Are boat-people real people?

The nightmare of the past 16 weeks since she left Iraq she will deliberately forget, but the memory of the farewell to her parents had been burnt into her brain forever. To hug a loved one while knowing that there is little chance of ever seeing that person again is a feeling beyond description.

It was October 18, 2001 and Asera was now in Lampong, Indonesia. She had paid the people smugglers the last of her parents’ life savings. Holding her hand was her eight year-old daughter "Farrah". When "Asera" looked down at the child, the trust she looked back with made Asera’s heart ache.

They were Muslims and the traditional family structure meant everything to them. Asera prayed to God every day that her husband "Hakim" will once again be able to support his family as a man must. Whatever the dangers, she and Farrah must go to him. (These are not their real names.)

On that October day, Hakim was safe - but surrounded by razor-wire

He had been here for over a year. He had learned English in Iraq and was willing to work his guts out to be an Aussie. Instead he was condemned to an emotionally empty and useless life behind razor-wire in a camp in a desert. He had never heard of the place, but now the name “Woomera” meant a lot to him.

His crime was that he “jumped the queue” to escape from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He saw his chances of getting into Australia quickly and legally as negligible. Once established in this country, he could then work to get his wife and child away from fear and deprivation and to give them a life they deserved to have. He had taken a huge gamble, but as Asera’s and Farrah’s provider, he felt that he had no other option.

Even if confined behind wire and looking out into desert, he can read newspapers and listen to radio which are not controlled by a dictatorship. He has no fear of torture. Nevertheless, he has been placed in a situation which in time will send a man mad. His behaviour was already becoming erratic and he was aware that if he were to be here another year or (God forbid!) more than that, psychological problems would make it more difficult for him to be integrated into Australian society.

Hakim is angered that so many were judging asylum seekers to be of low character. One talk-back radio program seems to be encouraging a hatred of boat-people. And, he heard one man in parliament report that three asylum seekers threatened to sink their boat when it appeared that they would be turned away by an Australian patrol boat. “Policy is not influenced by threats” sneered he.

That man did not think what it would be like, after months of endurance, and with families pinning everything on their provider’s arrival in Australia, to see the light at the end of the tunnel being blown out. The men blindly grasped at any possibility of saving the situation. They were not of low character. They were simply desperate - a state of mind that the parliamentarian should pray to God he will never be in.

Hakim wished that Australia had a more intelligent government which encouraged the best of human nature to emerge, and did not exploit for political gain the animal territorial instinct which is in all of us.

On that day of October 18, 2001, Hakim was unaware that his wife and child were boarding, with 419 other people, a dilapidated fishing boat which was 19.5 metres long and four metres wide.

Asera and Farrah are at sea on the last leg of their journey

The boat is leaking badly. Earlier that day 23 passengers had to be taken off by another boat. Asera wondered why. Was it due to a fear that the boat would sink before it got far enough out to sea to be out of Indonesia’s zone of responsibility? Asera began praying more than at any time in her life.

The passengers are packed-in so tightly that Farrah has to sit on her mother’s lap. There are not enough life jackets and none at all to fit the children. There is barely enough room to stretch. There is only fresh water for drinking - and it is insufficient for that. What they eat is only the dry food they have in their meager belongings. There is no privacy. The smell of bodies and excrement is becoming oppressive even after only one day. There is no silence at any time.

Then the boat’s engine stops. They are adrift in an endless sea. Later Asera hears a plane overhead. A passenger sets fire to clothing as a distress signal, but the plane flies on. An intense gloom now settles over all on board. They have made a mistake and only the grace of God was going to get them safely to land.

It is now the next day and the swell around the boat is increasing as the sky grows darker and the wind blows strongly. With one arm Asera clutches Farrah to her. The other arm hurts badly as she hangs grimly onto a metal pipe to prevent she and her child from being tossed about. She prays out aloud. All on board seem to be weeping or praying.

The waves are now crashing over the deck. Thunder and lightning add to the terror. Farrah is wet through with sea spray, she is sobbing and trembling. And then suddenly, due to an unbalanced shifting of the great mass of humanity, the boat tips over.

Asera and Farrah are in the heaving, foaming water, but they are no longer in contact. As soon as Asera’s head is above water, she screams her child’s name. But, she is unable to hear Farrah’s cry above the many cries. The panic-driven thrashing in the water exhausts the child in less than half a minute. She gulps water into her lungs and ceases to breath.

Asera thrashes around for her daughter but does not find her. Due to a combination of shock, grief, exhaustion and the taking-in of too much salt water, Asera gives herself up to God.

We can imagine how their adoring and adored provider felt when he received the news in his cage. He would later learn that after the boat foundered it became known as SIEV-X. This was an acronym for Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel - unknown. There was a loss of 146 children, 142 women and 65 men.

Our children must become involved

The staff at the detention centres are depressed by the shear pointlessness of what they are experiencing. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on border protection and the building and maintaining of detention centres which, as loans, would have enabled thousands of asylum seekers to establish themselves in the economy. Capable people are kept incarcerated for up to seven years and incarcerated children are being left with permanent emotional problems.

Popular hostility towards the boat people and political point-scoring can only get in the way of arriving at a better solution than the seemingly insane “solution” we have now.

It is human nature to look at the world from the top of a favourite hill. That is the reason so few us know of the 2001 sinking in our own vicinity which cost the lives of 146 children - when we all know of the Titanic disaster of 1912 which cost the lives of exactly half that number of children.

Labels are important in forming an image. Are the public at large not interested because those who were lost were not real people - but only “illegals”? Can we start towards a better solution by insisting that those pigmy intellects in parliament stop referring to asylum seekers  as “illegals”?

Because our children have Asian and Middle Eastern school friends, they are far less likely to be as racist as their parents. Our children must be made aware of what is happening. They must see the parallel between today’s boat-people and those immigrants of the early 19th century who also left loved ones forever and risked their lives to get here.

In our comfortable lives we are unaware of how close to the edge of the slippery slope we are. The steady building of a core decency in our society depends on our children’s ability to tell the difference between right and wrong better than their parents are able to do.