Silencing the lambs: Asylum seekers are a metaphor for our times

I'm a pre-dawn riser. Awake at four o'clock, when the world around me is still, when not even the early bird stirs. The hour renders me remote, isolated from the rest of humanity, the rest of life. And in this space my mind is sharp. No better place to dwell on other sorts of isolation.

It was in the dark hours of one winter Sunday that I began to ponder how asylum seekers held in apparent indefinite captivity in off-shore detention centres might be a metaphor for our times.

I saw asylum seekers as twenty-first century 'lambs.' Not weak, vulnerable, bleaters, but remarkable lambs with the spirit and savvy to get out of whatever hellhole they've escaped from. Lambs then subjected to the live-human import/export trade of people smugglers. Lambs eventually dumped on a shore, at the mercy of local law.

Innocent lambs (mostly), terrified, traumatised, needy.

The lamb is an ancient symbol of a victim to be sacrificed to assure the salvation of someone else. Although I'm sure this is not quite the motive behind the persecution of the Rohingya or the Kurds or any number of ethnicities singled out and blamed for all manner of issues, or ostracised for their faith. For I do not believe that salvation is what the perpetrators of such persecutions have in their hearts and minds. More likely some sort of hatred, hatred fuelled by fear and propaganda. Hatred cultivated or harnessed by those who like to profit from war (see Mary Kaldor's New and Old Wars http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745655628.

My asylum seeker lambs may have thought that they had escaped from the ultimate fate of the scapegoat: death. Only to find when they arrive on a new shore, that their fate is one of further persecution, including various forms of overt and covert torture, abuses of all kinds, and rape, in euphemistically labelled detention centres that many are now naming concentration camps. Reports are so frequent, allegations so dire, it's hard not to be affected.

In seeking asylum my asylum seeker lamb becomes a sort of universal scapegoat, as if there for the punishing of sins she took no part in, sins of which she was the very victim.

I find the metaphor of the sacrificial lamb collapses with regard to asylum seekers in the face of Christian symbology, for my asylum seekers are not the lambs of God, they are not there, as Jesus Christ was there, to take away our sins and make the world a better place. They are a pre-Christian sacrifice, just as the Jews were a pre-Christian sacrifice to the vengeful, exclusive, supremacist 'god' of the Nazis.

My asylum seeker lambs are held in extreme isolation. The camps are located in far-flung regions, or off shore on tiny islands far away, almost entirely out of reach of the rest of us. The camps are remote in another sense too: They are run at the behest of government by corporations (Transfield, G4S, Serco), who go on to outsource whatever services the corporation can't provide. It's a world of contractors and sub-contractors and dubious accountability. (see Antony Loewenstein's Profits of Doom)

Perhaps in this sense, asylum seekers are a metaphor for the isolation, the remoteness, of governance (whether Liberal or Labor) in the twenty-first century.

Stated boldly, in a fashion we are all lambs. Perhaps in some way we are all metaphorically languishing in captivity on a remote island of scarcity far from the land of plenty. Some of us might be homeless, or required to live in overcrowded shacks and share unsanitary facilities. Others may be doomed to a marginal existence, scrambling for whatever charity is thrown their way. A lot of us fight off depression and thoughts of suicide. And daily we may suffer the ignominy of our unheeded requests for justice at local, state and national levels, while we eke out a living in the face of crippling personal debt. We watch as our health, education and social services shrivel, our rights to privacy are compromised, and our demands for accountability brushed aside. And, perhaps now, anyone who has the audacity to act against the national interest can be thrown out and barred from re-entry, (although I wouldn't endorse anyone who seeks to take up arms to fight for any fundamentalist cause). It seems to me that neoliberalism and the rise of the superrich is reducing ordinary nation states to little more than vast, apparently fenceless, detention centres in which citizens are endlessly surveilled, and whistleblowers and journalists are gagged.

The lambs are silenced.

And while we forage for the remaining kernels of social democracy, a world of unimaginable cruelty is sealed away, and justified by an anti-asylum seeker propaganda campaign that has our elected leaders and their media cronies trotting out remarkably dehumanised 'stop the boats' slogans like brainwash.

Is this all so very different from the way government treats indigenous peoples? Isn't in large part indigenous government policy a false edifice built up out of propaganda and lies and empty promises? While the real agenda, which apparently includes forcibly removing people from their land and demoting sites of World Heritage status, (such as the Burrup Peninsula, WA - http://www.fara.com.au/aboriginal-heritage-protection-disgrace), seems to serve no one but the mining corporations.

It appears to me that there is some sort of corporate-favoured agenda at play in every quarter of our democracy. And whenever such an agenda is at play there's a sacrifice, whether human or environmental.

It seems to me that refugees, and their asylum seeker representatives abroad, are the human sacrifice in a global war game. The winners of this game ultimately exist as ever they have in the corporate realm: The Halliburtons and the Lockheeds, the Sercos and the Blackwaters. Are they not salivating beasts with dollar signs for eyes drooling over the next failed state along with their exceptionally clever and morally bereft lackeys?

Unlike the super corporations mentioned above, I like to believe most people at least try to be good. That goodwill is a basic human quality. We might not see it in those blinded by wealth and power, or in those fuelled but hateful ideology. In every society there exists a history of goodwill and a history of its opposite.

This is surely the case in Australia. The dark side of its history was enacted the moment Whites first came here, a wicked history of genocide and myriad other brutalities. And then there's the story of our community spirit, our generosity, our engagement and willingness to lend a hand. Australians of all stripes know how to be 'good neighbours.'

There is fast emerging a groundswell of ordinary Australians who are desperate to help asylum seekers held in the camps. In cities, towns and villages there are legions of warm-hearted women and men and children prepared to dedicate much, so much, to the refugee cause. There is the 'Grandmothers Against the Detention of Refugee Children' (http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/grandmothers-stand-up-against-detention-of-refugee-children-20150621-ghtloh.html), a rapidly growing movement voicing dismay and outrage over this cruellest of practices. Under the auspices of a movement of Christians who use the hashtag #LoveMakesAWay, children in schools across Australia have been voluntarily putting themselves in lunchtime detention, lips taped shut in protest and in solidarity with children locked in the camps. There are those who write letters, sign petitions, wave placards. There are lawyers, doctors, health workers, teachers, counsellors, all crying out one word: Shame!

Every sort of argument is brought to the fore to try to persuade others that what Australia is doing is wrong. We quote statistics, we cite the UNHCR or Amnesty and speak of human rights, but the propaganda is powerful, in some quarters rendering adherents unshakeable.

At best the 'lamb' advocates are slated, like animal rights activists, as misguided do-gooders with bleeding hearts. And, thanks to a successful campaign feeding on nationalism and Australia's racist past, the asylum seeker issue has become contentious. So sensitive, only the bravest of us dare raise the matter amongst our family and friends.

I think it's time we were brave. It is time to find ways to persuade. To this end I seek to reclaim the metaphor of the lamb and help restore asylum seekers their dignity. For asylum seekers are representatives. They are ambassadors for all of the almost 6o million refugees in the world today http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/18/world/unhcr-refugees-most-in-history/index.html. In a sense they represent ALL the atrocities meted out around our world. They represent all of us. They represent to us the enormity of human suffering. And they represent some of the finest qualities in the human spirit: courage and resilience. They represent not only survival, but triumph. They are heroes. They are spirited lambs. They are to be celebrated, not sacrificed. They are survivors. They represent us.

In my view, if we are ever to turn this boat around, blast through the propaganda lodged in people's minds, then we need to set an example that our politicians will be forced to follow. We must not wait to be led. We must lead. And we must all recognise ourselves in each and every asylum seeker, and do something, anything, to make a difference, every single day. For as our country makes a sacrifice of those innocent lambs seeking asylum, so we too are being sacrificed.