Boat tragedy: How Australians became complicit in the horror of Christmas Island

[CHIMO]

As the Australian territory closest to Indonesia, Christmas Island has in recent years become a favoured destination for refugee boats. And so it fell to the islanders to be awoken yesterdayon Wednesday by the screams of the drowning as a small wooden boat carrying about 70 refugees was smashed by a wild sea into a limestone cliff.

"I saw a person dying in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to save them," resident Kamar Ismail is reported to have said. "Babies, children, maybe three or four years old, they were hanging on to bits of timber, they were screaming 'help, help, help'." Lifejackets thrown down were tossed back by cyclonic winds, the last illusion of a hope that had once borne the name Australia.

If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question. Not that Australia has a refugee problem. Last year just 5,500 people sought asylum – less than 2% of the migrant intake. Yet Australia does have a dismal public life largely bereft of courage or humanity, and it has created a national myth that now poisons all sides of politics. The myth is that of the boat people. It is the idea that hordes of refugees will overrun Australia unless harsh policies of dissuasion and internment are employed.

How a nation in which one in four is a migrant embraced such a cruel and stupid idea is mysterious. Certainly hard times cannot be blamed: Australia is one of the few economies in the developed world that is still prospering, with unemployment dropping this month to 5.2%.But for more than a decade this myth, the issue of opportunism and electoral cynicism, has been a weeping sore at the heart of public life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/16/christmas-island-tragedy-australian-humanity