JOHNNY'S AN AMERICAN
Monday, 24 March 2003
By Correspondent
The reason we Aussies are helping the USA invade Iraq is to save the poor, oppressed Iraqis from the undeniable tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
Our steadfast Prime Minister John Winston Howard has always been a generous supporter of Iraqis fleeing the vicious Iraqi government.
OK, now back to reality: The Howard Government currently has 152 Iraqi asylum seekers imprisoned in concentration camps.
God knows how many have drowned at sea in their desperate attempts to find save haven Down Under in ramshackle vessels organised by unscrupulous traders in human misery. Certainly, the deaths we do know of are of little concern to John Howard and his mean and tricky government. Less wog mouths to feed here in the Lucky Country!
In prison camps on corrupt and bankrupt Nauru and Manus Island there are 113 Iraqi prisoners, and 39 in "detention centres" here in Australia.
Another 4000 Iraqis - found to be "genuine" refugees under Johnny's punative, vindictive, and cold-blooded policies - are subject to the miserable life of "temporary protection" visas.
Just like the anguished East Timorese who fled the Indonesian invasion of that traumatised land - and who have established lives here, raised families here, have children born here - the Iraqi asylum seekers will be forced back to the very place they thought they had escaped.
Johnny's an American, and he's just a despicable sub-species of the tyrant Saddam Hussein...
JOE VINDALOO
