Complexities
Sometimes, I don’t know what to think. And I don’t know how anyone else can have a firm opinion on these things, either. Most likely, they haven’t really thought about it that deeply.
Asylum seekers, I’m trying not to care. I just finished a thesis on them. I’m spent. But, its front page news, and it is a new and major development/crisis, can’t escape it.
The possibility has been raised that among the Tamil asylum seekers are LTTE Tigers.
The spectre of terrorism has been raised many times before, particularly with Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers, and I considered these claims to be dubious and often ludicrous, a xenophobic amalgamation of world events happening in close succession. The possibility of Osama bin Laden coming on a leaky boat to Australia in order to carry out a terrorist attack is just … laughable, really.
From my (reasonably informed, but ultimately far removed and second hand) perspective, the possibility that former LTTE Tigers are among the Tamil asylum seekers is actually credible. I don’t believe that they would be coming to Australia with the intention of carrying out terrorist acts or atrocities, I think they would just be getting the hell out of there to avoid retaliation. And while I believe that this in no way reduces our obligation to process and accept asylum seekers regardless of the method by which they come to Australia (and we don’t actually have any direct obligation beyond normal UNHCR responsibilities to those currently in Indonesia, however nausea-inducing Kevin’s policies are to try and keep them there), I wouldn’t want to be the one having to sort out the Tigers from the others - quite possibly family members, neighbours, and so on. I think a situation like the Tamil Tigers illustrates the complexities of terrorism that many people don’t seem to appreciate (and I certainly didn’t until I studied it).
I am by no means a supporter of terrorism. I am a pacifist, and I abhor violence (I gave my dog a little smack on the bottom today when she ate a piece of dog poo on our walk, and then felt so guilty about it that I gave her a treat when we got home to apologise. I in no way, shape or form recommend any of the aforementioned sentence in actually trying to get results from training your dog). I thus differentiate myself from apparently most of humanity in that I believe terrorism and war are morally equivalent. I think that George W. Bush should be indicted for crimes against humanity. I do instinctively side with the underdog, and put the pathetic into empathetic, and thus I often find the cause of terrorists to be compelling (more often than that of warmongers), even though I sharply disagree with their methods. The common adage is that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, and although this is often tossed off as a cliche, I think its quite important, and is going to become more important in understanding international relations in the twenty first century. I think terrorism is… well, I KNOW that its increasing, and I think it is going to keep increasing, as we have a unipolar world dominated by a country which, until very recently, was led by a man who seemed intent on doing everything possible to increase terrorism, and was previously led by a succession of men who did a great job of laying the embryonic groundwork in particular countries to nurture terrorism, plus technology plus globalisation plus yada yada undergrad politics primer. Its easy to bash the USA and the rise of capitalism/corporatism, and I probably wouldn’t want that many other countries to have been dominating the world instead (bar Scandinavia, whose inhabitants are largely wonderful), but it is pretty easy to trace cause and effect of current problems back to US policies. Hindsight is 20/20, obviously.
I have digressed hugely. In fact, so much so that I have forgotten my original point.
Oh, ex-terrorists. Wanting to be rehabilitated. Given that Australia is still debating whether to extradite Nazi war criminals who came here as refugees, I think that it is an important issue. But complex. I’m completely down with people (particularly men) being held responsible for their actions.
Until recently, my sister worked as a humanitarian aid worker in Uganda, which has been in a civil war for over twenty years. One of the major projects her NGO works on is the rehabilitation of child soldiers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army has a primer for the uninformed (as I was, until she moved there).
These children or young men, who were usually kidnapped and brainwashed into the LRA, are then ‘kidnapped’ back from the LRA by the Ugandan army. The young men are usually traumatised, were often forced to perpetrate atrocities against family members to prove their loyalty to the LRA, while the girls are used as sex slaves for the soldiers. Because so many families and villages have been affected (huge chunks of the country now sleep in refugee camps instead of their villages in order to be protected from the night time kidnapping raids), and the majority of members of the LRA did not willingly join up, the focus for ex-soldiers has been on rehabilitation, dealing with trauma, finding new occupations and upskilling the injured, reconciliation within families and communities, and so on, rather than revenge or punishment for the atrocities committed by the soldiers. It is a terrible, terrible situation, with no end in sight, but the blame and responsibility for this ‘terrorist’ organisation has been firmly placed on its leadership, not its rank-and-file. It is difficult to characterise them in any justifiable way as ‘freedom fighters’, and the leaders have been indicted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
With situations like the Tamil Tigers, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and even Hamas, its less clear. The leaders are usually not the ones perpetrating the atrocities. There’s often little employment opportunities or, really, much else to do in these places. Membership seems to be largely voluntary, while it is possible to justify their causes as legitimate resistance or freedom fighting, depending on your perspective about neo-imperialism et al. Hell, Hamas don’t need much justification at all. The establishment of Israel is one of the unfairest, and stupidest, events of the 20th century. I digress hugely.
Tamil Tigers.
Abhorrent, nasty group most famous for the popularisation of suicide bombing, a development which has made terrorism iteratively more deadly. Do we want any of them coming here? No. Is it likely? Possibly. Does this lessen the claims of other Tamil asylum seekers coming here? No. But it necessitates a more nuanced and thoughtful debate, which certainly seems to be lacking in current media analysis.
And I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the one processing claims right now. I want to work in government, but how can you be sure what is the right thing to do? The buck usually stops with the man at the top. But they often aren’t right.
