Published in Overland Issue 224 Spring 2016 · Activism Overland’s 224th issue Jacinda Woodhead As this edition of Overland goes to print, refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru have been protesting for 180 consecutive days about their 1153 days in detention. Twelve hundred adults, children and babies rammed into (repurposed) containers or suffocative tents in a camp where water is scarce and food rotten, where rape and sexual abuse is an everyday occurrence, where escape is sought through self-harm or suicide. Misery and pain goes unheeded; broken bones, infections, diseases and ailments are treated with, at best, Panadol. On Manus Island, where conditions are similar, one man says he spends his hours dreaming about eating dinner with his children – a quotidian act many would consider a chore. We are not facing this crisis for want of information, nor because journalists have been denied visas. We knew these details of detention before the release of the Nauru Files. There has been an inquiry, smuggled footage (as seen in Chasing Asylum), whistleblowing and revelations penned by those interned. The political class know how refugees are treated because they wrote the policy. We live in a world where money determines the manner in which you cross a border, and those in power are comfortable with that fact. Our refugee policies, which declare those seeking asylum to be less than human – as deserving of torture – are a shadow that stalks this edition. Its presence can be felt in essays on Australia’s history of using islands as prisons, accounts of refugees in Malaysia, an examination of the absurd amounts politicians earn and treatises on what we could be using fiction and the internet for. Recent ministerial speechifying about threats to national security – the implication being that Australia is compelled to torture in order to survive – suggests that the coverage of despair and cruelty, the daily protests inside the camps and the pressure from inside Australian borders are all resounding. Now we must turn the volume up. Read the rest of Overland 224 If you liked this introduction, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Jacinda Woodhead Jacinda Woodhead is a former editor of Overland and current law student. More by Jacinda Woodhead › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 1 June 20231 June 2023 · Politics Turning peaceful protesters into criminals—again Evan Smith So the Summary Offences (Obstruction of Public Places) Bill 2023 has been passed by South Australia’s Legislative Assembly and will become law. Fifteen hours of debate in the upper house, led by the Greens and SA Best, could not overturn the bill that was reportedly rushed through the lower house in just twenty-two minutes a fortnight ago. 1 9 November 20229 November 2022 · Poetry A poetry of justice: on Lionel Fogarty John Kinsella Fogarty’s is a unique and essential poetic voice in ‘world’ poetry, that has determinedly pushed change in ‘Australian poetry’, and maybe most relevantly, has disrupted both English usage in Australia, and even taken this use well beyond hybridity into a full-blown reclaiming of the space of meaning of words that is anti-colonial, decolonising and, actually, revolutionary.
