I SHARE Fr Kevin Ryan’s disappointment (Real Life, CL 23/1/05) at the imbalance between law enforcementÊand compassion in the governing of Australia.
Most senior members of the Federal Government are professed Christians yet they ordered the deportation of a refugee family (the Bakhtiyaris) that included six young children, one still at its mother’s breast.
Security guards were ordered to force the family onto a chartered plane in the middle of the night and deposited them in Pakistan, a country that they insisted was not their home. They were of the persecuted Hazara tribe that spreads across parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and for whom “nationality” is no protection from injustice.
Our government claimed legal (but still secret) proof that they were not true refugees, and it has expelled them to uncertainty and with a “bill” for $1 million.
Only days later our Prime Minister stood in the global spotlight and pledged $1 billion to universal applause, and rightly so, for the victims of the tsunami.
Other recent expenditures of this magnitude, however, have not been so exposed, including Australia’s participation in the human “tsunami” campaign in Iraq where 130,000 citizens have perished at last count, and the disgraceful Pacific Solution to exclude refugees, most of whom conformed to entry criteria anyway and now reside here.
The social justice preference expounded by Jesus on the Mount demands that Catholics voice their dissatisfaction with the monstrous injustices that our country is seen to be perpetrating whilst posturing as a global benefactor.
MIKE FOALE
Mt Crosby, Qld
