http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15529
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On Line Opinion, 1 October 2013
Why would Lebanese board the boat?
The tragic drowning of the Lebanese citizens in Indonesia should be a wakeup call for officials … Lebanese people cannot build their future in their own country.
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora galvanised the tragedy to highlight the desperation of poverty-stricken parts of Lebanon.
But this sentiment may be music to the ears of Prime Minister Tony Abbott who has been singing the same tune that our primary responsibility in these tragedies is to stop the boats.
While Abbott may galvanise the tragedy to highlight the fatal ‘means’, the source countries are navel-gazing about the human ’cause’.
But in a new military model that is driven by Operation Sovereign Borders and immigration policies coupled with Border Protection, questions of why asylum seekers leave their home countries are off the political radar.
To seriously and simply ‘stop the boats’, we cannot afford to be simplistic. We need to stop the causes of the people inside the boats. This does not mean solving all the inhumane push factors that drive this desperation, but it does mean looking beyond the ‘people smuggling’ pull factors and looking more at the people than the boats.
Who were the people inside the latest boat tragedy?
We know that they were an estimated 120 people from Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen, of whom there have been only 28 survivors so far.
We know that they were at sea for five days before food and water supplies depleted before the two Indonesian crew became disoriented then decided to return to the Javanese coast in six meter waves.
We know that the Lebanese boarders were mainly from Akkar, the northernmost region of Lebanon bordering Syria.
We know that more than a million Syrians have fled the war to Lebanon which has placed enormous economic strain on this struggling neighbour of only four million residents. Stories of Akkar families struggling without affordable schools, electricity and food to feed themselves abound. Stories of Syrians resorting to cheap labour, crime and even prostitution abound. Stories of car bombs exploding near Lebanese mosques in August, echoing the seismic sectarian strife within Syria and threatening to widen the fault lines within Lebanese civil society abound. Stories of frustrated Lebanese crying out for some of the foreign aid that is sent to their new Syrian ‘neighbours’ abound.
Stories of people predators with promises of visitor visas to Indonesia then a ship to Christmas Island abound. Akkar families with ‘nothing to lose and everything to gain’ became the perfect prey, in the hope of a future life in Australia.
Their voices of desperation drowned out the voices of reason by their Australian relatives over the phone, discouraging them, warning them that there is no such ship – it is a suicidal fishing boat.
The rest is history repeating itself, as recovered bodies are identified then flown back to their village for burial, if indeed they are recovered.
The latest tragedy has sent shock waves throughout Lebanon, prompting introspection about poverty and safety for those who see no future for their children. Local MP Nidal Tohme blamed “the neglect of [Lebanon] to Akkar residents” claiming that “their deprivation and leaving them alone to face poverty and unemployment is what led the sad citizens to venture to the unknown.”
Legitimate questions have been asked about how the boat boarders could use communications technology as an SOS, but could not use communications technology to predict the rough seas or discern that the smugglers were lying about the safe ships. They paint a picture of the asylum seekers as illegitimate and unsophisticated. Compatriots from Lebanon are likely to be deterred by the news of this tragedy, and may attract more attention from their government, both of which may be constructive outcomes.
But our discourse in Australia and Prime Minister Abbott’s discourse with his Indonesian counterpart this week needs to extend beyond the boats per se.
The Abbott government’s decision to curb foreign aid by $4.5 billion to pay for infra-structure is an example of compounding the causes of the people inside the boats. By steering and supporting a political solution rather than a military solution for Syria in the UNSC, Australia could again be redressing the causes of the people inside the boats.
As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon stated, “the burden of helping the world’s forcibly displaced people is starkly uneven … anti-refugee sentiment is heard loudest in industrialised countries”.
Speaker of Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri called on authorities in Australia and Indonesia to launch an investigation to determine who was responsible for the incident.
But while Lebanon looks in the mirror, perhaps our prime minister can also look into his moral mirror and realise that his honourable mandate for humanity must always prevail over his political mandate for sovereignty.