It was my second week in Australia when a comment about refugees came up letting me completely shocked. I was spending few days at an Australian family’s house last year, time the news about Syria’s conflicts and refugees’ requests for asylum were boiling in the news. “Why do we have to receive them? We have nothing to do with those people”, said the old lady in a kind of perverse and naive way. Well, I gave her the benefit of ignorance and just asked the reasons for that opinion. She gave me back a very rational cause, the economic instability, followed by some racist points.
Although the sudden increase in the number of people can shake the government system, what this lady had forgotten, or maybe ignored, was the conditions which created the situation. At least 270 thousand of Syrians died along the nearly five years conflict, 11 million had to leave their houses, that many faced violence and miserable conditions in the refugee camps. Among those people, are teenagers and kids who can just absorb from the whole war the unreasonable violence. So, what about them? The worst part is there are many of that “lady”.
The Cast From The Storm documentary promises to be an eye-opening movie about the subject and the negativity the refugees are surrounded by. “We are not here to invade (…) People come to this land to feel safe”, said one former asylum seeker to news.com.au. But I am not so sure how effective the production can be on a scenery where a politician can manifest racist and xenophobic speeches on the TV. First time I heard Pauline Hanson attacking immigrants I had to look up at the internet to check if I had really heard those comments. And they were real.
She has made, on air, bigoted suggestions about Aboriginal people, talked openly how the Muslims should be banned from the country expressing her generalized belief of a connection between them and terrorism, she has attacked Asian immigrants and charged them for what she called “terror on the streets” and amid all this probably has forgotten Australia is a country of immigrants. Pauline is polemic, her figure has generated criticism, but also supporters. The feeling about refugees and non-Europeans immigrants can be smelled on the streets.
Besides that, there is the chaos in Manus and Nauru islands, the Australia’s offshore refugees’ detention camps, where those people who were running away from the war have to face indiscriminate violence in a kind of limbo between their lost world and a decent life. The Chasing Asylum documentary describes assaults, sexual abuse, child exploitation and cruel living conditions endured by those people looking for a place in Australia. They are held in the camps by the Australian government until further decision and media is totally banned in there.
I can’t understand anti-immigrants politics in a country where a quarter of the population born in another country, discrimination against the first known people to arrive in Australia, and how such a beautiful nation can stay silent to this off-stage happenings in the refugees’ camps. It´s time to think beyond.
