Exposing Australia's foreign detention camps

Daniel Nelson

Chasing Asylum

Image by Chasing Asylum

It’s a terrible indictment, but true.

The film’s arrival in this country is timely because Europe is in the midst of a political wrangle over how to deal with the small percentage of global refugees who make it to our shores, and politicians are casting envious eyes at Canberra’s policy of refusing entry to all asylum-seekers arriving by boat and shipping them off to Pacific island nations. Australia pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea millions of dollars in "aid" money to run the camps.

Canberra argues that it’s morally ok because, by successfully stopping the boats, its policy has averted deaths at sea. And the policy works: the boats have stopped coming.

Or to be precise, stopped coming to Australia. Australia has simply pushed desperate people to another place. And to add injury to injury, the Australian camps are unhealthy, under-funded, under-resourced and under wraps.

Journalists have been banned, and legislation against whistleblowers introduced – covering even conscience-stricken staff who report sexual exploitation.

Chasing Asylum films undercover and talks to people sufficiently upset to spill the beans but afraid to show their faces, as well as to a handful of brave souls who feel they can retain their integrity only by speaking out.

Journalistically, the film is a lesson on how to build a case and make a gripping documentary with few resources and when gathering evidence is difficult and hazardous.

It’s harrowing and disheartening to see people’s future taken away. Only when news of an eruption of violence gets onto TV screens and onto the front-pages of Australian newspapers are serious questions asked, resulting in a small policy shift.

It’s a powerful film. The obvious moral is the importance of exposing the consequences in terms of people’s lives of the sort of “tough” policies so beloved of politicians (“I make no apologies for….”).

* Chasing Asylum will be shown at 9pm on BBC4 on 1 November.