Author: Dave Andrews

A protest at the office of Health Minister Peter Dutton MP has seen eleven Christian activists – including Westenders Terry Fitzpatrick and Dave Andrews – detained before being released without charge.

The abusive treatment in detention of children seeking asylum in Australia has touched a nerve.

Normally quiet well-dressed law-abiding middle-of-the-road religious people all over Australia are rising up and risking arrest to protest Australian Government Policy that The Australian Churches Refugee Task Force recently unhesitatingly labelled as “State-Sanctioned Child Abuse”.

There is much concern over the adverse impact prolonged detention has on the health of children. The facts are clear. A recent Australian study of children detained for more than one year found that:

o          100% presented with Post-Traumatic Stress syndrome

o          100% presented with major depression

o          100% displayed suicidal ideation

o          80% engaged in self-harm behaviours

o          70% displayed symptoms of an anxiety disorder

o          50% presented with persistent physical health problems
For Christians who believe we should treat each refugee child ‘as if they are Christ Jesus himself fleeing Herod the Great’, this treatment is totally unacceptable. Which is why Christians from Brisbane churches have written letters to The Hon Peter Dutton, as Minister for Health, asking him to intervene to ensure the immediate release of all children from detention.

But none of us received a single reply to our letters. Not one. Not even a perfunctory form letter.

Recently, Paul Young, the chief psychiatrist responsible for the care of asylum seekers in detention for the past three years, publically shared his findings. His interview with The Guardian suggested the government was in a state of denial, the immigration department refusing to accept the IHMS statistics, which ‘revealed damage to children and adolescents held in prolonged detention’.

So it was on September 9, during Queensland Child Protection Week, 30 Christian leaders from various denominations held a prayer vigil at the Health Minister’s office in Strathpine, with the intention of remaining in prayer in the Minister’s office until Mr Dutton undertook to act decisively to ensure the health of all children in detention by quickly securing the release of all children under 18 from mandatory detention onshore, Christmas Island and Nauru.

The police were called and asked those of us in the office to leave. But we politely refused their request. As a result, eleven Christian leaders, including ministers from the Uniting and Wesleyan Methodist Churches, a Catholic priest, A Sister Of Mercy, and three Anglican priests were detained. Terry Fitzpatrick and I were also detained. We were all later released without charge.

This action was part of a growing movement of Christians round Australia called Love Makes A Way. Following in the footsteps of Jesus – who was an asylum seeker as a baby, when his family fled from Herod to Egypt – Love Makes a Way believes love will make a way for all vulnerable suffering people – fleeing oppression, persecution and war – to be cared for with dignity, empathy and respect.

Nine previous Love Makes a Way prayer vigils have been held interstate, including in the electorate offices of Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Scott Morrison, Julie Bishop and Bill Shorten, with more than sixty participants arrested. This was the first in Brisbane.

I often experience serious grievous reasons to doubt what I am going to say, but let me tell you what I secretly really believe.

My mate, Mike Riddell, says that ‘everything alive is moving, even that which appears to stand still. Call it evolution if you will. Call it creation if you prefer. The engine that drives the universe forward is not natural selection but the dreaming of God. God’s dreams pervade the world as a song haunts your mind; summoning, luring, calling. Where they find resonance, there is movement. God calls the tune; some of us dance. This waltz between God and the world is the source of all that is, and more importantly, what is yet to be.’[i]

Mike, as he does, goes on. He says ‘the word that defines God, which carries through when all the others have stumbled and fallen, is “love”. Love is God’s essence’. Love is who God is and what God does. Mike concedes ‘the word itself is, of course, sloppy. Teenagers are convinced the rush of hormones flooding their bodies is “love”. The mindbenders have used it to sell chocolate and perfume. Love has been trivialised – like Bach played on a kazoo. Never-theless’, he insists ‘genuine love exists. The river of love between two people is at its deepest point an intimation of the heart of God. (And) the heart of God has gone out from itself to envelope the universe. Love is the source of its exi-stence, love the energy streaming through it, love the end to which it moves’. On a roll Mike cries ‘God is the one who dreamed you into being, danced with joy at your birth,(and) tracked you down the backstreets of your life, whisper-ing to you in the night, calling you (back to your self) from the darkness.’ [ii]

Author, James Olthuis, reaffirms the fact that ’love is the basic design plan for the universe. God’s love is the source of all that is. Because God is love, and human beings are made in God’s image, love is who we are. Love is not first and foremost something we do. It is who we are. Love is the essence of being human. To live is to let love well up and stream through us as the pulse of our lives, connecting us to ourselves, our neighbours, the whole family of earth’s creatures, and God, the alpha and omega of love. To love is to be seeking, fostering and sustaining connections with that which is different and other –  without domination, absorption or fusion – in delight, in care, in compassion.’ [iii]

We are like fish, in a Sufi story, who anxiously swim around looking for water – till they realise they are swimming in it. Once we realise that we are immersed in ‘the river of God’s providential love,’ we can learn to ‘float in it’. To ‘float’ we don’t have to do anything but ‘let go’. ‘Floating is putting our full weight on the water trusting that we will always be supported.’ The confidence we need to have in order to let go  – and float in the river of God’s love – comes from let-ting God’s love wash over us’ and ‘from soaking in the assurances of that love’ which come our way every day – ‘not from trying to believe them’. [iv]

In the Abrahamic traditions faith involves ‘deep trust in the watchful love of God for all God’s children. According to the prophet Isaiah, even in the midst of the most terrible circumstances, those whose hearts are centred in God’s faithful care “shall renew their strength, they shall mount up on wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint”.’ [v]

David Benner reminds us that ‘while human love can never bear the weight of our need for divine love, it can teach us about divine love. Human love can communicate divine love. Experiences of human love make the idea of God’s love believable. The relative constancy of the love of family and friends makes the absolute faithfulness of divine love at least conceivable.’ However, Benner  repeats, again and again, there is ‘no substitute for learning what love really is by coming back to the source. God’s love is the original that shows up the lim-itations of all copies. Only God’s love is capable of making us into great lovers  [vi]

Wayne Muller says ‘it is not the fact of being loved that is life changing. It is the experience of allowing (ourselves) to be loved’. [vii]This experiential knowing of ourselves, as deeply loved by God, deepens our thoughts with new data about our world, and deepens our feelings with new attitudes to-wards our world. In the light of our knowledge of God’s love we know we can trust God, take risks and embrace the world that we live in courageously.

God’s love connects us to all of God’s creation and all of God’s creatures. It moves us ‘from the isolation of self-interest to a connection with life that can-not allow any ultimate divisions. It does not allow (us) to limit (our) interest to those within (our) tribe – whether those tribal boundaries are understood in religious, ethnic or national terms’. Instead it involves us in a ‘movement bey-ond the hardened boundaries of the isolated self to the selves-in-relationship that make up community’ leading to ‘a sense of (our) oneness with all’ life.[viii]

Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, ‘God’s dream is that all of us will realize we are family – we are made for togetherness. In God’s family, there are no outsiders. Black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Buddhist – all belong’. Now, more than ever, we need to remember that ‘God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion. People are shocked when I say that George Bush and Saddam Hussein are brothers – but God says, “All are my children.” It is shocking. But it is true.’[ix]

And this is what I believe.

[i] Michael Riddell Godzone Lion Oxford 1992 p30

[ii] Michael Riddell Godzone p23-4

[iii] James Olthuis The Beautiful Risk Grand Rapids Zondervan 2001

[iv] David Benner Surrender to Love 61-63,79

[v] Wayne Muller Legacy Of The Heart p27 (Isaiah 40:13)

[vi] David Benner Surrender to Love p84-5

[vii] Wayne Muller Legacy Of The Heart p27

[viii] David Benner Surrender to Love p93-4

[ix]Desmond Tutu Desmond Tutu’s Recipe For Peace www.beliefnet.com 2004

Recently I wrote about ‘Entering A New Dark Age’ and its policy impact on asylum seekers published in The Westender under the title ‘Corporate Feudalism’

The two default reactions for dealing with a threat to civic society like the ‘New Dark Age Of Corporate Feudalism’ we are face to face with are ‘Fight’ and ‘Flight’

The first option, favoured by the hawks among us, is ‘Fight Against The Darkness’. The trouble is that this reflects and reinforces the neo-feudal ‘crusade’ mentality of society and will only increase the darkness of our New Dark Age.

The second option, favoured by the doves among us, is ‘Flight From The Darkness’. The trouble is that this reflects and reinforces the neo-feudal ‘castle’ mentality of society and will only increase the darkness of our New Dark Age.

We need to find a third option, which doesn’t reflect and reinforce the neo-feudal mentality which imbues society with the Darkness of our New Dark Age.

Fortunately for us there are people who engaged their Dark Age effectively who can serve as examples for us as we seek to engage our own Dark Age effectively. In the earlier Dark Age Francis and Clare engaged in the struggle for change by simply ‘Being Lights in the Darkness’. The political philosopher, John Ralston Saul, says of Francis and Clare and their cohort, they ‘were the most famous activists (of their day). To a great extent they laid out the modern democratic model of inclusion – an important step towards egalitarianism.’ And, in my view, if we would want to change our society – and encourage it to be much more egalitarian and inclusive – we would do well to follow their example.

The feudalism that defined the Dark Age that Francis and Clare faced was a pre-modern, but very sophisticated and very effective system of control, upon which our post-modern system of oppression and exploitation may well be based. It was built on the foundation of a network of castles, guarded by towering walls, and protected by heavily-armed patrols of free-lance mercenaries, hired to safeguard the wealth – and well-being – of the castle inhabitants. Francis and Clare undermined feudalism simply by encouraging all their brothers and sisters to refuse to join the crusades, but lay aside their weapons, unlock the gates of their castles, welcome outsiders in, and share their wealth with the poor.

The challenge of Francis and Clare for us is to realise that we cannot change the system we inhabit, without changing the essential zeitgeist on which it is based and which gives it political legitimacy.

We need to realise that we cannot change the Sovereign Borders Policies of neo-feudal Fortress Australia, by attacking the government and the wanna-be government-in-waiting, because – whether we like it or not – we need to acknowledge that they have the overwhelming democratic support of a paranoid population for their xenophobic policies. The more we attack these policies, which make people feel safe, the more fear we will induce, and the more likely it is they will support the policies we oppose.

Francis and Clare show that the way for us to change the system is to demonstrate to people in our society that we don’t need the Sovereign Borders Policies of neo-feudal Fortress Australia because we don’t need to be afraid. We need to demonstrate that most of our fears are not real, only constructions of the powerful to justify their power – ostensibly so they might ‘better protect us’ – and those fears that are real can be managed sensibly and sensitively – with due regard for the welfare of everyone.

However, we cannot demonstrate to people in our society that we don’t need to be afraid, unless we, like Francis and Clare, overcome our fears, refuse to join the crusade for the inhumane treatment of others, lay aside our weapons of power and privilege, unlock the gates of our gated community castles, welcome outsiders in as friends we are yet to meet, and share our wealth with the poor who need our support. Only then will we be able to transform the zeitgest of our society and then, with the help of our compatriots, begin the task of deconstructing Dark Age Fortress Australia and reconstructing an Enlightened Age Refuge Australia.

From recent painful experience we know that policies don’t change when parties change, but only change when there is public support for policy change. When people live change and vote change politicians will follow the lead of the people – and change – to stay in power. Each of us, who feel inadequate, need to realise our capacity to act. And each of us, who feel afraid, need to realise our courage to act. Each of us, who feel impotent, need to recognise the potential of our actions. Each of us, who feel insignificant, need to recognise the consequences of our actions. Every act of truth is a victory over lies. Every act of love is a victory over hatred. Every act of nonviolence is a victory over brutality. Every act of kindness is a victory over cruelty. And every risk a person takes to make a stand, for peace and justice, however small, is a victory in the struggle to build to a better Australia – an Australia that is committed to the welfare of all.

During Lent I have joined some dear friends to lament Australia’s treatment of Asylum Seekers. I have prayed to find a way to encourage my fellow Aussies to re-discover our compassion. As I prayed I got this weird kind of idea about walking to the capital of our country, to appeal to the heart of the nation. And when I discovered that Tri Nguyen was already doing it, I asked him if I could walk alongside him, on the last leg of the journey.

In 1982 Tri Nguyen came to Australia as a boat person, seeking asylum, after fleeing the war and its aftermath in Vietnam. On his arrival he remembers being welcomed by Australians. His family ‘stayed at the Midway Hostel in Maribyrnong “where there was no barbed wire”. Locals ‘taught them English, gave them clothes and meals, and helped his father find a job at Australia Post’. And a group from Moonee Ponds Baptist Church helped bring the rest of his family to Australia eight years later. He says 60 Aussies went to the Melbourne Airport at 2am in the morning to welcome them!

Tri Nguyen walked from Melbourne to Canberra in 35 days towing a home-made wooden boat (an idea inspired by a Leunig cartoon of a man and a duck towing a trolley) as his own gentle plea for better treatment of Asylum Seekers. Tri says when we arrived ‘we were traumatised, but were immersed in hospitality’. I feel ‘very sad the [asylum seekers] coming now don’t experience the same welcome that (we) did’. Tri says we need ‘to change the national conversation about asylum seekers’, which is too negative. ‘We are at our best when we show compassion and work for justice for those who are oppressed’.

Over the Easter weekend I joined Tri Nguyen and three other asylum seekers, Linda, Daniel and Majid on the last leg of their walk from Melbourne to Canberra to take that message to the heart of the nation.

This is the message Tri delivered on the grounds of Parliament House:

‘Thank you Australia. Thank you for the gift of refuge that you have given me and my family. Thank you for giving this gift of refuge to generations of migrants who have sought asylum in this land.

“While I was a stranger, you welcomed me. While I was a boat person seeking asylum, you responded with compassionate hospitality. While I was vulnerable and without hope, you cared for me and welcomed me into a safe community where healing could begin.

“Thank you to all the elders, past and present, the traditional custodians of this land for your gracious welcome of all people seeking refuge in this land. In your vulnerability you call me your brother. In your suffering you call me your sister. You affirmed to me that together we are God’s family.

“Thank you Malcolm Fraser, it was your Government, which sought a bipartisan approach, working in collaboration with other countries, that responded to a generation of Vietnamese refugees. We are forever grateful.

“Thank you Australian Parliament for continuing to seek ways to respond to the great need of people in the world fleeing war, persecution, oppression, marginalisation … seeking asylum. For many Australia is their last hope.

“Thank you to my wonderful friends Linda, Daniel and Majid for walking with me from Melbourne to Canberra, sharing in the laughter, tears, the pain and the joy in our common humanity receiving welcome and hospitality. You are an inspiration!

“I too have a dream! That in thirty two years time, your children will walk from towns and cities to Canberra to thank the Australian people and the Australian parliament for giving their parents the gift of refuge.

“I too have a dream, that Australia will continue to be a nation that welcomes the strangers, that cares for the vulnerable and gives a fair go to all who are seeking refuge.

“That’s the Australia to be proud of.”

http://australia.isidewith.com/news/article/the-walker-meet-the-former-refugee-walking-from-melbourne-to-can

 

 

Anybody who knows me, knows that I have been having a recurring nightmare – now more than ever – that we are entering A New Dark Age.
And Jacques Attali, who was a professor of economics at the Polytechnique in Paris, and was appointed as the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development based in London, shares my nightmare.
Attali says: ‘By 2050, 8 billion people will populate the earth. More than two-thirds will live in the poorest countries. Seeking to escape their desperate fate, millions will attempt to leave behind their misery to seek a decent life elsewhere. But neither the Pacific nor the European spheres will accept the majority of poor nomads. They will close their borders to immigrants. Quotas will be erected and restrictions imposed. (Renewed) social norms will ostracize foreigners. Like the fortified cities of the Middle Ages, the centres of privelege will construct barriers of all kinds, trying to protect their wealth.’And, when I wake up every morning, I see every reason to believe that the nightmare is becoming a terrible reality
As I look around, I can see signs the New Dark Age has begun. Some of the features of emerging neo-feudalism that I observe include:

1. The emergence of powerful, unelected and/or unaccountable leaders.
2. These ‘lords’ offer protection in return for subservience and services.
3. People are given a choice – they are either ‘for’ or ‘against’ these ‘lords’.
4. Those people who are ‘for’ these ‘lords’ live their lives as their ‘vassals’.
5. ‘Vassals’ wait on the ‘lords’, live off the crumbs that fall from their lords’ tables’, and find refuge – in times of danger – inside their lords’ ‘castles’.
6. Those people who are ‘against’ these ‘lords’ are branded as ‘infidels’.
7. The ‘lords’ wipe out ‘infidels’ either by leaving them to starve ‘outside their gates’- in times of hunger – or by slaughtering them in ‘crusades’.
8. There are no universal basic human rights. The only ‘right’ is ‘might.
9. ‘Civilisation’ is the private preserve of these ‘lords’ and their ‘vassals’.
10. And they justify this iniquitous ‘civilisation’ in the name of religion!

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as the National Security Advisor in the Carter administration, supervised the beginning of the Afghan war and credits himself for having bought down the Soviet system, in the true spirit of the son of a Polish aristocrat that he is, says: ‘The three imperatives of geopolitical strategy are to maintain security dependence among the vassals, keep tributaries pliant, and keep the barbarians from coming together.” [ The Grand Chessboard, New York, Basic Books, 1997]
Australian sociologist Ghassan Hage says ‘Not so long ago the state was committed to the welfare of everyone within its borders. (We even called it ‘the welfare state’.) That is no longer so.’
‘We seem to be reverting to neo-feudal times, when the boundaries of civilisation no longer coincide with the boundaries of the nation, but the boundaries of upper class society… There are no universal rights – only the privilege of the elite.’
‘We are increasingly witnessing the rise of a culture that combines a siege (castle) and warring (crusade) mentality; by necessity it emphasizes the exclusion (and/or) eradication of the potentially threatening other.’
‘In each country now – there are first world elites and third-world threats to the elites. In this neo-feudal age the challenge is not how to integrate the marginalised, but how to rid ourselves of these third-world (threats – the refugees and refugee claimants – that we have on our doorstep.)’ (Against Paranoid Nationalism Pluto Press Annandale 2003)
We are beginning to build more and more of what we euphemistically call ‘gated communities’. Citadels guarded by walls, infra-red cameras, heat-sensitive alarms and private security companies. Purpose-built – as the developer of Sanctuary Cove – put it: ‘to keep the cockroaches out!’
The Australian government under John Howard planned to turn the whole continent into a ‘gated community’ like Sanctuary Cove. Millions of dollars – dedicated to foreign aid – were spent on the ‘Pacific Solution’ – a flotilla of heavily-armed patrols dedicated to preventing asylum seekers from ever setting foot upon our shore. It is a policy that is neither ‘pacific’, nor a ‘solution’. It’s meant ‘to keep the queue-jumping cockroaches out!’
The Australian government under Kevin Rudd took the ‘Pacific Solution’ further with its ‘PNG Solution’, according to which, ‘any asylum seeker who comes to Australia by boat without a visa will be refused settlement in Australia, instead being settled in Papua New Guinea if they are found to be legitimate refugees’. The policy includes ‘a significant expansion of the Australian detention facility on Manus Island where refugees will be sent to be processed prior to resettlement in Papua New Guinea, and if their refugee status is found to be non-genuine, they will be either repatriated, sent to a third country other than Australia or remain in detention indefinitely’.
The Australian government under Tony Abbot government funded ‘a nasty little comic book intended to deter those seeking asylum from making the journey to Australia; the narrative culminates with images of asylum seekers languishing miserably in mosquito-plagued camps’. After the latest tragic incidents that have occurred in the Manus Island detention facility, Jeff Sparrow says: ‘Perhaps an updated version can now depict them being shot or hacked at with machetes. Why not? That’s the logic of deterrence, isn’t it? Continue to make refugees miserable until the oppression they face from Australians becomes worse than that which they’re fleeing’. (The Guardian 18/02/14)
Walid Aly writes ‘It is the very logic of our asylum seeker policy – which is built on the sole rationality of deterrence – to create horror. So now, let us make this calculus finally explicit: whatever these people are fleeing, whatever circumstance makes them think they’d be better off chancing death on boats hardly worthy of that description, we must offer them something worse. That something is Papua New Guinea. The worse it is, the more effective it is destined to be. It is the very best form of deterrence.’(21/02/14)
For me these are signs we are entering a New Dark Age.

<Ed> This is a preview of the forthcoming March 2014 print edition of Westender.

For similar articles that we have published in the past search Westender for feudalism