[ericmay]

It's ok to be critical of how Australia is handling people trying to cross into their country without going through the proper process. I don't think it's ok, at all, to call these detention centers "concentration camps" given what's currently going on in the world and what has happened in the past. It's simply not ok. That you live next to Mauthausen and you still think it's ok is baffling to me.

I've gone to places like the Holocaust Museum in the United States and witnessed the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, people being executed, starved to death, gassed, forced into slavery (many of which currently going on with China's new Holocaust of Muslims) and I simply don't see those same activities being systematically conducted by the Australian (or any western) government. It's just not even remotely the same and I don't know how you can justify coming to that conclusion.

Even if you thought that these governments were doing much worse than what may be in view of the public, I'm bewildered as to why you would think that intentionally equating concentration camps (Nazis and Chinese) with detention centers is in any way helpful. Do you think when the Nazis rounded up Jews they gave them medical care and food and water?

Maybe you should revisit Mauthausen and get a more proper perspective. To me it seems that your work has clouded your judgement.

[petre]

Read this then:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/worl...

Sorry about the amp link. NYT paywall bypass.

[ericmay]

Thanks for the link. A tragic situation, of course.

But I'm confused as to how this situation is remotely comparable to a concentration camp? Do the Chinese let Uighur Muslims apply for asylum in other countries? Are kids at these camps being forced into slave labor? Are they being murdered?

These are refugees who, frankly, are getting a shit deal in life. That has nothing to do with actual concentration camps. The Australians are not rounding up people and gassing them, harvesting their organs, or forcing them to be re-educated.

These aren't comparable situations!

[pinkfoot]

Indeed, the Australian experiment showed most of these folk weren’t even refugees fleeing for their lives.

They were normal folk from poor countries who wanted the Western lifestyle and knew their best chance was to fake it in Australia and exhaust the courts.

Proof: when the boat route to Australia closed, very, very few are asking for asylum in Indonesia.

It just hurts some snowflakes SRC sensibilities to admit this.

PS. I really think Western democracies should hold a binding referendum on whether billions of poor people have a right to migrate to their countries, or not. You are tearing yourselves apart over it.

[fit2rule]

Australia's Mauthausen: Rottnest Island. A place of vomiting teenagers and little else.

Austrias Mauthausen: a real memorial to the victims, out in the open. (Occasional vomiting teenager notwithstanding.)

Australians hide their crimes against humanity in places nobody reasonable will ever visit, because they don't want to know about Australias crimes against humanity.

The Austrian people maintain Mauthausen, because they never want to forget the atrocities.

The history of The Australian State is rife with injustices and crimes against humanity. The Australian Genocide is a real thing.

[ericmay]

Ah yes, the Australian Genocide. Classic. Very comparable to other genocides, like the Uighur Muslim genocide, the genocide of the Jews, or the Armenian genocide.

It's very clear to me you just want to grandstand. And in doing so you're creating even more problems. If you want to criticize Australian treatment of refugees, go for it. Don't call these detention centers concentration camps though, because that's not what they are. There is simply no comparison and I am still bewildered that you would think so.

[fit2rule]

A couple of million people lost their lives, and a civilisation that had been around for tens of thousands of years was wiped out in a hundred.

Australia got away with its genocide while the worlds attention was elsewhere. Don't even try to defend this.

[ericmay]

If you want to talk about Australia's treatment of Aboriginals, then that's fine. But that's not what we started discussing. So don't try and say that I'm defending something we haven't even discussed. If there is something I've missed, please tell me, but my understanding is we're talking about the original articles and Australian detention centers for intercepted unauthorized migrants.

To re-center the discussion I think it's bad in just about every conceivable way to refer to the facilities we first discussed as concentration camps. While they could potentially fit a technical definition of "concentration camp", they are a far, far cry from what we mean when we say concentration camps.

In colloquial use, concentration camp refers to what the Nazis did to Jews and others in the 1940s, and now also refers to the current genocide that is occurring against Muslims in China (which I also find disturbing that Muslim majority countries are largely silent on the issue). It does not refer to a country intercepting potential unauthorized migrants and then giving them food, water, shelter, safety, and giving them the opportunity to apply for asylum in the intercepting country or in others. To equate these two, totally different things (for lack of a better word) is irresponsible and unhelpful. If these were concentration camps, the Australians would just sink the boats and kill them before rounding them up, wouldn't provide food and medicine, or allow people to apply for asylum - they would just force them into forced labor, or murder them (like the Chinese and Nazis).

This self-hatred that people in Western countries have is bewildering, and I don't understand why people lie to themselves. Maybe people have a pathological need to be outraged? Maybe we're bored?

-edit-

I'd also like to add, while the treatment of Aboriginals is certainly regretful (to understate the hell out of it) - let's not try and put the Australians in a unique category. There is not a single country or people that doesn't have blood on its hands. Ideally in the West, we now know better, but that doesn't make us perfect, and that doesn't mean we don't also criticize and condemn other countries or peoples for their mistreatment of others. Throughout most of history, most of the time there was no afterthought once you wiped out a people.

-edit2-

Since I can't reply to your last comment - why did you change the subject?

[fit2rule]

Just because someone did something, worse than you have done it, doesn't mean you get away with doing it also.

If your family was First Nation, probably you'd not have as hard a time seeing the similarity that some make in comparing Australia's genocide with those that occurred elsewhere in the world. In fact, systematic eradication of what was considered a 'lesser people' did happen in Australia's past - it was an official government policy for far too long, and in many places in Australia, is still happening. Children are still being taken from their families, never to return.

Its not just the offshore concentration camps.

Your idea that crimes against humanity are only done by those who manifest their violence in an overt manner, is precisely the issue with Australia today. It is getting away with its crimes against humanity, precisely because peoples expectations, as you demonstrate, require a much more violent, overt act before they will respond.

Australia is getting away with it. It has systematised oppression at scale, behind the scenes, with industrial efficiency.

In the meantime, the ADF's support of Saudi Arabia's forces in the campaign in Yemen, against innocent people, remains unreported and out of our focus.