dreamer_easy | (no subject)

Lots of refugee news lately, of which more shortly, but first I wanted to quote you a para from the latest Refugee Council of Australia newsletter:

Statistics fail to justify media obsession with boat arrivals

It was ironic that, while representatives of UNHCR, governments and NGOs were at the UNHCR ExCom meeting discussing the forced displacement of millions of people, the Australian media were giving great prominence to the recent arrival in Australian waters of two boatloads carrying 31 asylum seekers. By any measure, the number of people of arriving in Australia by boat to seek asylum is tiny. UNHCR reports that, at the end of 2007, there were 739,986 asylum seekers around the world with claims still pending. Australia had just 1516 people in this category (0.2% of the global total). During 2007, 468,597 asylum seekers were granted refugee status. Of these people, 1702 (or 0.4%) were granted protection in Australia. Of the relatively small numbers of people who seek asylum in Australia, the great majority arrive by air, generally with a valid short-term visa of some description, and have their protection visa application assessed with no public fanfare. Asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat currently make up fewer than 0.01% of the world's asylum seekers.

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Interesting. My initial reaction is that it goes to show how much the media is trying to run this agenda (and I do remember how much Howard loved to jump on it for his own ends). As in, boats make for more drama (who cares about someone arriving with the right paperwork and following international law at an airport after all?), and they also love pumping up the unusual (things of smaller numbers always seem get the attention) at the expense of the humdrum. I imagine that any challenges either get buried, ignored or twisted... *sigh* I do despair for so-called journalism like that, but am glad for journals like the Economist that maintain the standards of true journalism.

Thanks for posting what the officials actually say about it. It's what I love about the net - while there is a lot of tosh out there, there's also a lot of sense! Thank you for being one of the beacons of sense (if sense can be a beacon...)

Oh, ta! My gods, the amount of slag ya need to dig through to find the odd opal of fact...

I suppose after sixteen years of this bullshit it's not surprising that the press go OMG BOAT PEEPUL scrutinise scrutinise. Just have to hope that this humanises the new arrivals, rather than feeding into needless panic about how we'll all be murdered in our beds, etc.