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Letter to Senator Macdonald. GetUp! Australia Heads or tails. Life or Death Campaign
This
is a letter sent to Senator Macdonald through the GetUp! Campaign to
encourage Senators to vote against the proposed changes to the Migration
Act, including the deportation of Asylum Seekers with a 50% risk of
facing harm, torture or death. Please follow this link and write to your
Senator.
Dear Senator Macdonald
I am
extremely concerned with Scott Morrison’s latest announcements of
deporting asylum seekers based on the notion of a 50% or less chance of
torture or serious harm. I have particular concerns about women and
children seeking asylum. The specifics concerning gender specific
torture or harm are never discussed or exposed, in a debate about asylum
seekers which is generally silent. The following is an excerpt from a letter I sent to the Prime Minister and Minister for Women in December 2013.
I hope the following influences your decision to vote against Scott
Morrison’s proposal to return asylum seekers to the risk of harm,
torture and death.
In a
journal article published in the journal of Refugee studies, “Marginal
Women, Marginal Rights: Impediments to Gender-Based Persecution Claims
by Asylum-seeking Women in Australia”, McPherson et. al (2011) have
identified two barriers to women’s claims of Gender Based Persecution:
Emergence Barriers, and Assessment Barriers. Emergence Barriers speak to
the factors impeding articulation of a claim. Although the Australian
Department of Immigration and Citizenship has responded to the authors
of this journal article, the following were not addressed:
Women
applicants should systematically be interviewed separately from their
spouse and should be allocated a female case officer, interviewer and
interpreter.
Case
officers should receive training and advice, from appropriately
qualified staff working in the women’s violence services or refugee
trauma support services, to help them understand the psychological
effects of trauma, and its links to non-disclosure.
Every negative decision should be independently reviewed by a second
officer or panel. Applicants should be systematically informed, from the
outset, that asylum requests may be based on claims of GBP.
This article also highlights that:
“The
bases upon which clients of our interviewees made asylum claims
included sex slavery, rape, sexual abuse and attack, fear of honour
killings, female genital mutilation, domestic abuse, emotional abuse,
one-child policies, discrimination due to sexual orientation or feminist
political activism, children being under threat, general religious
restrictions on women, sexual harassment, denial of education, forced
marriages, slavery, trafficking, and imprisonment” (p. 331)
It
is my concern that this Government’s hard-line stance on Asylum Seekers
and ‘turning back the boats’ has become instrumental in ensuring that
the reasons women seek asylum remain silent, through the absence of
leadership highlighting the atrocities asylum seekers are fleeing from,
particularly women. It is also my concern that this Government’s
hardline stance and popularity on the issue, has become instrumental to
the increase in expressions of hatred and vilification of asylum
seekers, particularly noticeable across social media forums.
Once
again, this Government’s leadership highlighting reasons women flee
asylum is absent and your Government makes no move to challenge this
growing discourse. This only serves to further oppress and harm women,
fleeing abhorrent levels of violence which ordinary citizens in
Australia could never imagine. It can be summed up by this quote:
“Before
atrocities are recognized as such, they are authoritatively regarded as
either too extraordinary to be believable or too ordinary to be
atrocious. If the events are socially considered unusual, the fact that
they happened is denied in specific instances; if they are regarded as
usual, the fact that they are violating is denied: if it’s happening,
it’s not so bad, and if it’s really bad, it isn’t happening (MacKinnon
2006: 3, cited in McPherson, et. al, 2011).
The
Hon Judi Moylan MP states in her article “Desperation, Displacement and
Detention: Australia’s Treatment of Asylum Seekers Past and Present”
Prison Service Journal (2013) that:
“It
is axiomatic that tough deterrent policies have not stopped boat
arrivals and it is unlikely that any civilised jurisdiction can invoke
penalties so harsh, that they stop people escaping unimaginable
brutalities. Managing the human dimensions of refugees fleeing war and
civil unrest will require a return to regional processing, including
‘effective protections’ and a commitment to resettlement by
participating host countries as indicated by UNHCR”
It
is my concern that there is a plethora of research which highlights that
this Government and the former Government’s stance on off shore
processing, only seeks to place those seeking asylum, particularly women
seeking asylum under more hardship and harm and as the Government’s
policies encourage this.
Senator
McDonald, considering the above information, I implore you to vote
against Scott Morrison’s proposed changes to deport asylum seekers
within the proposed changes to the Migration Act.
Yours faithfully
Patricia Corry
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