“Boat People Should Have Thought Before Deciding To Illegally Light Themselves On Fire”

INGRID DOULTON OAM | Let’s Talk Sense | CONTACT

THE 21-year-old female asylum seeker who set herself on fire on Nauru Island has arrived in Australia, as she remains in a critical condition with extensive burns.

This is the second case of it’s kind, and hopefully, it doesn’t go the same way as the last one.

We can only hope this victim of self-harm, caused by disintegrating mental health, was not left for ten hours without pain killers before passing away, leaving a widow to be denied a lawyer for a further 24 hours. We can only hope.

But here’s the bottom line.

These people [the war-weary refugee families currently detained on the extremely humid Micronesian island of Nauru] chose this.

They chose to illegally travel by boat to Australia to avoid being blown to pieces by low-quality shrapnel bombs, created by the uneducated teenage extremists in their home country – who have grown up orphans with only one book to read, after they witnessed their parents die at the hands of “Western forces” and have responded to that traumatic experience by attempting to kill the least religious people they come across.

These so-called “refugees” made that choice.

They made that choice to jump the queues for legal passage to our great country.

They chose to avoid the process that would have seen them pin-balled around the Gulf States, eventually free-falling into a North African internment camp for the best part of a decade, where they would most probably be separated from at least one of their children, forever.

They made that choice to pay an illegal human trafficker their entire life-savings for the chance to be afforded standing room on a leaky boat, with about 45% chance of making it to Australia without sinking.

They made that choice to have no possessions when they where intercepted by Border Patrol as they crossed into Australia’s sovereign ocean borders after several weeks at sea.

They made that choice to not own any form of identification, which makes it difficult for Australian authorities to identify them, and then send them and their children back to the war-ravaged country they were attempting to flee.

What’s worse, they also made the choice to enter the borders of a country that has had six different Prime Ministers with six different, and increasingly psychopathic, attitudes towards the treatment of stateless asylum seekers, in the last ten years.

They made the choice to be warehoused on the humid, dangerous and under-resourced Australian equivalent of Guatanamo Bay (Nauru) for processing – which, as they have been informed, could take as long as ten years before the 7.692 million km² nation of Australia can find room for them to be settled somewhere else in the world.

They made that choice to illegally travel here by boat, and when it became too much, they made that choice to illegally light themselves on fire.

I, for one, join our Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton when I say I will not be blackmailed by human decency when it comes to these people.

I join the likes of Tony Abbott and the true Coalition cabinet when I say I will not be moved by human empathy when it comes to these people.

As a proud Australian, I know how hard we have worked for what we have. And if this is what it takes to keep us this way, then so be it. They are the ones breaking international law.

Professor Ingrid Doulton earned her PhD in women’s issues from the University of Sydney in 2012. She completed her undergraduate studies at La Trobe University in regional Victoria soon after completing high school. Immediately after, she began her Masters at The University of Canberra with her dissertation in women’s sport. She is chairwomen of the Women’s Literacy Foundation and a brand ambassador for Rexona. Prof. Doulton lives in Sydney’s upper north shore with her dog, Peter. 

If you would like to contact Ingrid Doulton to discuss any of the things you read here, you can contact her via email at [email protected]