On 30 November 2015, Six hundred men in Manus RPC, PNG, wrote the following letter to Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia and Peter Dutton MP, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection.
The importance of this letter is that it sets a challenge for all of us who are preparing to celebrate Christmas. Read the letter and ask yourself: by treating people this way, are we being true to the Christian spirit, or are we betraying it? Christmas is the time when, according to Christian tradition, Christ’s parents could not readily find shelter as they fled to escape persecution. If they did the same thing today and found themselves in Australia, they would be taken by force to another country where they would be locked up indefinitely in shocking conditions.
This Christmas, we should all face up to some uncomfortable facts:
- boat people are not “illegal”: they do not break any law by coming here to seek asylum;
- we take them by force to another country (PNG or Nauru);
- we imprison them and mistreat them;
- we vilify them as “illegal” and sanitise the whole exercise by calling it “border protection”
- every aspect of it: the cruelty and the dishonesty, contradicts the most fundamental aspects of Christan teaching;
- all of this has been implemented by people who conspicuously proclaim their Christianity, including Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison.
Any government which is willing to tolerate these things cannot possibly describe itself as adhering to the Christian tradition. Likewise any Opposition which does not oppose it. If your Federal MP is a member of the government and sends you a Christmas card this year, you can be pretty confident that he or she is a hypocrite.
Here is the transcribed text of the letter:
30/11/15
Hello Dear Mr Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton.
As the refugees and asylum seekers trapped in Manus Island detention we wold like to request you something different this time.
As previously we wrote and asked for help and there was no respond to our request to be freed out of detention we realized that there are no differences between us and rubbish but a bunch of slaves that helped to stop the boats by living in hellish condition. The only difference is that we are very costly for the Australian tax payers and the Politicians as our job to “stop the boats” is done.
We would like to give you some recommendations to stop the waste of this huge amount of money ruining Australian’s reputation and to keep the Australian boarders safe forever.
1. A navy ship that can put us all on board and dump us all in the ocean. (HMAS is always available)
2. A gas chamber (DECMIL will do it with a new contract)
3. Injection of a poison. (IHMS will help for this)
This is not a joke or a satire and please take it serious.
We are dying in Manus gradually, every single day we are literarly tortured and traumatized and there is no safe country to offer us protection as DIBP says.
Best regards
Merry Christmas in advance
Manus refugees and asylum seekers.
The asylum seeker issue in Australia makes me feel ashamed and powerless.
I agree with the comments in the letter that what this government is doing in unchristian and that those that claim to be Christian are anything but.
Keep up the good work and go Greens
Detention prisons must end, they take away peoples humanity and ours for allowing human beings to be treated this way. I made a petiition for Malcom Turnbull to change policies, create humane policies. 25 people signed it. There are alot of us that do care, that feel compassion and empathy that discuss, write and research, how can I help, what can we do collectively? This letter left me with tears stinging my eyes. I will continue to fight for asylum seekers and refugees freedom.
With the demented racist politicians being fed by the lazy racist media we have come to this, people we have trafficked to another place begging to be murdered by us. And the moron media never report such things, or facts of any kind for that matter.
I also cannot believe the hypocrisy of people like Abbott or Morrison or Rudd. Anyone who proclaims Christianity and then allows detention prisons in another country is a terrible hypocrite. I understand why they may worry about too many boat people however a line that we never cross should be drawn. Sure have a detention place in Australia with a maximum stay of 4 weeks. If you can’t disprove asylum status then the person is elevated on some fair visa allowing work. Otherwise they need to be deported within the 4 weeks. How can they (Abbott et al) sleep at night with the current torture happening, leaving people without hope of any sort of outcome? I bet they couldn’t cope with experiencing this.
If things are so bad on Manus Island you are most welcome to return to your own countries.
There are just two difficulties with you comment.
First: it is ignorant to suggest that people return to face persecution. Australia played a significant part in preparing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed on 10 December 1948. Article 14 of the UDHR says “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution” Apparently you want to bully people into abandonning that right.
Second: it is heartless, and completely ignores the misery we are inflicting, deliberately, on people who have committed no offence at all. People who are simply looking for safety.
You are a despicable human being.
Dear Julian,
Thanks to your project writing letters to asylum seekers in offshore detention some time back, I am in touch with a Manus Island detainee. He is very brave and strong, though he feels his sanity is increasingly vulnerable. Having left his pet duck behind when he fled his home, he asks me to send him photos, and pictures (I’m a painter) of ducks. I’ve asked my friends and colleagues to do likewise to maintain contact, show we know he exists, and we care. His duck is such a perfect symbol of his plight (Michael Leunig knows the power of the duck!) and I think an exhibition on a major attention-grabbing scale featuring the duck might be yet another way to register our protest and solidarity. I have commenced initiatives on a local community/school scale, but I’m not the person to launch something bigger. I’d love to know what you think. My whole-hearted thanks to you for all your energy and effort in this field, Maggie.