I’ve been steadfastly refusing to engage with the stories about refugees in the media for some time now. Child abuse and rape on Manus and Nauru, bribing boats to turn around, the ‘Cambodia Deal’, boats which have apparently miraculously stopped. I saw the headlines, I saw the stories, but I couldn’t bring myself to engage. Even yesterday, when photos of a tiny child washed up on a beach were circulating, I resolutely closed my eyes and scrolled past.
Am I a cold-hearted, unfeeling monster? Do I not care about the plight of millions of people around the world, and many in my own backyard, suffering and dying trying to exercise their fundamental human right to seek asylum or refuge?
In 2009 I volunteered in Kenya and saw people living in some of the most dire situations imaginable – and this was in a country not at that time plagued by armed conflict. I was told that it was too dangerous for me to travel to the north of the country to volunteer with the refugee camps where more than 100,000 people were awaiting resettlement after fleeing persecution in countries such as Rwanda, Somalia and South Sudan. Today, that number is more than 160,000.
Having seen a tiny, tiny fraction of the corruption, violence and poverty that governments perpetrate on their citizens, and hearing first hand stories of people who had waited a decade or more to get out of refugee camps, I began to see why people would flee their own country for a better life. When a mother offered me her baby to take back to Australia so she could have a better life, I truly understood the depths people would go to to save themselves and their children.
I came back to Australia full of fire and began trying to raise awareness with my small circle of influence about these issues. I joined Twitter and began live tweeting during shows like Q&A and Go Back To Where you came from, using my experience and the knowledge I’d gained during the Masters of Law (Human Rights) I’d begun. I wrote to politicians and went to rallies and with hundreds, maybe even thousands of others, tried to effect change in anyway I could.
So when the Labor government slashed funding for humanitarian aid, I was disappointed. When we started sending people to offshore detention centres, I raged against it. When the ‘Malaysia Solution’ was brokered I realised our government didn’t care about people, only winning conservative votes. And when the Abbott-led Liberal party won government, I gave up. Each new conservative policy that was enacted drew me deeper into myself on these issues. A further cut to the humanitarian aid budget. Reduced refugee intake numbers. ‘Stopping the boats’. Push backs. Secret operations. The Children in Detention in report. As they happened I knew they had the power to hurt me deeply if I thought about them for more than five seconds. So I didn’t.
And so it came to seeing the body of a tiny child – not that much older than the baby a Kenyan mother had asked me to take back to Australia – and not being moved to do anything other than complain that someone had tweeted the picture into my feed.
Then this morning I logged onto Facebook and saw that three people from very different circles of friends, none of whom are prolific posters, had shared this video by Waleed Aly on The Project. Curious about what had prompted them to do so, I watched it.
And as the music played over images of people trying to flee, trying to escape, trying to get to a better life – a life like mine – something broke in me. I ugly cried – big, choking sobs and tears that streaked last night’s mascara down my face. I imagined Australia and its people opening our arms to welcome refugees in the way we did in the fifties and then again in the seventies and giving people – actual human people with loves and lives and struggles and hopes just like ours – a safe refuge, a home, where they can have the life they dream for their children. And I cried, and I cried, and I cried.
And as the emotions began to subside I realised what carefully cultivated apathy had cost me. I thought I was protecting myself, I thought that by not feeling the anger or desperation or sadness that comes with the politics of this issue, I was gaining the ability to function better as a human being, not buffeted by emotion.
But actually it cost me. It cost me a larger portion of my humanity than I dared admit.
So here is what I know:
Seeking refuge is a human right.
People fleeing persecution and death are not illegal immigrants.
National security is important and difficult to balance with migration policy. But a theoretical risk is never more important than the actual lives of human beings. We need to find a better way to balance these two issues.
As a country, we need to let compassion start driving our politics instead of politics driving our compassion.
Apathy and the fear that there’s nothing we can do to effect change is no better than the policies that leave people to die at sea, or in camps, or whilst fleeing.
I am what I am because of who we all are. People are people through people. Ubuntu.