Shamed by two lost boys on the other side of the world
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Your support makes all the difference.It is possible that many Afghans claiming refugee status in Australia no longer fear persecution back home. The two boys who sought refuge in the British consulate in Melbourne say they left Afghanistan about two years ago, when it was ruled by the Taliban. So the Australian government may be right to rule that the brothers, aged 12 and 13, are not refugees in the terms of the Geneva Convention. The British Government may therefore be right to come to the same conclusion.
But what brutality and lack of compassion the two governments have shown in reaching those decisions. This is no mere heart-sleeved liberalism, moved by footage and accounts of the boys' tears. Indeed, we accept that they are unlikely to be innocent babes in the wooded thickets of bureaucratic indifference. After all, they have a lawyer and found their way to the British consulate in the first place, probably assisted by the kind of Australian citizen that is a credit to the country.
But the Australian government's policy towards asylum-seekers has been so harsh that it constitutes a form of persecution in itself. These boys were fleeing the Woomera detention camp, which they justifiably regard as a jail, and where the conditions are notoriously bad. Australia, more recently than most places a country of immigrants, is having a fit of xenophobic hysterics over a mere 1,200 asylum applicants, and needs to be shamed out of it.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, has only encouraged this Australian fear of foreigners. It may not have been sensible to offer the whole family – the boys' mother and three sisters are still in Woomera; their father was in Sydney on a temporary visa – refuge in Britain. But Mr Straw sanctioned the handing over of the boys to the Australian police after just eight hours.
Surely the British authorities could have displayed a minimum of decency and sympathy and looked after the two boys until a humane arrangement could be reached, or until one or both of their parents could be brought to Melbourne?
The British record on refugees is bad enough, but to collude in the even less enlightened policy of the Australian so-called Liberal government is embarrassing and shameful.
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