like a sore thumb
Shall we take bets on how long it will take for the general public to tire of the Cornelia Rau story?
Typically I would have written a larger piece about this tale of a grotesque system, but in all honesty I don't have it in me. I've really just lost a little purpose when it comes to dissecting our prevailing culture of carelessness. What use do my words really serve when people don't want to listen? The country has spoken and voted for this ship of fools, again, and have thus explicitly approved the arrogant, lawless, dehumanising approach that led to such an occurrence - who am to question them?
For those of you who are not native to Australia, the skinny here is as follows - Australians just love locking up refugees and asylum seekers. It's our national pastime. In an exciting new development we now also lock up those that look remotely like they could be from the former two groups. Such was the case when we learnt this weekend that the Government had wrongly incarcerated a mentally ill, permanent Australian resident for 10 months for this very reason.
How could such a thing happen, you may ask. Well, apparently a failure to provide an identity when you are having a schizophrenic episode is reason enough to be sent to an immigration detention centre. Yes, this means if you bang your head, have loss of memory, and drop your wallet somewhere, you too can win yourself a stint on a stretcher in a high security hell hole.
To provide a little background, you should know that Australia is completely without peer when it comes to the durations we detain refugees and asylum seekers while we work out what to do with them. What's more, we also enjoy detaining children, flouting the UN charter as we go. But we don't stop there.
We keep these vermin in abhorrent conditions for so long that we completely fry their minds, make them suicidal and drive them to self-mutilation. Many of them, who risked their lives to leave their country for fear of persecution, have begged to go home to a great danger or certain death rather than stay in these conditions a moment longer. But we don't even let them do that. Why would we when we can hold them until they are a babbling mess, with absolutely no working grey matter intact, and then deport them back to their country of origin?
Thankfully we have politicians and their henchpeople to carry out all this nasty stuff well away from our consciousness; for our part all we have to do is turn our shoulder and look away. You occasionally still sense there are some terribly vile things are taking place somewhere in the country but you're provided enough distractions through important celebrities and sports to keep your mind occupied and away from the dangerous territory of independent thought.
It's a great system and it works a treat. Advance Australia Fair.
Typically I would have written a larger piece about this tale of a grotesque system, but in all honesty I don't have it in me. I've really just lost a little purpose when it comes to dissecting our prevailing culture of carelessness. What use do my words really serve when people don't want to listen? The country has spoken and voted for this ship of fools, again, and have thus explicitly approved the arrogant, lawless, dehumanising approach that led to such an occurrence - who am to question them?
For those of you who are not native to Australia, the skinny here is as follows - Australians just love locking up refugees and asylum seekers. It's our national pastime. In an exciting new development we now also lock up those that look remotely like they could be from the former two groups. Such was the case when we learnt this weekend that the Government had wrongly incarcerated a mentally ill, permanent Australian resident for 10 months for this very reason.
How could such a thing happen, you may ask. Well, apparently a failure to provide an identity when you are having a schizophrenic episode is reason enough to be sent to an immigration detention centre. Yes, this means if you bang your head, have loss of memory, and drop your wallet somewhere, you too can win yourself a stint on a stretcher in a high security hell hole.
To provide a little background, you should know that Australia is completely without peer when it comes to the durations we detain refugees and asylum seekers while we work out what to do with them. What's more, we also enjoy detaining children, flouting the UN charter as we go. But we don't stop there.
We keep these vermin in abhorrent conditions for so long that we completely fry their minds, make them suicidal and drive them to self-mutilation. Many of them, who risked their lives to leave their country for fear of persecution, have begged to go home to a great danger or certain death rather than stay in these conditions a moment longer. But we don't even let them do that. Why would we when we can hold them until they are a babbling mess, with absolutely no working grey matter intact, and then deport them back to their country of origin?
Thankfully we have politicians and their henchpeople to carry out all this nasty stuff well away from our consciousness; for our part all we have to do is turn our shoulder and look away. You occasionally still sense there are some terribly vile things are taking place somewhere in the country but you're provided enough distractions through important celebrities and sports to keep your mind occupied and away from the dangerous territory of independent thought.
It's a great system and it works a treat. Advance Australia Fair.
posted by W at 11:24 pm
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