Unless the Water is Safer than the Land

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UNLESS THE WATER IS SAFER THAN LAND

LIZA WALLING

An overview of a report by the Centre for Research Architecture conducted in 2017-2018

Operation Sovereign Borders was an Australian border security strategy that commenced in September 2013 and ended in February 2017. The scale of the operation was huge, mobilizing an estimated $A9.6 billion dollars into a military and naval operation and propaganda campaign to deter asylum boat arrivals to Australia. The policies and associated propaganda (figure 0) of Operation Sovereign Borders served to secure the “border” outside, while promoting exclusive national identity inside.

The Centre for Research Architecture, after receiving a communique and guidance from the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), began research documenting the sheer scale of the operation through fragmentary media reports, witness testimonies, GIS data, and official Senate hearing and court documents. The CRA complied research on over 60 cases of naval operations,

Figure 0 | A screenshot from an Operation Sovereign Borders advertisement narrating by the commander of the operation, Angus Campbell.

Figure 1 | T he lifeboats used by OSB to ‘tur n-back’ asylum seekers, equipped with limited fuel and food to restrict navigation.

and focused on a series of incidents which best illustrated the different tactics and architectures of Operation Sovereign Borders.

What emerged from these studies was a pattern of systematic human rights abuses on the waters between Vietnam and Indonesia: the violation of the law of non-refoulement, illegal detention-inmovement, denial of adequate asylum procedure, deprivation of basic human rights, violence and criminal abetting of people smugglers.

The research which followed the compiling of this list began to focus on several specific cases and developed a set of spatial and forensic methodologies to crossreference available media sources and overcome the lack of publicly available information.

The final report detailsvessels cut-loose in high seas with inadequate fuel, (figure 1) a prison ship towed for 22 days off Australia’s east coast, (figure 2) the procurement of increasingly covert vessel types to mislead the international community, (figure 3) the denial of the most basic assessment of refugee claims (figure 4) the subsequent imprisonment, torture and in some cases, disappearance of individuals in their returned to countries (figure 5)-

And adds to the indictment of the architects of Operation Sovereign Borders and a government that continues to conflate a humanitarian refugee crisis with a political people smuggling epidemic, as a way of justifying their ongoing violation of the human rights of a vulnerable population at sea.

“you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” -Warsan Shire, Home 69

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Figure 2 | T he path of the HMAS Choules as it circles the coast of Ne w South Wales while detaining __ asylum seekers.

Figure 3 | T he covert ‘Fishing Vessels’ used by OSB to ‘tur n-back’ asylum seekers aboard ABFC Ocean Shield.

Figure 5 | A protest led by detainees on Manus Island Re gional Processing Centre, an offshore detention facility which is part of OSB’s deterrence scheme.

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Figure 4 | A copy of an ‘Enhanced Screening’ for m, a controversial process which rapidly determines the validity of a refugee claim.