When a boat crashed into the rocks on Christmas Island last week, I watched the news reports come in and cried. All those families torn apart. They’d gone through so much to get to Australia, to somewhere where they would hopefully be able to find a new life and with one big wave, that hope was dashed.
Parents held their babies up above the water, screaming for help, while residents of the Island threw life jackets, only to watch the life jackets torn away and the babies drown. So much floating debris, that they couldn’t see what was wood and what was human anymore.
The death toll is expected to rise as high as 50, with exact numbers not being known. Some bodies won’t be recovered.
Three children were left orphaned. Can you imagine that? Arriving in a new land, a land that your parents have likely promised will be free of death, only to have your parents drown, leaving you alone in a foreign country. Those children are in the Christmas Island Detention Centre now, not knowing their fate. There are over 150 children locked up there.
I’ve been reading the news reports and stupidly, some of the comments below them. To the person who declared ‘We don’t want them here’, I’d like to know: Where did your family come from that you can afford to be so arrogant about the arrival of families who need our help? There is a very good chance they didn’t want to be here either, however their need to be here outweighs everything.
Thinking about it, would you want to leave your home, your extended family, your country and your culture on a whim, forever? No. It takes some major trauma to have to decide that a foreign country is your only hope. That’s why they’re asylum seekers, not holiday makers.
We don’t know their stories, or their horror. We don’t know what they were fleeing from. To trust their lives and the lives of their family to a people smuggler and boat that, at the end of the day, didn’t hold up so well, somehow I’d hedge a bet that it wasn’t rising rates and taxes that forced them here.
I am ashamed that in the wake of this tragedy, our politicians are using it as a stone to throw at each other, the ‘Boat People’ stone. It isn’t constructive to throw rocks and portion blame at this time, not when you could be using your collective powers to organise a better solution, a plan so that this doesn’t happen again. A decisive agreement on what should happen once they’re here, that is in the best interest of these human beings, not in the best interest of your polls.
Screeching at the cameras that you will ‘STOP THE BOATS’ is equally unproductive. By all accounts, the amount of asylum seekers who have made it to Australian shores this year aren’t in danger of flooding us out of our own country, like some people fear. “Boat people” has turned into a general term thrown around as a fear mongering tool that is handy for point scoring.
It makes me wonder if the politicians have forgotten that at the heart of this aren’t people with fangs and giant claws, but babies and mothers. Fathers holding their daughters, begging for them to be saved and now, orphans. They are families who are in search of a better life, one without starvation, or murder on the horizon. Not monsters who need to be stopped.
In a shining beacon of hope however, I’ve gotten to watch Louisa move heaven and earth to get gifts to the children incarcerated on Christmas Island. She’s organised for the parcel to make its way onto a Virgin Blue flight and clear customs quickly, in time for Christmas morning.
Louisa has helped me feel less ashamed to be Australian today. With her idea and the blogospheres support, amazing things have happened in the last few days. Blogging has, yet again, reminded me about the best in people, instead of showing me the worst in them.
So, thank you, to every single person who donated, who shared the love and who helped out. You people are amazing.
And to our politicians, maybe you should be looking at the outpouring of love coming from this community and realising that not all Australians are scared of The Boat People monsters that you created. Most Australians are sympathetic and think that they deserve to be here, in this so called Lucky Country.
Maybe you can see that too.
One day.
