart,” goes an East African proverb. But there is something about how profoundly sad they sound that either jolts you out of your own sorry state – or, well: misery, company and so on.
“I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, / if they could,” says Bottom – his head transformed into a donkey’s – in Midsummer Night’s Dream: “But I will not stir / from this place, do what they can: I will walk up / and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear / I am not afraid.
“The Nature of … ” is a column by Helen Sullivan dedicated to interesting animals, insects, plants and natural phenomena. Is there an intriguing creature or particularly lively plant you think would delight our readers? Let us know on Twitter @helenrsullivan or via email: helen.sullivan@theguardian.com
Democratic proposals like raising the minimum wage than under previous administrations. Their support makes such policies easier to pass and more likely to be enduring.
Something even more important is at stake. For decades, corporate America has been a key pillar in the Republican coalition. That pillar is starting to crack, providing an opportunity for Democrats to weaken a dangerously extremist party which poses an existential threat to American democracy.
As big business flees the wreckage of the Republican party, the best thing to do for the future of the country is welcome it into the Democratic coalition – with conditions.
Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University, and the host of the podcast America Explained