Australia (Continuación)

Faysal Ishak Ahmed

MundoOceanía,

“They’re trying to kill me, if they kill me take care of my son.”

These were the last words of Faysal Ishak Ahmad before his death on Christmas Eve. The Sudanese refugee uttered these words during his last visit to his friend Walid Sandal. This is not a scene from a tragic film or novel. This is the reality of the prison on Manus Island, hundreds of kilometres from Australia and in the middle of a silent ocean.

Faysal was born in Darfur, Sudan – a region associated with war, genocide and displacement. A symbol of affliction in western media. In other words, Faysal was born into war.…  Seguir leyendo »

One way to anticipate the future is to look to the past. Bernard Spragg/Flickr

MundoOceanía

When the industrial revolution hit in the 1800s, countries with large disparities in wealth, low property ownership, deficient democracies and disparate education systems were left behind.

There’s a new industrial revolution just around the corner, driven by artificial intelligence and robotics. Deterioration within the key institutions of suffrage, education, and land policy indicate that Australia may be one of the countries left behind this time.

The first millennium

One way to anticipate the future is to look to the past.

British economist Angus Maddison has estimated that in the year 0, the population of Western Europe was 24.7 million. 1,000 years later it was 25.4 million – an increase of just 700,000.…  Seguir leyendo »

Australian players celebrated their defeat over Pakistan this month in Brisbane. Dan Peled/European Pressphoto Agency

MundoOceanía,

When young men loiter on street corners or in shopping malls throwing out insults or physically intimidating passers-by, we condemn their behavior as antisocial. When Australia’s top athletes do the same, we celebrate their “wit” and “spirit”.

Sporting prowess is the highest form of status for young men and boys in Australia, as it is in many other places. And in Australian sport there is no pinnacle higher than the national cricket team, which has won four of the last five world cups.

For a cricketing superpower, Australians have a poor on-field reputation. Mutually respectful competition has been replaced by ugly belligerence.…  Seguir leyendo »

Melbourne, Australia, 2012. Scott Barbour/Getty Images

MundoOceanía, ,

Our Christmas smells like pine needles and chlorine. My children help decorate the traditional tree at their grandparents’ house, then run outside to leap into the swimming pool. They sun themselves in the humid air of an Australian summer.

Back at our place they have been building a gingerbread cottage and adorning it with snowdrifts of icing while batting away flies. On Dec. 25, we will be baking a whole ham studded with cloves and roasting a turkey, but unlike most roasts served on the other side of the Equator, ours will be served with cubes of fresh mango, stirred through with lime.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOceanía, ,

It's so typical of the West to sneer at the actions of what they see as "small brown folk on the other side of the world."

The latest example of this racist and colonial mentality is the outrage and virtue-signaling criticism of the Philippines' hardline approach to drug crime under President Rodrigo Duterte.

Yet the Philippines has a problem. The scourge of drugs -- particularly crystal methamphetamine, known in the country as shabu -- has taken its toll on families and relationships and on communities and barangays (small neighborhood-based local governments) right around the nation.

It's a problem that has led to theft, violence and death over many years.…  Seguir leyendo »

The author’s photograph of a demonstration by Cypriot refugees in Melbourne, Australia in 1995. Ashley Gilbertson/VII

MundoOceanía,

I was 17 when I first came face to face with refugees. It was 1995 in Melbourne, Australia, and it was a Saturday. As usual I was out taking pictures of my friends skateboarding. We rolled up to a spot near the state Parliament. Across the street a protest was taking place — Cypriot women calling for the government to help them find their sons who had disappeared during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. I left my friends and took a photograph of the protesters.

A few days later, in the darkroom, I pulled the film out of the wash and saw the image.…  Seguir leyendo »

Demonstrators in Melbourne, Australia, protesting last month against the United States president-elect, Donald J. Trump. Julian Smith/European Pressphoto Agency

MundoOceanía,

I grew up in Footscray, a West Melbourne neighborhood then brimming with factories and optimism. Refugees had always moved to Footscray to start anew: Eastern Europeans in the 1950s and ’60s, Southeast Asians in the ’70s and ’80s, Africans in the ’90s and the new century. A foreman gave my dad a trial at a car-trailer factory, thinking this 100-pound man would not be able to lift heavy metal parts. He didn’t know that my father’s previous job as a slave laborer was to bury dead bodies. He got the job.

But when businesses began to move production overseas in the early 1990s for cheaper labor costs, many proud working-class Anglo-Australians — including the kind of foreman who hired my father — were laid off.…  Seguir leyendo »

Autriche de l’espace pour l’Europe

Europa,

Par 53,3 %, Alexander Van der Bellen (Verts) l’a finalement emporté nettement sur Norbert Hofer (FPÖ, extrême droite) à la présidentielle autrichienne du 4 décembre. La mobilisation différentielle de ce «troisième tour» a été favorable au candidat pro-européen et a fait remonter son score presque partout. Cependant, dans sa différenciation spatiale, ce vote ne diffère pas significativement du précédent, en mai dernier.

Au-delà de ces nuances, et si, par ailleurs, l’âge et le sexe ont joué un certain rôle (les femmes et les jeunes ont davantage voté pour le candidat écologiste), c’est surtout l’opposition entre les grandes villes et le reste du territoire qui frappe.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

The Australian government has announced a new deal long-expected, in policy circles, that will see asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island transferred to the United States.

This is the first positive news in three years for asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. It is a circuit breaker that has received support from the country's Labor party.

However, it is worth observing that this could only be considered a good deal in a world where developed countries have a strong aversion to receiving asylum seeker claims at their borders.

In September, Australia pledged to take a group of Central American refugees housed in camps in Costa Rica.…  Seguir leyendo »

Voters at a polling station in Sydney, Australia, in July. Rick Rycroft/Associated Press

MundoOceanía

If you were designing a nation from scratch, it would look something like Australia. A Eurasian people, boring politicians, and an economy that virtually runs itself.

Australia, uniquely, has avoided every major shock of modern globalization. Its economy mostly kept growing through the Asian financial crisis in the late-1990s, the tech crash at the turn of the millennium and the global financial crisis of 2008.

While other wealthy nations struggle to define their purpose, Australia has unlocked the secret to its next wave of prosperity. The key is the very thing that intimidates the United States, Britain and most of Europe: large-scale immigration.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía, ,

Governments tend to dislike being called torturers. That’s why the George W. Bush administration went through such legal contortions to exclude waterboarding from the definition of torture. That this relied on a definition too idiosyncratic for anyone outside the Republican Party hardly mattered because it allowed President Bush to say, “the United States does not torture”, with a straight face.

So on one level, when Amnesty International reported last week that Australia’s system of offshore detention — in which asylum seekers heading to Australia by boat are intercepted and sent to camps in Nauru or Papua New Guinea indefinitely — “essentially amounts to torture”, the Australian government’s response was entirely predictable.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Price of Australia’s Real Estate Boom

MundoOceanía, ,

One hundred twenty-five years ago, the suburb of Balmain, which juts into Sydney Harbor, represented the aspirations of a young Australia: a society that wanted to be free of the class structure of its mother nation, Britain, with a safety net that would make it one of the most egalitarian countries on earth.

Today, Balmain epitomizes the unexpected conclusion of that political and economic project: a nation where rampant property prices have made society appear richer while leaving it worse off.

Australia is entering the third decade of a real estate boom that has altered the national psyche. Over the past 30 years, housing prices have risen 7.25 percent a year, leaving the country with some of the most expensive real estate in the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Australia Needs the United States to Keep China in Check

MundoAsiaMundoOceanía,

Sydney Town Hall is central to the civic life of this city. Its marble steps are a favorite meeting place for Sydneysiders. Over the years, this secular cathedral has hosted rallies, political conferences and prime ministers’ funerals.

A different kind of occasion had been planned this week at the hall: a memorial concert for the 40th anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, a man responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people.

The event was organized by Chinese-Australians and businesses intent on currying favor with the government in Beijing. Following protests from other Chinese-Australian groups and concern from the police about public safety, the concert was canceled, as was a similar one scheduled in Melbourne.…  Seguir leyendo »

Australia’s Gulag Archipelago

MundoOceanía,

In 2009, 5,609 people traveled to Australia in tiny cramped boats, seeking refuge. By 2012, it had rocketed to 25,173. Kevin Rudd, the prime minister at the time, vowed that no one who tried to get here by sea would ever be allowed to settle. The opposition party successfully ran on a slogan of “Stop the Boats” in the next election, and by 2014-15, the numbers were down to 158. Now it is virtually zero. And the success of this approach has meant the number of people in detention more generally has plummeted: in 2013 there were almost 2,000 children in onshore and offshore detention; now there is little more than a hundred.…  Seguir leyendo »

A protester from the Refugee Action Coalition at a demonstration outside the offices of the Australian Government Department of Immigration and Border Protection in Sydney in April. (David Gray/Reuters)

MundoOceanía,

In recent years, Australia has been condemned for deterring boat people. Brutal, callous, inhumane, racist, xenophobic — all these barbs have been hurled at Canberra for its treatment of refugees. The tough border-protection policies have included turning back boats, mandatory detention and refugee camps in neighboring islands of Nauru and, up until last week, Manus in Papua New Guinea. The measures are indeed severe and allegations of human rights abuse persist.

At first glance, this criticism is not surprising: That Australia, a nation of 23 million built by immigrants, is acting heartlessly toward those who want a better life would seem like the height of hypocrisy.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

El 1 de julio de 2016 es, sin duda, un día para recordar en Austria. El Tribunal Constitucional anuló el resultado de la segunda vuelta de las elecciones presidenciales del 22 de mayo 2016, ganadas por el candidato verde, Alexander van der Bellen, con una ventaja de tan solo 30.863 votos. El tribunal, que había abierto una investigación a petición del partido ultranacionalista, sostiene que no ha detectado manipulación del voto, pero en su sentencia constata irregularidades formales en el proceso electoral.

De hecho, se han detectado anomalías en 77.926 votos, que podrían haber implicado una teórica manipulación del resultado final, motivo suficiente para repetir las elecciones.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOceanía,

As the world works to resolve a major international refugee crisis, Australia just wants them to go away.

At the recent World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the international community to find new long-term solutions for refugees.

In Australia, however, political debate is more often about ways to stop refugees from reaching the country, especially in the lead up to that country's national election on July 2.

Amid a record number of displaced people around the world, including an estimated nine million people in Asia, restrictive asylum policies have implications for refugee protection across the region and the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOceaníaInternacionalOrden Mundial,

Las arriesgadas acciones de China en los mares vecinos han provocado un cambio en la política australiana, digno de la atención internacional. Al hacer del mantenimiento de un “orden global basado en reglas” una prioridad estratégica central, la nueva doctrina de defensa de Australia adopta un lenguaje que no es común hallar en posición tan prominente en los programas de defensa nacionales. Y lo que más sorprende es que la medida viene de un gobierno conservador generalmente habituado al seguidismo de Estados Unidos.

Australia necesitaba una base fácilmente defendible para contrarrestar los reclamos chinos, y ya no bastaba para ello una mera repetición de la posición estadounidense.…  Seguir leyendo »

Australia: sending refugees to Kyrgyzstan?

MundoOceanía,

Yes, Kyrgyzstan, the country bordering Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China and Tajikistan, and no, this is not a joke.

Apparently intent not to backtrack on its 2012 promise that asylum seekers attempting to get to Australia by sea would ‘never make Australia home’, the Australian government has reached new heights of desperation/creativity.

Asylum seekers found to be refugees in the Australian-run detention centres on the Pacific Island state of Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) need to be resettled, and Australia seems to be running out of options of where to send them.

While reports the government is considering Kyrgyzstan as a so-called ‘third country’ resettlement option have not been officially confirmed, it would not be the first time countries with no logical connection to Australia have been considered.…  Seguir leyendo »

Meanwhile, in Australia: The Other Migration Crisis

MundoOceanía, ,

Whereas European media is inundated with new policy developments and opinions concerning the recent influx of asylum seekers arriving at Europe’s borders, you rarely read about the controversial immigration policies of Europe’s ally down under. While Australia may be known more for its beaches, barbecues and backpackers, what is happening to asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia by boat should not escape the debate.

Asylum seekers who embark on the ocean journey to Australia, often setting out from Sri Lanka or Indonesia but in some cases coming from as far as Syria, Iran and Afghanistan face one of three fates. None of these three fates involve asylum seekers reaching Australian shores.…  Seguir leyendo »