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The 'Legal' Mistreatment of Refugees in Australia.
Maria Giannacopoulos, Macquarie University
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In 1994, the Joint Standing Committee on Migration wrote that:
"The genesis of the existing problems with immigration detention can be traced back to 28 November 1989 when 26 Chinese and Vietnamese asylum seekers landed at Broome in the North West of Australia. In the period from 28 November 1989 till 27 January 1994 a total of 18 boats arrived at Australia’s shores bringing with them 735 people of varying nationality, mainly Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese. Most of these arrivals sought refugee status in Australia and were detained pending the determination of their claims."
It is extremely chilling that it is openly stated that the problems with immigration detention begin with the arrival of these ‘boatloads’ rather than with the problematic nature of the detention centre itself. The problem is seen as stemming from the ‘arrivals’ and not from the freedom depriving procedures that are at once anti-humanitarian and yet legal. A statement such as this brings to the fore that the beach or the shore if you will, can never be a place of leisure alone. The Australian shore in this instance is the location that is sought as a place of refuge, of survival and indeed as a place that can display humanity to people who have sought these shores as their only chance for life. A place that will and can intervene to alleviate the cruelty that has been faced in so many situations. Instead it becomes a site of oppression, of cruelty of strict policing and surveillance and control.
If viewed in these terms the Australian shore can be seen as a site that is anxious to maintain itself in some sort of pure form, in a form that keeps it pure and ‘problem free’ to use the words of the Committee. In this paper I will be concerned with the way in which institutions of power such as Migration Institutions, both create the idea and then unwittingly reveal as farce that Australian shores are friendly, humanitarian and ‘sunny’ if you will.
