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Are boat-people real people?

By Brian Holden - posted Thursday, 1 April 2010


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.

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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.

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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.

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About the Author

Brian Holden has been retired since 1988. He advises that if you can keep physically and mentally active, retirement can be the best time of your life.

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