This letter in The Age today struck a deep chord with me - it articulates better than I could hope to why a blog on asylum seeking got side-tracked into this horror.
"JOHN Howard tells the ABC (28/11) that the Australian electorate is sufficiently "intelligent" and "sophisticated" to be comfortable with his attending a cricket match on the day of Nguyen Tuong Van's execution.
Let's get this straight. This is the man whose Government held a mentally ill resident in immigration detention for several months and abandoned an Australian citizen in an overseas home for the dying for several years. His Government deports mentally ill residents to statelessness. It is paying for the detention on Lombok Island of more than 90 Afghan men, women and children four years after they reached Australian soil and claimed asylum.
No intelligence or sophistication are required to realise that no human rights abuse would be sufficient to put the PM off being photographed with a cricketer. All that's needed is cynicism."
Juliet Flesch, Kew
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