Richard Flanagan sums it up

Excerpt Reposted from the UK Guardian I have no personal comment for this one – Richard’s article stands alone.  Please click on the link to read the full article.

• Richard Flanagan
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 December 2010 21.30 GMT
• Article history

Boat tragedy: How Australians became complicit in the horror of Christmas Island

The myth that we must be protected from hordes of refugees is a weeping sore at the heart of my country’s public life

As the Australian territory closest to Indonesia, Christmas Island has in recent years become a favoured destination for refugee boats. And so it fell to the islanders to be awoken on Wednesday by the screams of the drowning as a small wooden boat carrying about 70 refugees was smashed by a wild sea into a limestone cliff.

“I saw a person dying in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to save them,” resident Kamar Ismail is reported to have said. “Babies, children, maybe three or four years old, they were hanging on to bits of timber, they were screaming ‘help, help, help’.” Lifejackets thrown down were tossed back by storm winds, the last illusion of a hope that had once borne the name Australia.

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