Posted by John, July 8th, 2010 - under People smugglers, Refugees.



‘That people smuggling is an evil trade to be punished.’

One of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s nationally ‘agreed’ points on immigration when speaking at the Lowy Institute on 6 July 2010.

Actually people smuggling has a long and honourable history. During the Nazi barbarity ordinary people – people smugglers – saved tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Jews. Most did it because they hated what the Nazis were doing; they were decent compassionate human beings.

Shamefully those who ‘turned back the boats’ or wanted to ‘stop the flood’ of Jews were the Governments of ‘civilised’ countries like the United States, Great Britain and Australia.

Oskar Schindler was paid for his people smuggling. Did that make him an evil trader? No. He saved people’s lives. It made him a hero.

Kevin Rudd’s hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a people smuggler. He was arrested for secreting Jews to safety. Did that make him an evil trader or evil scum as Rudd put it? No.

Moses too was people smuggler. Did that make him an evil trader? No.

Some border guards helped the Holy Family flee to Egypt. Perhaps they were evil? If they had turned Jesus and his parents back we might have had a very different religious society.

What about Rick in Casablanca? The Scarlet Pimpernel? Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities?

If some in the Catholic Church are to be believed, Pius XII was a people smuggler.

What about all those who helped the Vietnamese boat people flee the regime? Were they evil? What about those who helped tens of thousands flee Stalinist Europe. Evil too?

People smugglers helped blacks escape the South in the 1800s in America. They helped draft dodgers flee the US for Canada in the 60s and 70s. They got ANC members and others out of apartheid South Africa. They helped people leave Zimbabwe. Evil? I think not.

Are those who help people flee the terror we have launched against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq evil? Are those who help Tamils flee the genocide in Sri Lanka evil? Are those who help Palestinians find new lives far away from Israel’s apartheid evil?

OK, so let’s come to the here and now. Poor Indonesian fisherman risk their boats and lives to bring refugees to Australia. They don’t make much money. The people they are bringing are fleeing because they have a well founded fear of persecution – death, rape, imprisonment. These fishermen are heroes.

Gillard’s attack on people smugglers is a crude dog whistle. Her real target is asylum seekers.

Labor’s inhumanity knows no bounds.

The time has come to fight back – not with namby pamby ‘vote for me’ non-solutions but by building a mass fighting organisation of militants that defends all those under attack – refugees, aborigines, workers, gays and lesbians.

This will be a socialist organisation that understands that a new world free of oppression is possible – a world where those who produce the wealth own it, where democracy is a daily lived event, where people, like capital, can travel the world to improve their lives.

Then we will have no need of borders. No one will be illegal.

Until then we must organise against Labor and for refugees.