When did we stop calling a spade a spade?
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Oh gasp, the elephant in the room. Let's refer to it as a settlement rather than a genocide.
Our ancestors shed blood, but yet let's call a settlement or colonisation... anything other than genocide.
Many Australians tend to rank themselves above warring nations, but let's take a closer look before pointing our blackened finger in judgement.
Refugees on Manus Island were given a short reprisal from their six-years of compounds around a fortnight.
Behrouz Boochani is one of 120 people who were transferred to Port Moresby.
He is also the author of No Friends But the Mountains - awarded the 2019 Victorian premier's literary prize - and he was a guest speaker at the Blue Mountains Writers Festival in late August calling in on What's App.
Mr Boochani said he has been caught in an emotional mine-field.
He also urged the people of Australia to do their own research of the boat policy and detention centres.
The Kurdish man who has spent six years as a detainee on Manus Island does still not know where he will be settled.
However, he has no ambition to be settled in Australia.
I don't blame him, after the way our country has treated him.
Imagine for a moment being kept locked away from your family for six years.
The irrecoverable mental anguish of knowing that a moment ago you were young with the world at your doorstep, and now it's gone.
Since his arrival at Port Moresby, a number of men transferred from Manus Island are allegedly in jail with no contact to the outside.
Where is our benevolence, our quality of being humane?
The death of Alan Kurdi, the young boy washed up on the shores of a Turkish beach changed nothing.
It's not all sunshine and Crocodile Dundee down under as the closure of the (uncompromising) border lock down continues.
I can't comprehend the effects of Australia's refugee policy and I can't rewrite legislation, but let's call a spade a spade.
These people aren't our prisoners, but let's call it for what it is, let's call it a prison.
Not much has changed in the past two centuries.
We care about what you think.
Have your say in the form below.