As the election draws closer, anger about the immorality and inhumanity of Australia’s asylum seeker policy continues to swirl.
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The terminology used to describe, and intended to defend, Australia's divisive offshore processing situation speaks volumes.
Politicians speak of ‘detention’ happening ‘offshore’ as refugees are ‘processed’.
They refer to asylum seekers as ‘illegals’.
Illegal! How can we personify human beings like this?
An action can be illegal, but a person can not be.
The anti-refugee rhetoric being used by this government has shown how language can dehumanise people.
Its restrictive, isolating language is used to justify a system destined to strip its victims of hope.
Perhaps this cold lexicon has had its intended effect: Guiltily, I find myself desensitised to the inhumane actions normalised on Manus Island or Nauru.
It seems Immigration Minister Peter Dutton can barely recognise asylum seekers’ basic skills let alone unique traits, recently deeming them innumerate and illiterate.
In history class in high school, we learnt about a time when immigrants were branded 'aliens'.
The curriculum implied and class conceded the language was archaic and xenophobic.
So how is it now, with a supposedly progressive leader and a relatively healthy, wealthy, happy nation, that we have regressed?
The solution to boat arrivals is not as simple as it may seem, or to be idealised.
But holding “illegals”, who are really people just like us, in conditions conducive to self-harm, sexual assault and self-immolation is a shameful “solution”.
In decades to come, history teachers will recount this era with shame.
- TAMARA McDONALD