Should we continue to deter asylum seekers risking their lives sailing from Indonesia in rickety boats? Yes, absolutely, but in a civilised way.
Should we demonise the people smugglers and damn their evil trade through every legal twist? Most certainly. They’re still trading.
Should we screw up the lives of brave people trying to escape a tyrannical government, then force them into years of detention in an indifferent society?
That’s not the ‘Australian Way’ – the idiom that supposedly suggests the ill-defined ‘Fair Go’.
Now shift from rhetoric to fact. The people in this feature are ethnic Hazaras who left Afghanistan to escape persecution by the Pashtun tribal rulers. The Hazara form more than 60 per cent of the 12,000 detainees trapped in Indonesia, and they ran to keep their lives.
They've suffered violent discrimination for historical grievances, including being Shia Muslims in a country where the main faith is Sunni Islam, as in Indonesia. They cannot return home, fearing they'll be jailed, tortured or killed by the Taliban militants.
That's the mob that denies women education and the right to live their lives without male control; two leaders could now front the International Criminal Court for persecuting women and girls.
Most of the light-skinned Hazara with the cash and courage crossed the nation’s borders into Pakistan and India. They were then teens, often the family’s eldest son.
Some then flew to Malaysia and were ferried over the Strait of Malacca into Indonesia and offered places on fishing craft heading for northern Australia.
The trade is illegal, and many boats were pushed back to Indonesia by Australian patrols. Numbers spiked as the trade grew profitable and sophisticated; fear of an invasion was stoked by xenophobes, forcing politicians to panic.
On 1 July 2014, PM Scott Morrison, a Pentecostal Christian, announced that travellers heading for the Wide Brown would be forever banished from its sweeping plains. His predecessor, Tony Abbott, a prominent Catholic, backed the ban.
Their actions did not uphold Christian values offering neighbourly love. The same principle lies in the teachings of Islam.
Their motives have been questioned in this blunt analysis from the Swiss media:
'The Australian government's justification for its policy towards boat refugees seems almost cynical. Officially, the measures are based on humanitarian reasons. The aim is to prevent people from dying on the dangerous journey across the water—hundreds have drowned in recent decades.
'But it's also about politics, and probably also about racism. The Australian electorate supports the measures. Not least, critics claim, because most of the refugees are Muslims.'
The policy was tagged Operation Sovereign Borders, and the job of catching or repelling the ‘illegal (previously ‘irregular’) maritime arrivals’ was given to the new Border Force.
It could have been tagged an Authority or Agency or similar, but the language had to be armed along with the crews, and leadership given to a Rear Admiral.
If you've been an Australian voter this century (that includes this writer), we share in the blame. We allowed the OSB policy of denying resettlement to dominate the decisions of an independent democracy.
We unthinkingly accepted that we needed “the discipline and focus of a targeted military operation” rather than negotiating a diplomatic solution. Easier to flash firearms than briefcases.
Indonesia is a democracy, albeit ‘flawed’, and has reasonable relations with its neighbours. We talk to each other in formal meetings and usually try to resolve differences amicably.
Since 2017, the Indonesian Government, which hasn’t signed the 1951 International Refugee Convention, has provided temporary protection to stranded refugees under a Presidential regulation. This allows access to basic services, though not education.
Some get a $175 monthly allowance through the UN-affiliated International Organisation for Migration. A few get cash or food donated by individuals, here and RI.
Those still in Indonesia have been in limbo for more than a decade.
Ten years? Violent offenders get lesser sentences; the 'offence' these men committed is wanting freedom. They haven't bashed or raped, abused kids, contrived to deceive or ripped off the vulnerable through shonky scams.
They sought help but didn’t check their calendars.
Did the policy work – and if so, at what moral and personal cost? Australian academic Dr Kim Huynh has written:
“The Coalition government addressed boat arrivals not so much a matter of human rights or mobility, but rather state security and deterrence.
“Australia’s border policing has not advanced orderly and fair migration channels. It has contributed to spiralling state brutality and human desperation … deterrence only ‘works’ when it is applied with greater force.”
Are the boats still coming? Probably, and mainly as shark-fin fishers. The qualification is needed because Border Force is a secretive unit that repels journalists' legitimate (in a free society) inquiries.
Its PR strategy is to blanket “on water” news, adding to the tone of invasion, threat and danger that keeps the issue thriving, the electorate twitchy and the Hazara decaying.
Asylum Insight claims that between 1 May 2022 and 31 January 2025, 26 boats carrying a total of around 475 people were intercepted. The passengers and crew were either transferred to Nauru or returned to their departure point – usually an isolated Indonesian fishing port.
Indonesian authorities are getting more serious about tackling smugglers. This gives Australia an opportunity to work with the neighbours on surveillance, supply modern equipment for patrols and offer rewards for detection and deterrence.
While this neighbour-bonding is underway with the help of the UNHCR and the Indonesian Government, we can slowly start moving the Hazara and other refugees to safe havens in Australia and other resettlement countries.
The numbers aren't big, and the distressed have yet to become intractable. Using diplomacy and humanity will benefit Indonesia and Australia, but more importantly, restore the dignity of the asylum seekers and give them a future.
##