I went to a forum on refugee issues at the residential hall today. It was eye-opening for me, partly because of my ignorance in Australian politics, especially their refugee policies, partly because I’m from a country full of troubles and is thus not expected to have much responsibility for refugees. Previously the only refugee issue I knew in some detail was how China treated the escaping North Koreans. Don’t worry, we didn’t torture them or detain them for years. They were treated fairly well in China and only detained for a very short time, and then… guess what? We SENT THEM BACK.
There’s no point in doing it. Yes, we’re the only country with a consulate in NK and we’re the only country their head of state still dares to visit, but to everyone’s surprise (if you’re still able to be surprised by that country), they freaking hate us! It doesn’t make sense, I know. But on our part, what’s the problem of taking North Korean refugees? They’re awesome source of cheap labours, at a time when local workers are all the more aware of their rights.
If they (by which here I mean the North Korean government) hate us, why should we be “nice”? And really, what can they do even if we keep all their refugees? Use their nuclear weapons on the only country willing to and able to keep them in power for the time being? Yeah, I have to admit that they can be too crazy to refrain from anything, but life’s too short to worry about that kind of small probability, and they need something to sustain their continuous craziness anyway. We have no reason to do that regime any favour and we’re not afraid of them, so why the deportation? It didn’t make any sense.
Back to the refugee forum for an answer. Among all the odd things the speakers mentioned, one was especially enlightening: the contrast between Vietnamese refugees some decades ago and Afghan refugees today. Australia was completely open to the Vietnamese refugees at the time, but extremely unwelcoming to the Afghans. One (yes, there’re always a lot of them) reason is that the Vietnamese were lucky to be on the right political side: some US-led countries waged war against the “evil communists” in their country in order to “save these people”, but they failed, so they made great efforts to help the refugees as an anti-communist gesture. Australia, heavily relied on America at the time (even now), had little choice but to open its borders.
The situation now is radically different. A similar group of countries went to war in Afghanistan in order, again, to free the people and this time they succeeded (on the battle field, that is). Beautiful! It should then follow that the country has become a great place. Why would you want to flee the country? How dare you! — This sounds stupid to anyone who reads news, but the presence of these refugees is a big shame for the governments that participated in the war. Thus for the Afghans, the Aussie government lacks a political motivation to improve their situation.
So how is this related to NK? The dire situation of NK people is too well known to be kept secret from anyone in the world, including the Chinese. But in order to justify the country’s stance in international politics, the state media in China have never mentioned anything about North Korean people’s daily life. There’s no point to lie about it, so just avoid it. And then, North Korean refugees? OMG, there shouldn’t be any refugee from there! Otherwise why would we side with that regime? Oh, they must be just running away for no reason and let’s protect our borders and send them back.
Now, while still against the way my government treated the North Korean refugees, I can understand where it comes from. Let’s call it “the politics of losing face”. There is, however, one thing they have to bear in mind: when people see through it, you lose more faces.
Actually, I can think of one way to move these people to the “right” side of politics, and for their sake, Australia, instead of China, should border North Korea.
