Moving beyond Preaching Hospitality and Compassion

"Refugees and asylum seekers are among the most powerless, marginalised and dislocated people in the world, clearly a high priority for those who follow Jesus. Christian mission and ministry stands or falls on its response of hospitality to such groups." (Professor Ross Langmead)

I have watched as many of my Facebook friends have posted, shared, reposted and critiqued items relating to the Australian Governments asylum seeker and refugee policies and practices. Many of you have spoken passionately and with conviction about how wrong it is that Australia locks desperate and frightened people up. You've commented with anger about the deaths at sea and you have spoken with frustration about the apparent apathy of Australia and her people. Some of you have asked the question, "what can we do?"

Well here is something that all of us can do. Here is an opportunity to channel the words into actions. Here is a chance to combine faith and action, to go beyond the words and to "love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action". This is a way that all of us that have preached compassion and hospitality can practice it.

Welcome to My Place for Dinner is an opportunity for us to show hospitality to asylum seekers and refugees during Refugee Week, 15-21 June 2014. (Wouldn't it be radical to go beyond that week?) We have an opportunity to rise up and show love and hospitality to those fleeing the trauma of conflict, crisis and poverty in their birthplace to face uncertain futures here in Australia.

Check out the webpage see how you, your Corps (Church) or Home Group could be part of this. Welcome To My Place. [Imagine if there were stories of 1,000 'ordinary Australians' hosting refugees and asylum seekers for dinner in their homes.]

It is a human right to be free to move between borders, to make a home within a country, and to leave and return as one pleases. This is decreed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 13 (1&2)

Toxic Mix Of Uncertainty, Unlawful Detention And Inhumane Conditions

Heightened border surveillance in Sri Lanka, as well as recent agreements between Australia and Sri Lanka to divert and deport would-be asylum seekers, have slashed the number of Sri Lankans reaching Australia’s shores by boat, say Australian authorities. Yet these measures have failed to discourage an increasing number – mostly from the island’s former conflict zones in the north and east – from attempting the dangerous journey.

In 2013 (up to 7 November) close to 2,000 Sri Lankan asylum seekers arrived by sea in Australian territories, according to Australia’s Customs and Border Protection office. In 2012, three times as many Sri Lankans reached Australia’s shores.

Fighting back

"Don't be led by illegal boat operators"
warns a government billboard in Batticaloa District

Australia started deporting Sri Lankan would-be immigrants in August 2012 (543 from January to November 2013), diverting others to off-shore processing centres in the neighbouring island countries of Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and putting up cautionary billboards at popular departure points in Sri Lanka’s north and east. “The program is working well. The return policy and rapid transfers appear to have an impact on would-be immigrants,” an official with the Australian High Commission in Sri Lanka said.

Undeterred
Even so, more and more people are trying to leave Sri Lanka, especially in the north, where a 26-year civil war destroyed infrastructure and caused severe suffering. Hostilities ended some four years ago between Sri Lanka’s security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels, who fought for a separate homeland, but economic recovery has been slow. Jobs are hard to find, making people willing to risk their lives escaping by boat.

Most migrants are unmarried young men with low levels of education, while older men with families and women are less inclined to risk the crossing, according to the Point Pedro Institute of Development, located in the northern district of Jaffna.

Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, an economist and principal researcher at the institute, said livelihoods in the north have improved since 2010, but more investment is needed to speed up recovery. “Although the unemployment rate had dropped [to 27.4% in 2012, from 32.8% in 2011], it is still more than double the national average in 2012,” he pointed.

Economic migrants?
The unpublished results of a 2012 survey by the institute found that the main factors driving migration - legal and illegal - included poor living conditions (74%) and lack of secure employment opportunities (41%), while fear of the military, which has retained a strong presence, is still a factor. Youths in the north reported being more fearful of persecution, and also more willing, to leave the island than those in the east.

Marimuttu Valliamma*, 61, a resident of the northern town of Kilinochchi, whose 24-year-old son returned home in 2012 after an unsuccessful sea crossing to Australia, the “madness” of migration had “destroyed” her family, “my son sold the only land we had to raise the money, and got my only valuables – a gold chain and earrings – also pawned, promising to redeem them when he gets paid the first time. He said there [was] no future in Sri Lanka as there were no jobs.”

Others deny they left because of poverty. “After 2010 [post-war], we expected normalcy. Instead, youths involved in opposition political activities felt under [so much] pressure that many felt compelled to leave the island,” said Sugunan Vaithilingam*, 28, a supporter of the key Tamil political party, Tamil National Alliance (TNA), who paid the equivalent of nearly US$11,400 to a smuggler in 2011 to get to Australia. He was also turned back.

Since July 2013, Sri Lankans deemed eligible for refugee status by Australia’s Department of Immigration and Citizenship have been sent for off-shore processing and detention on either Papua New Guinea or Nauru. Amnesty International has described the facility in Nauru as a “toxic mix of uncertainty, unlawful detention and inhumane conditions”

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) also recently condemned the harsh conditions and legal shortcomings in Australia’s off-shore detention centres. Activists have deemed Australia’s “enhanced screening” approved in late 2012, as a violation of the country’s obligations under international treaties to assume asylum seekers will not face persecution in their home countries unless proven otherwise before repatriation.

Australian authorities deported Alagan Kumarvel*, 27, in 2012 after holding him in custody on Christmas Island for one month. “If I have to do it again, I would do so. There is nothing for me here [Sri Lanka]. But I have no means of making a second attempt. We were told by the boat operators ‘Australia [is] a humanitarian land’”

Good blokes
The researcher, Sarvananthan, said why Australia was a country of choice for Sri Lankan migrants had a lot to do with its record of humanitarian assistance. “This… is largely due to the number of Australian volunteers who arrived [in the north] during the ceasefire [2002-2004] between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers, and post-tsunami [in 2004] in the north and the east].”

More recently, Australia invested nearly $187 million in Sri Lanka from 2010 to 2013, which included rebuilding communities affected by conflict. Its program strategy until 2016 emphasizes a “post-conflict” approach, in which “all aid interventions Australia supports will be conceived, managed and evaluated in a way that is sensitive to the post-conflict environment. Australia does this because social and economic progress will be undermined if peace is not sustained”.

As the number of youths fleeing the island increases, Canberra has financed local radio broadcasts in the dominant language of the north, Tamil, warning listeners that "Australia has toughened its immigration laws. Illegal entry will not be allowed on Australian soil. Boats will be diverted to Papua New Guinea”.

In November 2013 there were nearly 5,000 Sri Lankans in Australian immigration detention facilities on Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Australia: The Spoilt and Selfish Country

It's a dry, hot, dusty day in Chavakachcheri (Northern Sri Lanka) when I am taken to meet some of the families that have returned to their home communities after 30 years of civil war. Many of the children I meet have lost their Dad in the war, and the lucky ones - their Dads are amputees, or suffering from mental distress. Female headed households, (that's the official term) are the norm here.

But the community suffers, not just a human cost, but also from a lack of water, sanitation, food and economic opportunities to change their reality. Among the many challenges facing the area, much of the infrastructure in the Northern Province was destroyed and water sources were neglected.

In Chavakachcheri the people bought me bottled water - but this wasn't the $1 bottle you buy and throw, this was a bottle of the water they use for cooking, drinking, cleaning, bathing and gardening. (The picture to the right.)

Over the last year I have been working with a team in Sri Lanka to design a project that will "enhance the health and quality of life of the poor and vulnerable by improving sustainable access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene."

Our plan will transform the lives of 3,800 households, (15,960 people) and 4,500 students (in 15 schools) in 10 villages (with a bias towards female headed households and households with a disabled person). Our plans include:

• Constructing 10 water supply units which will improve equitable access to households and schools.
• Develop (with the government and community) new water supply options including: rainwater harvesting, household level solar treatment facilities and community tanks piping water to universally accessible stand points
• Sanitation and hygiene behaviour change will occur as a result of the provision of affordable latrines and solid waste disposal management which will result in the communities becoming open defecation free (ODF).

BUT IT'S ALL JUST ACADEMIC NOW. 

On Friday, the Liberal Government's decision to axe AusAID came into effect and an email arrived telling us that the funding (and the two other similar projects planned for PNG and Zimbabwe) has been withdrawn.

Tony Abbot's promise to balance the budget includes a $4.5 billion cut in the projected foreign aid budget over four years to help fund ''essential infrastructure'' in Australia. ''We can't continue to fund a massive increase in foreign aid at the expense of investment in the Australian economy,'' Hockey declared. Abbott added insult to that injury: ''We will build the roads of the 21st century rather than shovel money abroad.''

(It's much bigger than this; I am reducing the issue greatly, but to try and paint a realistic picture). Despite last year telling us that we had $2.5 million and the mandate to proceed - 12 months of discussions and planning with government and community, making promises on behalf of the Australian people, and with the approval of the Australian Government - on Friday night I had to ask the Sri Lankan team to begin to break the news that it is not going to happen. We do not have the promised money to help them get safe, clean water, or to assist them to build improved sanitation facilities. We do not have the people to help them, because we do not have the money. 

Why? Because the Australian government, on my behalf, told them that they are not a good investment. Julie Bishop (Foreign Affairs Minister) says 'that the new order was about making aid a tool of diplomacy and trade promotion'. So, investing in the lives of 4,500 students who have no safe drinking water at school has no economic advantage for Australia. It is more important that I have a nice road with a neon super-sculpture to brighten up my trip than 15,960 people in post-war communities have clean, safe water. (The number is actually much bigger than that because the whole program is actually 20 NGOs, in 12 countries.)

Mark Baker, (Editor, The Age: The shame that is Abbott's foreign aid policy) says: "The cuts... will also reinforce growing perceptions throughout the Asia-Pacific region and beyond that Australia is a spoilt and selfish country that's indifferent to the moral obligations of the richest nations to the poorest." (The Great Southland? Not so much!)

What Abbot's us-first approach to aid fails to acknowledge is that investing in the development of Northern Sri Lanka could actually have a dramatic impact on one of his other election promises - Stop the Boats. The best way to stop Sri Lankan's getting on boats and causing us discomfort on our boarders is to help them get water, sanitation, safety, jobs, hope and the same rights you and I demand at home - I suspect that it would be a lot cheaper too.

Overseas Aid: An Australian View

A quick look at what Australian people know and think about Overseas Aid.

Insignificant Casualties - (Very General Ranting)

On Monday night (Indonesian local time) another tsunami, caused by a 7.7 magnitude quake, devastated the coastal villages of Sumatra, in Indonesia. At this stage at least 113 people are dead, over 500 missing and according to local government sources 10 villages have been destroyed - which means that in the days to come the death toll will rise, and the cost to the local communities will only begin to be realised as the emergency subsides.

Here in Australia though, you could be forgiven for wondering if there were any casualties at all! Having read the local (Melbourne) papers and listened to the local news reports, it appears, as one reporter said, "there were no significant casualties". Apparently what is meant by 'significant' is that there were no Australians killed or injured. The search for 9 Australians missing after the tsunami has finished with the Herald Sun newspaper claiming a "Great Escpae". (Don't get me wrong, I am glad they are okay!)

Do the editorial staff of our largest newspapers really believe that their readers consider all other nationalities, (in this case Indonesian Muslims) as insignificant? Are their editorial decisions based on any genuine data? If so then we are a sorry people.

It would appear (acording to our news reports) that for the cost of a humanitarian disaster to matter to Australians an Australian needs to be affected - or unfortunately killed!