I am trying to understand the utter inhumanity of this Abbott government towards asylum seekers.  First, let’s look at just some of what they are doing.

Scott Morrison, Australia’s Immigration minister and devout evangelical Christian, has sent a profoundly disabled four year old child of asylum seekers to Australia’s concentration camp on Nauru.

He separated Latifa, a Rohingya asylum seeking mother from her new baby in a Brisbane hospital and banished the rest of the family offshore.

She was held in detention for 18 hours a day while her newborn was in intensive care.

Here is just part of what Tony Abbott, Australia’s  Prime Minister, said about keeping Latifa from her baby. ‘I don’t as it were apologise for what happens when people come to Australia illegally by boat.’

Carte blanche is it Tony? Why stop at denying Mums access to newborns?

By the way it is not illegal to seek asylum in Australia.

Love thy neighbour as thyself, anyone?

This rabid anti-refugee brutality explains why Tony Abbott fully supports the genocidal regime in Sri Lanka, saying at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting there that while the Australian Government deplores the use of torture:

…we accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances difficult things happen. Sri Lanka since the end of the war is much more free and prosperous, and has a better future and that’s important for everyone.

So in Tony Abbott’s mind torture is OK. People fleeing torture make it to Australia, to be tortured by the criminals in charge here, Labor and Liberal.

The Australian Government supports the criminals in charge of Sri Lanka because they – both the Liberals and Labor before them –  are criminals in cahoots with their brothers in Sri Lanka. The regime in Sri Lanka has enthusiastically backed Abbott’s attacks on refugees, has stopped some boats leaving the country and accepted asylum seekers sent back illegally by Australia.

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, Abbott on Sunday donated the Sri Lankan navy with 2 retired patrol boats.

Abbott said that the coordination between Sri Lanka and Australia was “well-co-ordinated and highly effective, with at least 12 on-water interceptions by the Sri Lankan Navy in 2013”. He went on:

Sri Lanka provides strong support against people-smuggling operations and Australian agencies work closely with their Sri Lankan counterparts. Only 14 boats have travelled directly from Sri Lanka to Australia in 2013 compared to 120 boats in 2012. Australia appreciates its strong cooperative relationship with Sri Lanka in countering people smuggling.

That is the reason Abbott, unlike British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron,  supports the genocide by Sri Lanka’s rulers of Tamils. It is why he justifies torture by these criminals and says the country is improving.  All because they ‘stop [some of] the boats. ‘

Judas was bought for 30 pieces of silver. The Australian government can be bought for murder, torture, rape and genocide, in the name of ‘stopping the boats.’

This slogan was one of the key reasons for Abbott’s victory and so to fail in this would be to put at risk victory in 2016. This means that the Government will take any action, no matter how brutal, to ‘stop the boats.’

The fact that people are fleeing war, rape, murder, genocide and will keep coming is irrelevant at this stage to the stop the boats racists. They can proclaim success because of a slow down. It cannot last.

The Hazara in Afghanistan, the Rohingya in Myanmar, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, will keep fleeing their persecution. Others like Iraqis will continue to flee the results of the war Western war criminals imposed on them.

The brutality of the Abbott government has to be put in context. It was Labor under Paul Keating that first locked up asylum seekers. It was Labor in Opposition under Kim Beazley that supported Howard turning the Tampa back. It was Rudd and Gillard in government who, after a brief period of slight relaxation, increased the rhetoric and action against refugees, culminating in the PNG solution and a deal with Nauru.

Labor moved Australia’s concentration camps offshore.

It is because Labor has been at the forefront of the demonisation and dehumanisation of refugees that the Liberals have moved further and further to brutality, dragging Labor with them. The alternative would have been for Labor to welcome refugees, allow them freedom in the community and settle them without any rancour and to argue for this humanitarian position.

It didn’t. The brutality we witness today is attributable to Labor’s capitulation to attacks on the other.  Attacking the other is in fact part of Labor’s tradition and history.

The other today is refugees; it is Muslims more generally; and of course it is Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

The ruling class uses fear of the other and attacks on them to divert attention away from the real problems of capitalism; its boom bust nature, its drive for war, and as profit rates fall around the globe, attacking the working class to restore profit rates.

The other then becomes unions. The Abbott government is unleashing the Australian Building and Construction Commission on construction workers to try to smash the one set of unions that fight for members and their jobs, that want to make workplaces safer. The demonisation has begun already with claims of thuggery and criminality on building sites. It is not true.

The Cole Royal Commission wasted $66 million on trying to find this so-called thuggery. It couldn’t. There was not one prosecution. Not one.

Labor and the Liberals have set the template for attacks on unions with their attacks on refugees. The regime of lies will continue and spread from the external other to the other within.

Defending refugees is defending the other. Defending unions is defending the other.

One struggle, one fight.

There is a National Convergence on Parliament House in Canberra on Monday 18 November for refugees. Refugee Action Committees are active in all the major cities across Australia.

Refugees: Understanding The Brutality Of The Australian Ruling Class