State-sponsored cruelty – review of an important book

The Guardian Weekly has recently reviewed a new book subtitled Journeys Among Refugees. Following is an excerpt from the review by Mike Phillips, which can be read in full on the Guardian’s bookshop site, and where the book can be purchased at a discount:

“Perhaps the element which makes Moorehead's story so urgent and terrifying is her description of a history in which governments' perception of refugees altered with the end of the cold war, when the "good" refugees fleeing communism, suddenly transformed into "bad" refugees threatening our civilisation. In fact, the vast bulk of refugees remain in their own region, or are accommodated in the world's poorest countries, which are least able to carry the burden.

Australia provides the most extreme example of a state's anxiety to barricade its borders by its policy of stopping boats on the high seas and dumping refugees on its poorer neighbours. Imprisoned behind razor wire, Australia's asylum-seekers protested by sewing their lips together, an act of self mutilation reflecting the desperation to which they had been driven by their treatment.”

Shocking accounts like this help fill in the picture for us…