Sunday, December 29, 2013

Australia’s treatment of refugees is 'cruel and mean-spirited’

Sixty years after he left his home and family in London, aged 16, to work on a cattle station in outback Australia — discovering a breed of people with whom he felt “free and at home” – Miller has decried his adopted nation as cruel, intolerant and mean-spirited.

In a scathing essay for a new book in Australia, he says his concerns about what he regards as the inhumanity of his fellow citizens “are forcing me to reconsider what it means to be an Australian”.

Likening Australia’s “cruel and inhumane” treatment of asylum seekers to Britain’s treatment of the Jews fleeing the Nazis for British-ruled Palestine, Miller said his fellow countrymen belonged to a nation of migrants and should feel ashamed of their hypocrisy.

“Sadly, among many refugees and migrants and their children there is an attitude of, 'We’re in! You can shut the door now,’ ” Miller writes. “We enjoy the riches of being one of the world’s most successful multicultural societies. So why don’t we feel betrayed and shamed as Australians and as human beings by the cruel and inhuman treatment our government is meting out to refugees?”

 His bitter assessment was spurred by Australia’s adoption of some of the world’s toughest measures against asylum seekers. In a bid to stem the flow of people arriving in unseaworthy boats from Indonesia, Australia began deporting them this year to detention centres on two remote Pacific islands, and barred any from settling in Australia. Full story...

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  6. Australia's refugee crisis...
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