"And whatever the facts turn out to be, Morrison has treated the Australian public with contempt."
"And whatever the facts turn out to be, Morrison has treated the Australian public with contempt." Photo: Andrew Meares







These facts we know: There are confirmed reports of Tamil
refugees headed for Australia. They are Sri Lankan Tamils who had gone
to India and set out fro Puducherry.. Their English has a Sri Lankan
accent, and their Tamil does not have a strong Indian-Tamil accent, so
it is quite likely that they had been in India for only a short time.
India has not signed the UN's Refugees Convention.



One boat was certainly carrying 153 people: 84 men, 32 women
and 37 children. We have the names of four of the people on that boat. A
person on that boat has been in contact with people in Australia. They
expressed concern about the boat’s engine failing. They asked for help.
They told the media they were Sri Lankan refugees seeking asylum in
Australia.




The boat last made contact with Australia by phone on June 28
at about 10am. At that time, the boat was 175 nautical miles from
Christmas Island. 



That same Saturday, Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan was on
Christmas Island. She said immigration staff on Christmas Island were
“on standby waiting for instructions”. She said she had been told two
boats had been intercepted. She told the ABC: “They're saying that two
boats have been intercepted and the ship on which they're being loaded
is in Christmas Island waters.”




That same day Scott Morrison refused to confirm the boats’
existence despite the fact that people in Australia had spoken to people
on board. He said that there were no “significant incidents at sea” to
report. He would not say whether any boat had reached Australian waters,
or whether the government had taken any action.



The known facts suggest several Tamil refugees reached the
waters off Christmas Island last weekend. The facts make it apparent
they included several children, and it is easy to infer they would have
been distressed: it is a long and uncomfortable journey. They were
seeking asylum from the Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka, which has an
appalling record of mistreating Tamils who had (or may have had) any
connection with the Tamil Tigers.



From this point on, the facts are more difficult to pin down.
There is reason to think the refugees have been handed over to the Sri
Lankan navy. They have not made phone contact again since Saturday. That
suggests either their phone has been confiscated or disabled, or they
are in some other difficulty. Morrison refuses
to say anything about the issue because it is an “on-water matter”.  A
Sri Lankan spokesman told ABC Radio: ‘‘We are not aware of any
arrangements of the Australian navy handing over refugees, to Sri Lankan
navy’’, which looks like a denial, but leaves plenty of room to move.



All that can be said with any confidence is at least 153
refugees have tried to get to Australia; they have disappeared; any
decent human being would be concerned about their safety and their fate;
and a minister of the Crown refuses to tell the public anything: he
won’t even acknowledge or confirm known facts.



Morrison officially calls boat people “illegal” in an attempt
to convey the impression that they are criminals, when in fact they
commit no offence at all by coming here as they do. He officially tells
us he is “protecting” us from the “illegals” and even changed the name
of his department to “Immigration and Border Protection”. It is all a
cynical exercise designed to persuade a gullible public that we are
being protected from criminals when, in fact, we are mistreating
innocent, frightened human beings.



Morrison knows if the refugees arrived at Christmas Island he
would not have been able to send them back to Sri Lanka without seeing
whether they had legitimate claims for protection. If it turns out that
he did hand them over to the Sri Lankan authorities, it is a clear
breach of our obligations under the Refugees Convention. And sending
men, women and children back to a murderous regime where they are likely
to be persecuted makes him unfit to be a minister of the Crown.



Anyone who troubles to look behind the political rhetoric can
identify Morrison’s lies. But now he wants to hide the facts:
presumably so he can maintain his ignoble boast that he has “stopped the
boats”.  What he overlooks, now as before, is that he is playing with
the lives of innocent people and, almost as bad, he is destroying this
country’s reputation for decency and a fair go.



And whatever the facts turn out to be, Morrison has treated
the Australian public with contempt. The public have a legitimate
interest in knowing what is being done, in our name, to people who have
done nothing worse than ask for our help. Morrison either knows the fate
of the refugees or he does not.  If he does, he should tell us: either
that they have been rescued or helped, or that they have been sent to
Sri Lanka.  The alternative is that he does not know, in which case he
should be sacked for incompetence.



We should no longer be treated as if we do not care about the fate of other human beings.



Julian Burnside is a lawyer and human-rights advocate.