Sparrow misses the point about ASIO, screening asylum seekers
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In an item redolent with irrelevant gossip from bygone eras, one-sided political claims and a view of Australian history as seen through a particular ideological prism, Jeff Sparrow, was unable to cite one instance where ASIO assessments of refugees have been improper or incorrect, nor was he able to demonstrate that security screening of refugees is somehow unjustified, illogical or immoral. Moreover, those of Sparrow’s ideological bent heartily criticised ASIO for many years for its part in the supposed poor screening of post-World War II refugees and immigrants with fascist or Nazi records. The bottom line is that some security screening of those entering Australia, whether as refugees, immigrants or visitors, is clearly required. Not least because we all live in a globalised society and economy, we cannot somehow quarantine Australia from the rest of the world by total exclusion of travel, and there are at least some foreigners who seek to enter Australia with ill intent. With regard to asylum seeking, Australia remains one of only seven countries between the Aegean and Arafura seas that are signatories to the 1951 Convention and we are the only first-world liberal democracy (and country of mass settlement) among them. The legal and moral dilemmas of our situation are complex and nuanced. Just what can you do, for example, when a claimant for asylum turns out to be a serious violator of international humanitarian law (IHL) and likely to remain so?
Sparrow’s further claim that receiving information from foreign governments is automatically an example of malign influence by such a government is simplistic nonsense. Obviously most of the information on foreigners coming to Australia has to come from somewhere overseas. But equally obviously the views of foreign governments are weighted accordingly, depending on their reliability and rule-of-law standards. Information from anywhere in a dictatorship (or compromised democracy such as Sri Lanka) is obviously treated with much more scepticism than information provided legitimately, in accordance with international law and UN processes, by the police force or security intelligence agency of a fellow liberal democracy that respects IHL. Finally, the end of the civil war in Sri Lanka again highlights serious problems with applying the 1951 Refugee Convention and its underlying concepts to today’s realities. Both sides in this war disobeyed international humanitarian law but the Tamil Tigers were much guiltier in this regard. Despite the propaganda emanating from Tiger sympathisers among Australia’s Tamil community, the Sri Lankan government is fully entitled to screen the population of areas previously controlled, viciously, by the Tigers in order to segregate Tiger combatants and committed supporters of terrorism. As long as such screening and detention meets IHL norms, it does not qualify as persecution in terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention. With appropriate safeguards, returning committed violators of IHL to Sri Lanka for criminal trial or temporary detention under the Laws of Armed Conflict is not necessarily a breach of the non-refoulement principle governing the treatment of asylum seekers or even refugees. As understandably no other Convention signatory seems willing to accept serious IHL violators, the imperfect but necessary alternative of administratively detaining them indefinitely in Australia, as it stretches into years, ends up being improper and eventually even inhumane. |
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14 Comments
That would be ideological filter, not prism. A prism breaks light down into a spectrum representing all its components, hardly the analogy you want.
How could anyone “cite one instance where ASIO assessments of refugees have been improper or incorrect” when their assessments and reasoning are kept secret from the public? That was one of the major points of the article.
And how can you say there are “serious problems with applying the 1951 Refugee Convention and its underlying concepts to today’s realities. Both sides in this war disobeyed international humanitarian law…”? Obviously the German regime disobeyed international humanitarian law inWWII, but so did we - the carpet-bombing of Dresden and the nuclear weapons dropped on Japanese cities being only two examples. Doesn’t seem that different from “today’s realities”, particularly if you consider the role played by freedom fighters/terrorists like the Partisans.
Neil James
With all due respect, Mr. James, the Refugee Convention is not about who is ‘guiltier’ - what an unfortunate term- but about persecution and torture for POLITICAl, religious, ethnic, racial or a membership of a particular social group reasons. According to the Convention, and The Regugee Law by Hathaway, the State or State sponsored perpetrators should not be part of refugee assessment processes.
We had numerous examples when government interefered with refugee assessment cases of prominent dissidents from the former Soviet Union. Same with China.
Politics should not be a part of assessing process. Many Serbs who were also victims of the Balkan war could not even dream of getting a refugee status as they were all automatically classified as terrorists.
ASIO is a very important Australian organisation. And we put trust in people responsible for our national security. So there will be no ‘oops’ - weapons of mass destruction misunderstanding or ‘oops’ children were not overboard but we had election looming. It is too serious to make a joke or take it lightly. Innocent people can get hurt. And you have already ‘assessed’ all Tamils as ‘guiltier’.
Noone is against screening people coming to Australia. But then, again we seem to concentrate on dinghy boats and airports. We do not seem to be very successful in monitoring smuggling hard drugs into Australia. There are plenty of victims here.
We have to trust ASIO and strongly believe they protect us and our national interests. Otherwise we would be listening to nasty comments, as I did recently, that the only reason to highlight refugee-terrorist links (again) is to solicit for full body scanners. Apparently very costly and not terribly useful. Fifteen full body scanners at the Amsterdam airport failed to detect a terrorist plot attempt.
Neil James - If we used your criteria, then George W Bush, Tony Blair and others should never have been given permission to land in this country, and neither should Dick Cheney.
There’s enough evidence to hand now, that at best queries the legitimacy of the invasion of Iraq certainly, and probably Afghanistan. There’s plenty of evidence about the role of the CIA in its rendition programmes; the absolute disregard, no scathing disgraceful and torturous behaviour re ‘suspects’, and the killings either deliberate or via ‘inhumane and degrading’ treatment at too many US run prisons. If you came out castigating and shrieking calls of injustice and/or crimes against humanity just once; or criticize both the US and Britain (with our agreeance)the breaking of many Geneva Conventions or in fact several other well documented and known Laws, perhaps I’d give your comments here some credence. At best, all you’ve ever annunciated are pro-govt, pro-war utterances that I find disgraceful and sadly pathetic! I think it’s called, ‘justifying your own position’? We have too many avenues to educate ourselves these days. I don’t have to take your word or the PM’s or the President of the US either, for that matter.
This country provides information, monies and support for several dictatorships that I know of; Indonesia, Israel, Burma and Sri Lanka to name just 4. Of course there’s our slavish following of everything the US thinks and does, regardless of the lives lost, persecuted or tortured. You haven’t answered the main question; how can people be deemed genuine refugees entitled to asylum, but at the same time be considered some security threat? To whom? To what? Sri Lanka’s so called democracy, peace and just treatment of its citizens? Oh please!
By the way, Australia isn’t “between the Aegean and Arafura seas”.
Just remember, it is smart arse buggers like those that comment in threads like this that will be the first to undergo remediation by ASIO when the time comes
Oh dear Neil, bending history yet again are we, I thought it a pity that Crikey terminated our debate over Afghanistan by not publishing my last letter, but Liz 45 has you fairly well typed. Let me just say this, in the modern globalised world of which we are a part, our slavish following of not only the rule of the universe by the USA but also by their psychopathic corporations, and our willingness to kill civilians in the cause of the “war on terror’ has actually included us, with them, in the ranks of terrorist states and we are no better than the Hitlers or Genghis Khans. In many ways we are a lot worse, because we hypocritically pretend we are doing it for a reason other than to enrich the real “masters of war”, the US (and British) military-industrial complex. The real sadness in all of this, is that in Australia, (like the UK) it is currently a so-called Labor party perpetuating this obscene myth.
Have to agree with Bob the Builder. Our Neil seems to have missed the point completely. I think he was in the military and something to do with intelligence matters so no surprise that he goes for the subtext over the obvious. And what’s the deal with “the Aegean and Arafura seas “? Is it just alliteration or is it a coded message to a colleague?
Hey Neil, how many Afghanis have to die before the US+ can start on that pipeline from the Caspian Sea to the West? The yanks must be really pissed off at having to spend so much money without the ‘pot of gold’ or in this case, $16 TRILLIONs worth of oil and gas - just lying there! President Karzai was an ‘oil man’ in the US prior to him being planted, I mean elected as president of Afghanistan! He fluctuates between being angry(ha!ha!) at the huge numbers of murdered civillians to passing laws that allow men to rape their wives, and yet the ‘end game’ is so far away! Damn!
I think they’ve killed enough oil workers, unionists and pesty journalists in Iraq who are getting in the road of the spoils in that country? Those huge oil deals still haven’t passed through the so-called parliament in Baghdad though. Perhaps after the ‘elections’? - in March I think?????I know who the real terrorists are! And our names are on the list!
Lev Tolstoy was very prophetic when he said that ‘The biggest threat to our civilisation is a Genghis Khan with a … telephone’.
So it could not be Osama Bin Laden as they do not have that facility in the caves of the Hindukush. If they did our sophisticated satellites would detect them and the rascal would be easily located and captured.
Wot BobtheB & PatB sed - re”..unable to cite one instance where ASIO assessments of refugees have been improper or incorrect..”. Kneel J has an unappealing tendency to constantly demand that we trust our betters, … well, his anyway. Evidence of their incompetence & mendacity just proves his point that we don’t need to know, just obey.
Neil, did you read James’ article?
He did not claim that “security screening of refugees is somehow unjustified, illogical or immoral” or that it should not happen.
What he said is that ASIO should make public enough of its findings that the public can understand the reasoning behind them:
“[They may be] dangerous people. But in that case, why not make the information available so that the public can make up its own mind?”
We’re still waiting for an answer.
Self styled defence expert Neil James ,and motor mouth to boot, is now an ‘expert’ on ASIO and Sri Lanka. Before penning an article such as the one above it would do no harm to do a bit of homework.
The causes of the civil war stem back to 1947 and the moves by the Sinhalese to marginalise the Tamils culminating in a government backed massacre of Tamils in Colombo in 1983. Having served the Australian Government in Sri Lanka it did not take me long to work out who was committing the bulk of the atrocities.
As always in the region the Australian Government did not want to rock the boat and sided with the SLG in the civil war.
Tamil Tigers were not classified as terrrorists until after 9/11, when the US went to war on the side of poverty and dispossession. Until that time former Tamil soldiers were accepted as refugees in Australia.
ASIO/AFP have accepted the advice of Sri Lankan and US sources in making their assessment. Both are driven, the US with its ideology of making the world free from terrorism without seeking to address the root causes and the Sinhalese as the victor agasinst the hated Tamils.
The US has no other source than the SLG, so it is a very closed circle.
Because of the personalities involved ASIO is dominated by the AFP which amongst things is a fairly unsophisticated organisation.
Focus on the lack of leadership in the ADF and you will do all of us a big favour, but then given a craven desire to be accepted by authority that would no doubt be impossible.
Bruce Haigh
neil, I also have extended family members and many friends and acquaintances, who were deemed ‘genuine asylum seekers’ from Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and other places in Central America. The role of the US in all the ‘civil wars’ is well known. In fact, many of the murderous dictators and military people did their ‘training’ in the US. A well known retired CIA operative called Robert Boer has seen their diplomas on the walls. It was fortunate for these people, whose lives were in peril, that those in authority didn’t listen to operatives who slavishly followed the US line?
It should be stressed, that Margaret Thatcher came out applauding Pinnochet when the discussion was happening whether he’d have to face war crimes charges? She thought that this cruel and vicious butcher ‘did good things’? My friends would disagree. There was J Edgar Hoover’s hatred of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, and we all know how that ended don’t we? I’ve read many instances, where CIA operatives have been killing people around the world who happen to be on their ‘hit list’, as they’ve also kidnapped innocent people of middle eastern descent and held them, tortured them and harrassed them for years? If people don’t know, they should widen their reading sources on the net - and other places!
I hardly think these four Tamils and their toddlers should be feared, or accused of having some threat over the rest of us! If so, tell us what it is, and the evidence etc. Hiding behind a silent ‘we never divulge our findings’ is not good enough any more. It obviously is for someone like you, who agrees with all illegal activities of the world’s security people, but not for me.I ‘ve seen, heard and read too many horror stories, and our country is at best, guilty by association and appeasement!One local case that adds weight to this view, is East Timor, the role of Indonesia, and how Australia helped in the 60’s which resulted in the deaths of maybe 3 million, not to mention the at least 30 yrs of murder and torture in East Timor. We have blood dripping off our hands over the last 50-60 yrs, and we continue??I feel ashamed!