Here come the “boat people”! We thought that we were rid of them, but here they come again… and this time, they are “surging” to our shores, posing a “threat”, challenging our “national security” and bringing with them, the four horses of the apocalypse (I added that last one for unnecessary extra effect).The Australian reported yesterday (Wednesday, the 6th of May, 2009) that “Australia is facing the biggest spike in unauthorised boat arrivals since John Howard implemented the Pacific Solution”; that 11 boats have been detected this year; 18 boats have arrived since Kevin Rudd announced a “softening” of detention policies in September 2008; that 676 people were on those boats and 497 have been detained this calendar year. The big question that everyone is asking is why? (NOTE: it is politically advantageous to ask this question so as to get score political points off the suffering to some of the world’s most vulnerable people) Some say that it is because the Rudd government has “gone soft” on border protection and others say violence in Africa and in the Middle East has increased the already massive numbers of refugees in the world who are on the move and trying to get themselves and their families to somewhere safe.
The thing that I and others have noticed over the last few weeks in relation to the reporting on the arrival of asylum seekers via boats to Australia is the way the language and focus has shifted in the media since our last national panic attack on this a couple of years ago. The newspapers seem to have moved from terms like “illegal asylum seekers” (it is actually not illegal to seek asylum by the way, it is a human right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that Australia supports) and “queue-jumpers” (there are no queues to jump in many of the places that asylum seekers come from), to terms like “unauthorised boat arrivals”, which sound a whole lot nicer to me. The negativity of focus has also seemingly shifted from the asylum seekers themselves to the people smugglers (who Kevin Rudd described as the “vilest form of human life… [who] should rot in hell”).
I find this shift very interesting and have been wondering from whence it has come? My wife suggested that it could be a reflection in the media of the same change in the national thinking that resulted in the ousting of the Howard government and the bringing in of Kevin Rudd (a soft touch on asylum seekers, but tough talker on people smugglers). She is pretty smart, my wife. I had just hoped that maybe we were getting a bit nicer…As a person who claims a primary allegiance to Jesus Christ, I thought I’d include a few Bible verses that exhort us to be a lot nicer to refugees and asylum seekers in Australia than we currently are – even though we are improving. There are many practical reasons for us to not get defensive and paranoid about this latest “surge”, but here are some theological reasons as well (NOTE: “alien” in the Bible means refugee and asylum seeker, not little green people with big, buggy eyes):
- Exodus 22:21
- Leviticus 19:33-34
- Deuteronomy 10:18-19
- Deuteronomy 14:28-29
- Deuteronomy 24:17
- Deuteronomy 27:19
- Ezekiel 22:29-31
- Malachi 3:5
- Hebrews 13:2
Shalom...
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