6 September 2001 Edition
Tampa refugee crisis raises many questions
BY ROISIN DE ROSA ([email protected])
Any young computer games addict knows from playing `Age of Empires' that slaves represent wealth. The capture of many Africans and their export as slaves to America was the economic basis of the growth and development of that economy.
So how can we explain the refusals of the so-called ``developed countries'' now to welcome the hundreds of young able-bodied people who try to leave their native lands in search of employment?
Ireland needs 285,000 extra workers to maintain its huge growth rate, yet the Dublin government has gone to great lengths to keep them out. Why?
Is it because the nature of economic relations has fundamentally changed with the age of capitalism: that the cost-benefit of immigrant labour weighs against admitting new workers? Or is it that the dominant ideology of consumerism and insatiable greed has brought with it xenophobia, and widespread hatred of the outsider, which overrules economic sense and the profit motive.
At the moment Fortress Europe, and the ``developed'' rich economies, clearly prefer to keep the penniless of the third world locked up within their national frontiers. Instead, the capital is taken over to them, where at phenomenally cheap labour costs, factories for multinationals churn out computers, plastic toys, electronic components, etc.
The Tampa crisis
Whatever the answer to these questions, they lie at the heart of why 438 Afghan refugees spent last week on freight ship The Tampa, anchored in the Indian Ocean with little food, water, shelter or medication for the sick. Captain Rinnan on the Tampa reported that many of the refugees were very sick indeed.
The Norwegian container ship had gone to their aid as their own boat got into difficulties and began to sink. The Tampa rescued the refugees and was taking them to their nearest point of land, the Christmas Islands, Australian territory, which international convention obliges them to do. The political representatives on the Christmas Islands declared that they were happy to receive these refugees.
However, the Australian government refused to allow them to land, instead sending a 37-strong boarding party of Special Armed Forces to take control of the ship. They reportedly attempted to steer the Tampa out of Australian territorial waters, in contravention of all recognised international practice.
Under the UN 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 protocol, to both of which Australia is a signatory, people rescued at sea should be disembarked at the next port of call, where they should always be admitted, if only temporarily.
Panic aboard
As the boarding party approached the ship, the crew described scenes of near panic on deck. The Afghans watched as two high-speed boats closed in on the freighter. ``A lot of the refugees were screaming they were going to be shot or arrested,'' one crewman reported. ``Some looked as it they were going to jump overboard as the uniformed troops drew closer.'' Desperate crewmen shouted warnings that the waters were shark infested and pulled some young men back from the ship's rails.
Despite strong international pressure, in the outcome the Australian government continued in its refusal to allow the refugees to land, and reached an agreement that the Afghan refugees would be taken to Papua New Guinea, from where they will be airlifted to New Zealand and the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru.
What is more, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, despite international outcry, proclaimed that in future Australian military forces would establish a major surveillance presence in the Indian Ocean off Indonesia and any vessels transporting refugees to Australian would be turned back to Indonesia. Should these vessels refuse to alter course, they would be towed back, Prime Minister Howard is reported as saying.
By most definitions, such actions would amount to piracy on the high seas, an entirely illegitimate use of force outside national territorial waters.
Afghan Exodus
The flight of refugees from Afghanistan follows four years of drought and famine in that country. In the North of Afghanistan, where some five and a half million people used to live, 420,000 have left already. The devastating drought and famine compound the problems of conflict and the brutal Taliban policies.
In Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, women are not allowed to work, to educate or to be educated. Adult literacy is estimated at 35% and life expectancy is 45 years. It is reported that over 400 in Herat died last winter simply from cold. Since the Soviet invasion in 1979, more than 6 million people have tried to escape the war and a series of repressive governments.
The exodus from Afghanistan has meant that neighbouring Pakistan, a poor country, has taken over 870,000 refugees last year alone. Australia has agreed to take a mere 1,400. Altogether, Australia has an asylum seeker population of 62,579, as against the UK with 216,000 and Ireland with 15,566.
Australia, in support of what the international community broadly regards as illegitimate means to keep refugees out, has claimed that the country (a sparsely populated continent) is likely to be overrun by refugees, many of whom are economic migrants.
Economic or political refugees?
The terrible saga of the Tampa and the exodus from Afghanistan serve to throw doubt on the very notion that economic migrants can be differentiated from refugees. In conditions of famine, with or without religious persecution, you face death unless you can escape.
Were those who left Ireland for America in the days of the Great Hunger economic or political refugees? Clearly, to anyone who knows their history, they were both. The notion of an `economic' migrant, applied to third world conditions of starvation and poverty, is window dressing to disguise the reality of first world ``economic superiority'' and the rich states' determination to keep things that way.
TAYAD member Huyla Simsek, on Friday 31 August, became the latest to die on the Turkish death fast, succumbing on the 286th day of her hunger strike.
Simsek was born in Erzincan in 1963, where she completed her primary and secondary education before moving to Istanbul. She completed her teacher training and became an embroidery teacher. She met with revolutionaries after her brother Zeynel Abidin Simsek was arrested. Simsek became active in TAYAD and became the editor of the TAYAD journal, Tutuklu Aileleri.
When the death fast began she started her solidarity fast in Bursa. After the massacre of prisoners when sate forced atacked the prisons on 19-22 December, she was arrested and taken to Kartal F-type prison, where she continued her fast. She was released after 25 days and went to the Armutlu district area of Istanbul to continue her fast with other TAYAD members and released prisoners.
On the night of her death, the people of Armutlu held a torch-lit procession in her honour and her funeral took place on Saturday morning.
A protest vigil for Huyla Simsek was held at the Turkish Embassy in Dublin on Monday, 3 September.
Any young computer games addict knows from playing `Age of Empires' that slaves represent wealth. The capture of many Africans and their export as slaves to America was the economic basis of the growth and development of that economy.
So how can we explain the refusals of the so-called ``developed countries'' now to welcome the hundreds of young able-bodied people who try to leave their native lands in search of employment?
Ireland needs 285,000 extra workers to maintain its huge growth rate, yet the Dublin government has gone to great lengths to keep them out. Why?
Is it because the nature of economic relations has fundamentally changed with the age of capitalism: that the cost-benefit of immigrant labour weighs against admitting new workers? Or is it that the dominant ideology of consumerism and insatiable greed has brought with it xenophobia, and widespread hatred of the outsider, which overrules economic sense and the profit motive.
At the moment Fortress Europe, and the ``developed'' rich economies, clearly prefer to keep the penniless of the third world locked up within their national frontiers. Instead, the capital is taken over to them, where at phenomenally cheap labour costs, factories for multinationals churn out computers, plastic toys, electronic components, etc.
The Tampa crisis
Whatever the answer to these questions, they lie at the heart of why 438 Afghan refugees spent last week on freight ship The Tampa, anchored in the Indian Ocean with little food, water, shelter or medication for the sick. Captain Rinnan on the Tampa reported that many of the refugees were very sick indeed.
The Norwegian container ship had gone to their aid as their own boat got into difficulties and began to sink. The Tampa rescued the refugees and was taking them to their nearest point of land, the Christmas Islands, Australian territory, which international convention obliges them to do. The political representatives on the Christmas Islands declared that they were happy to receive these refugees.
However, the Australian government refused to allow them to land, instead sending a 37-strong boarding party of Special Armed Forces to take control of the ship. They reportedly attempted to steer the Tampa out of Australian territorial waters, in contravention of all recognised international practice.
Under the UN 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 protocol, to both of which Australia is a signatory, people rescued at sea should be disembarked at the next port of call, where they should always be admitted, if only temporarily.
Panic aboard
As the boarding party approached the ship, the crew described scenes of near panic on deck. The Afghans watched as two high-speed boats closed in on the freighter. ``A lot of the refugees were screaming they were going to be shot or arrested,'' one crewman reported. ``Some looked as it they were going to jump overboard as the uniformed troops drew closer.'' Desperate crewmen shouted warnings that the waters were shark infested and pulled some young men back from the ship's rails.
Despite strong international pressure, in the outcome the Australian government continued in its refusal to allow the refugees to land, and reached an agreement that the Afghan refugees would be taken to Papua New Guinea, from where they will be airlifted to New Zealand and the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru.
What is more, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, despite international outcry, proclaimed that in future Australian military forces would establish a major surveillance presence in the Indian Ocean off Indonesia and any vessels transporting refugees to Australian would be turned back to Indonesia. Should these vessels refuse to alter course, they would be towed back, Prime Minister Howard is reported as saying.
By most definitions, such actions would amount to piracy on the high seas, an entirely illegitimate use of force outside national territorial waters.
Afghan Exodus
The flight of refugees from Afghanistan follows four years of drought and famine in that country. In the North of Afghanistan, where some five and a half million people used to live, 420,000 have left already. The devastating drought and famine compound the problems of conflict and the brutal Taliban policies.
In Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, women are not allowed to work, to educate or to be educated. Adult literacy is estimated at 35% and life expectancy is 45 years. It is reported that over 400 in Herat died last winter simply from cold. Since the Soviet invasion in 1979, more than 6 million people have tried to escape the war and a series of repressive governments.
The exodus from Afghanistan has meant that neighbouring Pakistan, a poor country, has taken over 870,000 refugees last year alone. Australia has agreed to take a mere 1,400. Altogether, Australia has an asylum seeker population of 62,579, as against the UK with 216,000 and Ireland with 15,566.
Australia, in support of what the international community broadly regards as illegitimate means to keep refugees out, has claimed that the country (a sparsely populated continent) is likely to be overrun by refugees, many of whom are economic migrants.
Economic or political refugees?
The terrible saga of the Tampa and the exodus from Afghanistan serve to throw doubt on the very notion that economic migrants can be differentiated from refugees. In conditions of famine, with or without religious persecution, you face death unless you can escape.
Were those who left Ireland for America in the days of the Great Hunger economic or political refugees? Clearly, to anyone who knows their history, they were both. The notion of an `economic' migrant, applied to third world conditions of starvation and poverty, is window dressing to disguise the reality of first world ``economic superiority'' and the rich states' determination to keep things that way.
32 hunger strikers now dead in Turkey
TAYAD member Huyla Simsek, on Friday 31 August, became the latest to die on the Turkish death fast, succumbing on the 286th day of her hunger strike.
Simsek was born in Erzincan in 1963, where she completed her primary and secondary education before moving to Istanbul. She completed her teacher training and became an embroidery teacher. She met with revolutionaries after her brother Zeynel Abidin Simsek was arrested. Simsek became active in TAYAD and became the editor of the TAYAD journal, Tutuklu Aileleri.
When the death fast began she started her solidarity fast in Bursa. After the massacre of prisoners when sate forced atacked the prisons on 19-22 December, she was arrested and taken to Kartal F-type prison, where she continued her fast. She was released after 25 days and went to the Armutlu district area of Istanbul to continue her fast with other TAYAD members and released prisoners.
On the night of her death, the people of Armutlu held a torch-lit procession in her honour and her funeral took place on Saturday morning.
A protest vigil for Huyla Simsek was held at the Turkish Embassy in Dublin on Monday, 3 September.