By Jenny Noyes
Australia's hard-line asylum seeker policy of indefinite offshore detention in unsafe, unsanitary, dehumanising conditions reached a new milestone last week with it's first death by self-immolation.
Omid, an asylum seeker on Nauru, set himself alight on Wednesday morning after a visit from the UNHCR. As he doused himself with petrol, he called out: "This is how tired we are, this action will prove how exhausted we are. I cannot take it anymore." He was left on Nauru without proper medical assistance, in agony, for 24 hours before the Australian government medevaced him to Brisbane, where he died.
Just days after Omid's death on Friday, a second asylum seeker attempted suicide by fire. Hadon, a young Somalian woman reportedly on suicide watch in Brisbane (where she'd been treated for injuries from a motorbike accident) before being forcibly returned to Nauru, is currently in a critical condition in hospital.
While Immigration Minister Peter Dutton outwardly expressed his "grave concern" about such "behaviour", (which he's conveniently blamed on refugee advocates) in reality he should be quite pleased with the publicity. As Waleed Aly pointed out in a blistering editorial on The Project on Tuesday, having asylum seekers commit and attempt suicide by setting themselves on fire shows the Australian government's policy of "deterrence" is working.
Waleed Aly: Asylum seeker self-immolations are "part of the policy game-plan".
Aly makes the terrible point in the segment that, unlike other famous self-immolation protests that gained worldwide attention and sparked change, the deaths of asylum seekers like Omid don't make a difference. And the reason, he says, is "they are part of the policy game-plan."
The narrative Australians have been sold for the past 10 years, Aly says, is that they'll do anything to get to Australia, "so that everything they do is just an attempt to cheat the system." And we've bought this story so fully we seem prepared to accept that it even applies to suicide.
"I hope he's not saying that refugee advocates are telling asylum seekers to set themselves on fire," Aly says, referring to Dutton's accusation that people opposing his policy are coaching refugees to self harm. But that does indeed sound like what Mr Dutton is saying.
The irony is that, far from being something refugee advocates want, Aly argues it is the logical extension of the government's policy.
"If there is one thing that's more disturbing than people burning themselves alive, it's that even something that horrific isn't evidence of policy failure.
"This is deterrence. This is exactly what it looks like when Australia's policy is working."
What better way to send out the message to people considering making the journey that arriving in Australian territory is a worse fate than the war and oppression they are running from? It certainly beats a bunch of propaganda cartoons.