BOOK
REVIEW Tale of refugees all at
sea Dark Victory by
David Marr and Marian Wilkinson
Reviewed by Alexander Casella
On August
26, 2001, a 49,000-ton Norwegian container ship named
the Tampa, alerted by Australian search and rescue
authorities, rescued 433 passengers from a sinking
vessel some 140 kilometers north of Australia's
Christmas Island.
Over the following weeks, what
should have been a normal rescue operation became a
highly charged political drama. Coming at the tail end
of Australia's election campaign, the Tampa affair
became a bone of major contention between Prime Minister
John Howard and his opponent.
The days following
the rescue degenerated into a free-for-all mudslinging
contest that drew in not only practically every
component of Australia's political spectrum, but the
likes of the United Nations, Amnesty International,
Norway, East Timor, New Zealand and Nauru. Within this
ruckus, which made front-page news the world over, facts
took second place to ideology and posturing became the
rule rather than the exception as the spectators of this
drama sought to wring the last drop on political gain
from a human tragedy.
In writing Dark
Victory, the authors, two Australian journalists,
David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, do not claim to retrace
the steps that brought the refugees from their distant
and war-torn homeland, Afghanistan, to an almost certain
watery grave in the Java Sea had the Tampa not come to
their rescue.
Indeed, the refugees rescued by
the Tampa are almost incidental to their account.
Dark Victory is in essence an Australian
narrative; in the words of its authors, it is "the
secret history of John Howard's campaign against boat
people". In doing so, Howard and his team, so the
authors claim, "put lives at risk, muzzled the press,
misused intelligence, defied the UN, antagonized
Indonesia, closed Australia to refugees - and won a
mighty election victory".
If the description of
Howard as some sort of latter-day Genghis Khan might
appear excessive to anyone not familiar with the
vagaries of Australian domestic politics, it is in
keeping with the acrimony, compounded by a good dose of
irrationality, that typifies much of the migration and
asylum debate in Australia.
It is a pity that
Marr and Wilkinson made the deliberate choice of
becoming part of this internal Australian altercation
without first raising the one question at the root of
the issue, namely, what is a refugee?
According
to its current international definition, a refugee is a
person who had to flee his or her country due to a
well-founded fear of persecution for political or ethnic
reasons. Thus it is the notion of "persecution" that
defines a refugee. Except in the case of mass movement,
when a person claiming to have fled persecution arrives
in a country requesting asylum, he is an "asylum
seeker".
In industrialized democracies the
request is processed through existing administrative
structures and then adjudicated. If the adjudication is
positive, that is to say, if the claim of having fled
persecution is substantiated, the person is recognized
as a refugee. If the adjudication is negative, that is
to say if the reasons for departure were other than
persecution, the person is not recognized as a "refugee"
and must, in principal, return to his country of origin.
How the asylum seeker has entered the country
where he sought refuge is not relevant to his status.
Indeed, it is internationally recognized that a person
who is fleeing persecution is entitled to illegal entry,
or even the use of forged documents.
While the
asylum issue, in theory, is a simple one, it is
compounded by two major problems. First, the world is
currently witnessing a major irregular population
movement from poorer countries to industrialized
democracies. This movement, which has assumed global
proportion, affects millions of people and has spawned a
multibillion-dollar people-smuggling industry.
For the hundreds of thousands of illegal
immigrants who are intercepted every year, claiming
"asylum" in order to stave off, or at least delay,
deportation has become the rule rather than the
exception. The processing of these claims, of which some
95 percent prove to be bogus, has become a major problem
for industrialized countries, and the cost is estimated
at some US$2 billion per year. Thus "asylum" is
increasingly becoming not so much a quest for refuge as
an avenue for emigration.
Second, the right to
flee persecution does not entitle a refugee to choose
his country of asylum freely. Once a refugee has reached
safety, further movement to other countries is no longer
covered under the asylum umbrella. If such movement
occurs, it is defined as "secondary movement", that is
to say, movement for the sake of convenience and not to
flee persecution. In other words, it is the movement of
refugees who already have asylum and are thus in no
danger from persecution, as opposed to the flight of
those for whom it is an imperative necessity.
Needless to say, this is not the sort of
movement that governments like to put up with,
especially if it is in violation of their migration
regulations. Most do, either for want of better
policies, lack of political will or ultimately benign
neglect. Australia does not.
Australia, after
Canada, is a country that accepts for resettlement the
highest number of refugees in proportion to its
population. Conversely, and helped by its geographic
situation, Australia has a deliberate policy of
deterring refugees who already benefit from asylum from
entering the country illegally and then claiming refugee
status as a ploy to immigrate - a maneuver qualified as
queue-jumping.
Thus Australian law provides for
automatic detention for anyone entering the country
illegally. On an annual basis, Australia has a quota of
some 12.000 resettlement slots for refugees, divided
into "offshore" and "inshore". "Offshore" includes
refugees who are accepted from abroad, namely either
from refugee camps or people in pressing need of asylum.
"Inshore" includes two categories; the first is composed
of people who have entered Australia legally and who
have made an asylum request during the validity of their
visa. Such cases are generally given bridging visas
while their application is being assessed and are
accepted for resettlement if recognized as refugees.
The second includes people who have arrived
illegally, are consequently detained, and have made an
asylum request while in detention. Such cases, if
recognized as refugees needing asylum, are subsequently
released and accepted for resettlement.
The
system hinges on the fact that for every "inshore" case
accepted, there is, within the annual quota, one
"offshore" slot less for a refugee in dire need of
assistance.
It is within this overall context
that the captain of the Tampa, on August 26, 2001,
rescued 433 Afghans and Iraqis from the Palapa, a
sinking derelict Indonesian ferry that had departed
clandestinely from Medan, Sumatra, bound for Australia.
There is a valid presumption that the passengers
of the Palapa were "refugees", that is to say, people
fleeing war or persecution; but there is also a
certainty that even if they were indeed "refugees", they
were not in danger of persecution and hence in need of
asylum. Many presumably came from Pakistan, where they
already had asylum. All came through Indonesia, where
they already had de facto asylum and could have applied
for immigration to Australia. The Palapa was thus a
typical people-smuggling operation and was completely
unrelated to a quest for asylum.
It is
unfortunate that Marr and Wilkinson, who can in no way
be accused of not being thorough, chose to overlook
completely the smuggling dimension of the operation.
Where did the refugees come from, how long did they stay
in transit countries, how did they come in contact with
people are some of the questions that still beg an
answer.
All we are told is that one was a farmer
who "had paid US$11,500 to get his family to Australia";
another was a 16-year-old son of a shopkeeper. All had
paid the smugglers $5,000 per adult and somewhat less
for children for the journey, amounting to a total of
more than $2 million. It was a staggering sum, and not
only for the smugglers. With an estimated maximum
average per capita income of $400 per year, it was a
rare, and affluent, Afghan who could fork out the
equivalent of 12 years of revenue to be smuggled to
Australia. How much the Indonesian police received in
the process is not mentioned, but having the group, as
we are told, arrive by air in Jakarta and be whisked
through immigration without documents must have had its
price.
If the captain of the Tampa had had his
way there would not have been an incident in the first
place. At the time of the rescue the ship was on its way
to Singapore and had obtained authorization to land the
rescued at Merak, the Indonesian port they had departed
from. Conversely, the closest landfall was Australia's
Christmas Island, which happened to be the destination
of the Palapa.
However, when the Afghans heard
that the Tampa was setting sail for Merak they became
"angry". With a crew of some 40 men, the captain of the
Tampa, Arne Rinnan, felt that the situation was getting
out of control. What followed was a surreal wrangle
involving Canberra, Oslo, the UN and last but not least
Rinnan, who had no choice but to sail to Christmas
Island.
The final act was the interception of
the rescued by the Special Air Service (SAS) and their
transfer to Nauru for refugee status processing.
Ultimately Australia carried the day; the government's
firm stand that the country would no longer tolerate
being at the receiving end of international
people-smuggling rings met with considerable domestic
support and contributed substantially to the re-election
of the Howard government.
Thus the Tampa had
indeed contributed to the Conservatives' victory. But
was it, as Marr and Wilkinson assert, a "dark victory"?
No lives were lost. No refugees were forcefully
repatriated or exposed to persecution. Granted, as the
authors underline, the Australian government, in its
quest for a solution, overdid itself, although
undoubtedly more by ingenuousness then by guile.
Appealing, as they did, to UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan, to the UN in East Timor or to the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was a
non-starter. Ultimately, the lesson for Australia was
that multilateralism had its limits and that when push
came to shove, there were some issues that could only be
addresses bilaterally.
While Marr and Wilkinson
cannot be faulted for having skimped on their research,
and some of their chapters are detailed to the point of
microscopy, theirs would have been a far more credible
work had there not been even a distant inkling that they
might not have been totally partial. And while not a
single source that conforms to their views seems to have
escaped their attention, the reverse is true as regards
any alternative opinion.
While partisanship is
the essence of democracy, and Dark Victory should
be read by anyone who wishes to grasp the myriad facets
of Australian politics, the authors bring the art of
second-degree mendacity to new heights.
Thus,
they write, after having been "chastised" by the UN
refugee agency, Australia "cut its core funding to UNHCR
by half". What the average reader would derive from
these words is the image of a mean and vindictive
Australian government slashing its assistance to
desperate refugees as a punishment to a UN agency that
intervened on their behalf.
That Australia cut
its core funding to UNHCR is correct. But what the
authors do not tell us is that over the years the
administrative budget of the UN refugee agency has grown
to such proportions that in some cases it spends $2 in
bureaucratic costs to deliver $1 of aid. This is
becoming increasingly unacceptable to democracies that
are responsible to their parliaments as regards the use
of their taxpayers' dollars. With "core" funds tending
to support bureaucrats rather than needy refugees,
governments are increasingly earmarking their donations
to specific projects.
Thus, while Australia did
reduce its core financing to UNHCR in 2002 by A$7
million (US$4.9 million), it also gave the agency access
to an additional A$15 million, with the result that in
2002 Australia contributed more to UNHCR than it did in
2001.
Ultimately, Dark Victory is sour
grapes. An election was lost. Illegal arrivals
practically came to a stop, and with it the number of
"offshore" refugee visas granted in 2002 reached a
five-year high. A dark victory indeed.
Dark
Victory by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Allen
& Unwin, 2003. ISPN 0-299-08760-3. Price US$14.95.
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Oct 25, 2003
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Central, Hong Kong
On August
26, 2001, a 49,000-ton Norwegian container ship named
the Tampa, alerted by Australian search and rescue
authorities, rescued 433 passengers from a sinking
vessel some 140 kilometers north of Australia's
Christmas Island. 
