Refugee Update

Iranian refugee tried to burn herself to death from despair over indefinite detention on Nauru, husband says (ABC, 31 March 2016) This is Fatima, a mentally ill refugee who locked herself inside her family's accommodation and set it alight. She has now "been placed under the care of the Immigration Department controlled mental health unit on Nauru", a phrase which frankly gives me chills.

Marital rape no longer allowed and suicide, homosexuality decriminalised at Nauru (SMH, 27 April 2016) Which is good news, but rapes of refugees go unprosecuted and gangs beat gay refugees.

Resettling refugees in Papua New Guinea: a tragic theatre of the absurd (GA, 20 May 2016). "Lae is considered the most dangerous city in Papua New Guinea. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website advises Australian citizens 'to exercise a high degree of caution in PNG because of the high levels of serious crime', with particularly high crime rates in Lae, where 'bush knives (machetes) and firearms are often used in assaults and thefts'. Yet, somehow, Australia has chosen this city as the ideal place to resettle refugees."

Cambodia revives Australia refugee deal with planned Nauru visit (ABC, 25 May 2016) | First refugees sent to Cambodia under $55m deal have left (ABC, 27 May 2016)

Australian police accessed phone records of asylum whistleblower (GA, 24 May 2016). This is scary as hell. After the death of Manus detainee Hamid Khazaei, the Department of Immigration asked the AFP to investigate where the media had got their information about the lethal mishandling of his case. Dr Peter Young was a target because he had criticised asylum seeker medical care in the press. Police examined his phone records and grilled his colleagues.

Australia’s Offshore Cruelty (The New York Times, 23 May 2016). "The Australian treatment of refugees trying to reach this vast, thinly populated country by boat follows textbook rules for the administering of cruelty. It begins with the anodyne name for the procedures — 'offshore processing' — as if these desperate human beings were just an accumulation of data."

There's been such a response to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton's baseless remarks about "illiterate and innumerate" refugees which have been (correctly IMHO) understood as disparaging all migrants from a non-English speaking background. For example, this passionate editorial in The Age: Time to embrace the potential refugees offer Australia (The Age, 22 May 2016) "The refugees I meet at the ASRC are not some racist's caricature. They are the doctor I know who speaks nine languages, and the young man who is studying a double degree in law and business after arriving by boat as an unaccompanied child without a word of English. They are everyday mums and dads willing to do anything, often the jobs no Australians will touch, just to put food and dignity on the table for their families. They are my heroes, my role models and this nation's future."

Boat migrants 'turned back to jail', despite Vietnamese promise (SMH, 24 May 2016) The same fate befell asylum seekers who were returned last year.

'Like returning a lamb to a den of lions’: Deo Nuyu's fight to stay in Australia (SMH, 1 June 2016)

Asylum seeker forcibly returned by Australia says his refugee claim was ignored (GA, 18 May 2016). "Sri Lankan asylum seeker says he was only asked his name, where he was from and why he came when he arrived at the Cocos Islands by boat."

Keep in mind that in the UK "Black" includes South Asian / Desi

Steven Moffat, in The Guardian, of Doctor Who:

"Young people watching have to know that they have a place in the future. That really matters. You have to care profoundly what children's shows in particular say about where you're going to be. And we've kind of got to tell a lie: we'll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn't have been, and we won't dwell on that. We'll say, 'To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we'll summon it forth.'"

This explains the crowds in The Magician's Apprentice and The Woman Who Lived, which we've recently rewatched; both were as diverse as any scene in modern urban Britain. However, the presence of non-white people in Mediaeval Essex or the Commonwealth of England, and throughout Britain's history, is not a lie; it's just not a well-known fact. Those recent scenes may exaggerate the numbers, but the new show has long made a point of including some non-white characters in historical European settings.

Here's a few thoughts:

White and Black aren't the only colours; how about mixing it up a bit with more South Asian / Desi actors, more Chinese British actors, more actors with a Middle Eastern background, etc.

How about historical settings outside British / European history?

And historical settings in Britain and Europe in which non-white people were prominent; for example, the 1920s, amongst Chinese immigrants in Liverpool or Black Americans in Paris?

I was impressed by the acknowledgement of Black Britons in Shakespeare's time in The Shakespeare Code, but in her essay for "Doctor Who and Race", Fire Fly pointed out that the issue of race is quickly swept under the carpet. It would be really interesting to see a story which tackles racial issues more directly - not just to tut-tut at the past and by implication congratulate ourselves on being more enlightened, but as plot points in an adventure story: there are places you can't go, people you can't talk to, things you can't do, because of who you are and where and when. This could be done by dropping the Doctor into a setting where white people are unusual and/or unwelcome - such as Japan in the time of the Sakoku Edict. Bonus points for comparing historical racism to modern racism.