this will be a banger
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So, I've lived in Australia for a little over three months now.
It's very similar to the US in a lot of ways, but vastly different in others.
For instance, health care here is so much better than the United States, and it's
amazing to not be living in constant fear of gun violence.
But Australia, like the US, has some really major problems.
While the United States has recently begun violating international law by deporting asylum
seekers who present themselves at the border, this has been Australian policy for the past 5 years.
While the US has been separating migrant parents from their children, Australia has been doing
this for years on their Manus and Nauru detention centers.
Now I'm not trying to say that one is worse than the other; both the US and Australia
are guilty of terrible atrocities.
I just want to shed some light on what is happening in Australia, since I barely heard
about it while I was in the US.
And maybe that's because we're inundated with so much of our own shit, I get that,
but we need to talk about what's happening in Australia, cause it's really bad.
So first, I think it's important we understand what international law dictates when it comes
to refugees and asylum-seekers.
In 1951, in the wake of World War 2, the Refugee Convention outlined international laws for
dealing with refugees affected by World War 2 in Europe, and over 140 countries signed on.
Then, in 1967, the Refugee Protocol was created, again with over 140 countries signed on.
The Protocol outlined similar rights for refugees as the Convention, but it removed the part
about it being related to World War 2 or Europe, meaning that it protects refugees across the
globe regardless of the conflict they're fleeing.
Its goal was to ensure that nobody was ever sent back to a place where they fleeing violence
or persecution, and the majority of the world's countries got on board with that.
Australia signed the convention and the protocol, while the United States signed just the protocol.
Both of these countries have a legal obligation to the international community to uphold the
Refugee Protocol.
So what exactly does the Protocol specify?
It says that refugees have a right to not be sent back to the country they fled.
It says they have a right to not be punished for entering a country "illegally".
It says they have a right to housing, work, education, public assistance, access to courts,
and ability to obtain travel and identification documents.
This was an agreement made amongst countries who had just seen the horrors of World War
2 and didn't want to repeat the same mistakes.
In 1939, the United States turned away the MS St. Louis, a boat with over 900 Jewish refugees on it.
That boat was forced to return to Europe where many of its passengers were killed by Nazis.
That is a real thing the United States did, and the subsequent Convention and Protocol
were intended to prevent that kind of thing from happening again.
But today, asylum-seekers who are presenting themselves at the US southern border are being
turned away -- in clear violation of the Protocol.
In Australia, entire boats of refugees are regularly turned away, again, in violation
of the Refugee Protocol.
So how did Australia get there?
How did they go from endorsing the Convention and the Protocol, to happily turning away
entire boats of refugees?
Of course, you can thank right-wing politicians for that.
In 2013, Tony Abbott and his political party, the Coalition, campaigned on a slogan of "Stop
the boats" and promised that if they won, they'd implement Operation Sovereign Borders.
The Coalition, by the way, is a political party made up of an alliance between two other
political parties: the right-wing Liberal and National parties.
When the Coalition won, they enacted Operation Sovereign Borders in open defiance of international law.
Though the law is clearly predicated on anti-immigrant fears and stereotypes, they pretend like it's
actually to help asylum-seekers.
The Coalition argues that because some of the asylum-seekers who try to come to Australia
end up drowning, that preventing all boats from coming to Australia would save the lives of asylum-seekers.
It's a pretty obvious attempt to dress up their shitty policy in the nicest way possible.
They realize it would be mean and politically incorrect to say "we hate immigrants and
we want a white nation," so instead they just say they're stopping the boats for
the wellbeing of asylum-seekers.
What they seem to be forgetting, or outright ignoring, is the fact that asylum-seekers
come to Australia precisely because they have no other option.
They're willing to risk death in the open ocean if it means they could maybe live a
safe life in Australia because they fear what will happen to them if they don't leave.
But now, they're taking the risk of getting on a boat to Australia, then being denied
entry and having to take another risk going back, plus they're returning to a place
that they where they literally fear death.
This policy makes no sense if you're actually trying to help asylum-seekers, but the right-wing is not.
Unfortunately, this has remained policy since 2013, and in fact, many asylum-seekers who
have arrived by boat have been sent to detention centers on Manus and Nauru island.
Manus is an island controlled by Papua New Guinea.
Nauru is a small island nation northeast of Papua New Guinea.
Australia has set up detention centers here specifically because they're not on Australian land.
They call them offshore processing centers, but they're really more like detention centers
or even concentration camps.
Australia claims they're "processing centers" because they're trying to find somewhere
to send the asylum-seekers, and while a few have been resettled in the US, the majority
are still there, years later.
These two detention centers have been around since 2001, but they were later closed and
then reopened in 2012.
The government's position is that if you try to arrive by boat, you can never be settled in Australia.
So for some people who had family who were granted asylum or refugee status in Australia
before 2013, if they tried to come over after 2013, they can now never live in the same
country as their family.
That's a separation of families that has no end in sight.
Australia's right wing government doesn't seem to care and doesn't seem to be listening
to pressure from protestors.
Because, believe me, there are people here who have been protesting Operation Sovereign
Borders and the Manus and Nauru detention centers for years.
Just in March there were protests across the country; nearly 10,000 people protested in Melbourne alone.
In July, a protest in Sydney drew hundreds of people calling for the detention centers
to be shut down and for the asylum-seekers to be brought to Australia.
"Bring them here! Bring them here! Bring them here!"
But the really weird thing is, even with protests like these regularly happening, Australians
in general don't seem to know much about Manus and Nauru.
At least, definitely not to the extent that Americans know about the family separations
happening at the southern US border.
I have no idea why that is, but finding information on US immigration stuff is relatively easy.
Several major new outlets are covering the situation.
Yes, the government is being intentionally obtuse and many news networks have had trouble
getting into or properly covering the US's detention centers because of the government's
lack of transparency -- but at least reporters are on the case.
In Australia, articles and news about Manus and Nauru are harder to come by.
There is some reporting on it, but not a lot.
I wish I could give you reasons for why this is, but I really don't know.
Every Australian I've spoken to says that it feels like the information on Manus and
Nauru is intentionally suppressed or ignored, which is just wild to me because it's so astoundingly unethical.
Like, the Refugee Protocol, which Australia has signed onto, clearly states that asylum-seekers
have a right to enter the country and apply for refugee status and to be settled in that
country, and Australia is laughing at that.
Amnesty International and the UN have both told Australia that its policy is illegal,
but it continues anyway.
And on top of that, there's tons of abuse and mistreatment and deaths
at the Manus and Nauru detention centers.
Like, even if the detention centers were perfectly pristine, what Australia is doing would still
be illegal, but it's just adding insult to injury.
Not only can asylum-seekers not enter the country, but they're then housed in horribly inhumane conditions.
From what I can tell from the limited news coverage, here's what's going on at Manus and Nauru.
Currently, over 1,600 people are being detained across both of them.
(And quick side note, 1,600 people would not be a lot to resettle in Australia.
In fact it would be a tiny blip in the overall population.
Why the hell can't they come to Australia?)
Anyway, more people have been detained on Manus and Nauru but some have been sent back
to their home countries -- which is exactly what the Refugee Protocol is mean to prevent
-- while others have been sent to unknown locations.
124 children are currently being detained on Nauru, and imagine being a kid there.
They're suffering psychological trauma that they will never be rid of.
Around 40 children have been born there and have never known life outside of a detention center.
Another 50 have spent more than half their lives there.
In total, since 2013, 12 people have died on Manus and Nauru.
In 2016, the Guardian released 2,000 reports from the detention centers that outlined systemic
abuse, assault, sexual assault, and self-harm.
For a while there was even a gag order on health officials who went there to treat detainees
that prevented them from detailing the abuse and neglect they saw inside the camps, though
after there were a ton of leaks anyway, the government backtracked on that.
In 2016, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch went undercover to Nauru and found tons of abuse.
The Human Rights Watch senior counsel said: "Driving adult and even child refugees to
the breaking point with sustained abuse appears to be one of Australia's aims on Nauru".
And there's a reason they went undercover; it's become nearly impossible for anyone
to visit the detention centers.
Politicians and journalists have been denied visas to Nauru, and the journalist visa suddenly
jumped from $200 to $8,000.
The UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child found "inhuman and degrading treatment, including
physical, psychological and sexual abuse, against asylum seeking and refugee children
living in the Regional Processing Centres. It is further concerned that
spending prolonged periods in such conditions is detrimental to the mental and physical
well-being of these children, and has led to some as young as 11 years attempting suicide
and engaging in other forms of self-harm."
The head of the Asia and Pacific bureau of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees said, "I have seen a little girl for example who was 12 years old in a catatonic
state who has not stepped out of her room in a month […] clinical psychiatrists and
professionals have determined that around 80 per cent of the asylum-seekers and refugees
in Nauru and Manus as well are suffering from post-traumatic stress and depression.
This is per capita one of the highest mental health problems levels that have been noted."
Some people have said that the detainees should be released into Papua New Guinea and Nauru,
but for one, those countries don't have the resources to accept refugees in the same
way that Australia does.
Australia is a wealthy nation with a lot of room, while Nauru is a relatively poorer small island nation.
It doesn't make sense to leave them on Nauru, but also, the locals in both Manus and Nauru
often hate the asylum-seekers.
They blame them for using up their government resources and want them to leave.
The asylum-seekers are deathly afraid of being left in Manus and Nauru because the locals
are so hostile to them.
In fact, the Manus detention center was officially closed in October of 2017, but as far as I
can tell, the detainees there are still in the detention center because they fear violence
if they leave and go into the rest of Manus where people hate them and they don't speak the language.
Plus, they're terrified to go home because they were literally fleeing violence, so they're
trapped with nowhere to go.
The Executive Director of the Human Rights Law Centre said "These innocent men are
in great danger but they have nowhere safe to go.
They're terrified of violence if they stay.
They're terrified of violence if they leave."
And the UN high commissioner for refugees has called this whole situation a "humanitarian emergency".
I think it's important to put faces and names to tragedies like these, so these are
the 12 people who have died on Manus and Nauru because
of the abuse and neglect of the Australian government.
Hamid died because he had an infection that wasn't treated properly on Manus and his
transfer to Australia was delayed.
Omid set himself on fire in protest and wasn't treated for hours on Nauru, and then had his
transfer to Australia delayed.
Fariborz died by suicide on Nauru after 5 years on the island with worsening mental health problems.
He had begged to see a psychologist to help him deal with his trauma, since he was tortured as a child.
What's happening on Manus and Nauru is beyond inhumane.
Now I want to show you some of the children who are still alive and at these detention centers.
This is Batol, she's 10 years old and came from Iran with her father and sister.
She's been on Nauru for over two and a half years.
This is Shamim and Misbah.
Shamim is 18, from Myanmar, and came with her mother and grandmother.
She wants to be an obstetrician, and she's been on Nauru for nearly 3 years.
Misbah is 13 and also from Myanmar.
She said "We ran away from Burma because of the raping, [and] things that happening
to the girls, and burning houses."
She's been on Christmas Island and now Nauru for a total of over 3 years now.
And those are just some of the children still there.
Also, Christmas island is another detention center that Australia has, though details
on it are scarce at this point.
It seems like the government aimed to close it in November of 2017 by moving detainees
to Nauru or Manus, but according to news outlets it looks like it may still be open.
Like I said, information on this stuff is hard to come by, so I'm mainly going by
what's been reported by SBS and the Sydney Morning Herald.
You'll be able to see all my sources in the description, and I recommend reading through
some of them because there are a lot of details I can't fit into this video.
But yeah, at the end of videos I like to suggest things that people can do to help, but in
this case I don't know what to do.
Things seem pretty hopeless.
If you're Australian, pressure your politicians to close Manus and Nauru and only vote for
politicians who will promise to accept all the detainees and bring them to Australia.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton seem pretty set on their
shitty racist agenda, so the only viable solution might be to vote them out.
If you're outside of Australia, as I think most of you are, I think the best thing you
can do is make a commotion about it.
Put international pressure on the Australian government to do the right thing.
I mean, they're not listening to Amnesty International or the literal UN, but mounting
pressure could eventually force change?
Maybe? I don't know.
I don't have the solutions here, I just know people need to be aware of this stuff.
So yeah, thanks for watching this video, and I'll see you next time.
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