It is no secret either nationally or internationally that the Australian Governments current legislation in regard to refugees, infamously known as the ‘offshore detention policy’ is barbaric and extreme. This is not to say it doesn’t have its supporters, but I submit that even those in favour would refer to the inconspicuously named ‘regional processing act’ as a violent “policy of exile and torture” (Boochani 2018, p. 7). What I am suggesting here is whilst there are differing opinions as to whether the policy is ‘appropriate’, it is next to impossible to challenge the fact that Australia is in violation of human rights and international laws.
It is challenging and deeply painful to attempt to understand how one could – under the guise of false patriotism – justify the unlawful and inhumane imprisonment and torture of living, breathing, loving, thinking, beautiful, flawed humans, adult or child. This notion of a ‘threat’ to a border that we arbitrarily drew onto a map that we created at a time when we were busy stealing land, life, language and freedom from Indigenous inhabitants.
I can’t stop hearing the words of Gayatri Spivak in my head as I read Behrouz Boochani’s spectacular arrangement of words. A simple “accident of birth” (Spivak 1988, p. 281) could have prevented him from experiencing all of this suffering. But then I don’t get the sense that Boochani believes in these kinds of accidents. He seems proud of who his is, his Kurdish background making up one of the many pieces of his intricate and complex identity. He is proud in a beautiful way, not one that reminds me of the misplaced patriotism common to white Australians – his pride is in the beauty of things, the beauty of land, mountains, words and people. He is proud without needing to lay claim.
I don’t believe this is a consequence of the extreme trauma Boochani has and continues to experience, in his only 36 years on this planet. It runs deeper as though built into his very being, a sense of respect and shared humanity. I mourn for him, because his is the name that I know. But as I mourn for him I remember, that he is only one voice among many. A rich sea of diverse and dynamic voices, far from the homogenous images proliferated by Australian government and media. People who in seeking to build a safer life have been tortured, degraded and detained by a ‘democratic’, ‘first-world’ and ‘highly-developed’ country who in the words of the ‘national’ anthem have “boundless plains to share” (National Archives of Australia 2019). I have no pride in the nation that calls itself Australia.
*Readers on Australian land. Buy Behrouz Boochani’s book No Friend but the Mountains. Read it. Read it again. Those of us who benefit from the spoils of a ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ nation have an obligation to at least know what our Government is responsible for.
**I acknowledge that this was written on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations and I wish to acknowledge them as traditional owners. I would also like to pay my respects to their Elders, past and present, and Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be reading this.
***I further acknowledge that my classification of Australia as a ‘free’ and ‘democratic’ nation is likely at odds with the experiences of Indigenous Australians as sovereignty was never ceded.
References:
Boochani, B 2018, ‘Manus prison theory’, The Saturday Paper, 11-17 August, p. 7.
National Archives of Australia 2019, Australia’s National Anthem, National Archives of Australia, viewed 11 September 2019, < http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/fact-sheets/fs251.aspx>.
Spivak, G 1988, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in C Nelson & L Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the interpretation of culture, University of Illinois Press, Illinois, pp. 271-313.
Bad Feminist 