It’s time to turn it around and put the focus where it belongs: on the perpetrator. It starts at the top and it doesn’t trickle down, it roars like a river in flood. The paradigm is deeply entrenched in our society. It’s been messenger season as long as I can remember, in private and in public life. Again, we see the classic abuser spin: it is a far worse crime to speak out about abuse than it is to perpetrate it. It’s a greater offence to (allegedly) overstep a role than it is to torture refugees. The pursuit of Professor Triggs is a distraction: don’t look at the refugees, look at this woman who is (allegedly) overstepping her role. Obviously, the solution for the government is to cease persecuting refugees.
(Note to Turnbull government: never wise to make threats you can’t carry out. However, they can still go after Gillian Triggs and deprived of other targets, they’ll no doubt double their efforts. The Turnbull government was forced to make this particular backflip because health professionals have spoken out regardless of the intimidation, and even this collection of political grotesques can see the folly of prosecuting them. Last week, the Border Force Act was amended to remove a comprehensive list of health professionals from the threat of two years jail for speaking publicly about conditions they encountered whilst working in the detention camps. The first concern of abusers is to silence accusers, and the government has displayed this pathology innumerable times, not only in relation to the secrecy with which it surrounds Manus and Nauru and threats of retribution, including imprisonment, against anyone who might transgress those secrecy demands. In a classic abuser pattern of behaviour, the Turnbull government continues its efforts to destroy the messenger, in this case Professor Triggs, though the government isn’t fussy, the tactic is transferable. There’s no doubt that in some instances, including the New York Times editorial, there’s blatant examples of the pot/kettle affliction, however, that does not invalidate the truth of the protests against Australia’s policies. Amnesty, the UNHCR, professionals who’ve worked on Manus and Nauru, refugee advocates, some thirty nation states, and this editorial in the New York Times speak with one voice to Australia’s refugee detention policies, and that one voice is damning.
Is it the government’s expectation that Triggs will ignore human rights abuses because they are perpetrated by the government? In what country are we living?
There are instances in which even the silence of someone in her position is political. Of course any commentary Triggs runs on the government of the day is necessarily political, favourable or otherwise. If the Turnbull government is determined to transgress the human rights of refugees currently abandoned to a highly uncertain future on Manus Island and Nauru, Professor Triggs has no option but to hold it accountable, otherwise she isn’t doing her job. For a start human rights are inherently political, and secondly all actions by governments are also inherently political. The Turnbull government’s accusation that Professor Triggs is “politicising” her role is, like much of this government’s spin, farcical. When a government acts criminally, one hope for recourse is that statutory bodies will refuse to collude with or enable that government’s criminal behaviour, and indeed, that such bodies will name and shame the errant government. It’s hardly President of the Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs’ fault when the Australian government is the worst human rights offender that Commission has to deal with.
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