Australia’s refugee policies lauded by reactionaries in Europe
The Australian government’s reputation for cruelty has won it the admiration of conservatives and racists the world over.
Katie Hopkins, a commentator for Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid the Sun, recently referred to migrants as “cockroaches”. In a column entitled “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”, she also called for the British government to “get Australian”: “Australians are like British people but with balls of steel, can-do brains, tiny hearts and whacking great gunships.”
Probably the greatest indictment of Australia’s policy is not the endorsement from Hopkins, but the fact that elements of Britain’s far right have distanced themselves from the more draconian aspects of Australia’s refugee policy.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the staunchly anti-immigration UK Independence Party, praised Abbott’s anti-refugee rhetoric, echoing his “general point that if you say everyone is welcome then a lot more people will come”. But when asked if he supported the abuses actually carried out by the Australian government, Farage replied: “Some of the ways that Australia acts on these things are tougher than we in Britain can perhaps stomach.”
Nevertheless, the European establishment is modelling elements of its increasingly inhumane “border protection” policies on Australia’s policy of turning back the boats.
Much of the continent faces economic stagnation and high unemployment; the vilification of migrants and refugees has become an increasingly important tool of distraction and scapegoating.
More than 950 refugees are believed to have drowned when their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea soon after it left port from Libya on 19 April. Thousands of people fleeing war, poverty and counter-revolution in Africa die making the trip across to Europe each year.
In response to the catastrophe, European heads of state met at an emergency summit in Brussels. While EU officials pledged too little too late in the way of search and rescue operations, the main focus of the meeting was on “security”.
“We commit to undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers”, said a statement issued by the summit. A ten-point plan was outlined, which included deportations and an all-out military strategy. These brutal policies might include the use of Apache helicopter gunships to strike boats along the coast of Libya.
But it’s the criminalisation of refugees, and the carnage caused by Western military action, that has led to thousands of deaths over the past few years. EU border control agency Frontex has been destroying boats as part of its Atlanta operation, resulting in a shortage of seaworthy vessels and overcrowding on those that do attempt the journey.
