For all
the slogans and military operations, over 54,000 people have boarded boats
across the Indian Ocean this year, with around 20,000 in just the two months of
October and November. As much as Morrison may gloat, the boats haven’t
really stopped.
The
point you won’t see on any media release or hear at a doorstop press conference
is this: even if people haven’t drowned on the way to Australia, they’ve still
drowned. Because people fleeing countries in the region are still getting on
boats……
According
to the UNHCR report on Irregular Maritime Movements in
South-East Asia, over 50,000 people set sail just from the Bay of
Bengal area in January-November 2014. The smugglers operating in the region
move people who are trafficked as
well as those paying
for passage outside of legal migration channels. The latter includes
people such as ethnic Rohingya who
do not have any nationality (and therefore no official travel documentation)
and have a long history of persecution
and discrimination by the Burmese government.
The
UNHCR estimates that around 21,000 people have departed from the
Bangladesh-Burmese maritime border in the two months of October and November
2014. About 10% were women, and around one-third of arrivals interviewed by
UNHCR in Thailand and Malaysia were minors. The numbers for October 2014 are a
marked increase (37%) from the year before.
And not
all the deaths at sea are merely from drowning, according to the report:
“One in
every three interviewees said at least one other passenger on their boat died
en route; one in every 10 said 10 or more people died on board. Deaths were
attributed to severe beatings by the crew, lack of food and water, illness, and
heat.”
Globally,
around 350,000 people have
risked it all by taking a boat this year. On 10-11 December 2014, UNHCR is
hosting a meeting looking specifically at protection at sea. The
non-governmental organisations taking part have recommended, among other
things, that to implement effective protection and ensure safety at sea, it is
vital to “address ‘route causes’ and ‘root causes’ of forced and dangerous
migration”.
UNHCR
notes that these reasons for irregular movement
include: conflict and war, protracted refugee situations,
statelessness, the absence or inadequacy of protection systems, family
separation, poverty and economic inequality.
What is
notably absent from all the recommendations to “stop the boats” from these
experts is deterrence, which in Morrison’s
parlance is also known as “taking the sugar off the table”. This
was of course the honourable minister’s reasoning last month for reducing the
number of refugees Australia would resettle from Indonesia and banning those
who registered with UNHCR in Indonesia after 1 July 2014 from ever getting to
Australia.
Sweet though
that poison may be (and poisonous is certainly how one can characterise the way
Australia treats those who come across the sea), no refugee is paying a people
smuggler for any sort of benefit other than getting the hell out of the hell
they were in.
At the
opening of the UNHCR meeting yesterday, the High Commissioner for Refugees António
Guterres said, “You can’t stop a person who is fleeing for their life by
deterrence, without escalating the dangers even more”…..
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