“We’re running hard on security and terrorism”

 
It’s just past the sixth anniversary of the sinking of the SIEV-X and the drowning of approximately 353 people.We found this post by ex-Liberal candidate for Reid, Irfan Yusuf, via the [Andrew] Bartlett Diaries.

Excerpt:

” Then, one afternoon in October, I received a call from a lady named Mahbooba who ran a small charity working among Afghan orphans in Pakistan. She wanted to introduce me to a Middle Eastern chap. We agreed to meet at a small mosque in Auburn.

 

I entered the mosque and saw Mahbooba sitting with a visibly distraught man whose reddened eyes betrayed days of mourning. The man continued to weep in my presence while Mahbooba showed me some photos of some young children. The man then spoke:

 

These are the children of my sister. She was killed by the government of our homeland. I”ve been an Australian citizen for 25 years. I run my own business. I pay my taxes. I have only ever asked one thing from my local member and that was to help me get my sister and her children out of there.

 

“Who is your local member?” I asked. “John Howard,” was his answer.

 

He then told me about how he was informed by other relatives that the children had been placed on an unseaworthy boat. They were among some 350 others who had drowned.

 

This was the first time I had heard of the SIEV-X incident. I wasn”t sure what I could do. I was just a candidate in a hard-luck seat with little hope of winning. What could I hope to achieve for this man?

 

“Some people in your Party are starting to tell lies about my sister”s children. They are saying my sister taught her children to be terrorists. You must speak out against them. Remember what the Prophet Mohammed said — that the best jihad is to speak the truth to rulers. It is easy for you because you are in their Party”

 

I listened to the man”s story and looked at the photos of these young children who had barely reached their teens. After the meeting, I got onto the phone with campaign HQ. I told them about the conversation I”d had with the man, and how I wanted to make some statement about it.

 

“No way, Irfan,” said the voice from HQ. “You mustn”t talk about this topic. I”m warning you that if you say anything about it, you might find yourself disendorsed and expelled from the Party. We are running hard on security and terrorism.“

“But these are young kids,” I objected. Then the HQ officer told me something that made me shudder.

 

“Listen, I know how much you hate Pauline Hanson. You”ve got to understand that we have a deliberate strategy here. We want to destroy Hanson by sounding like her and attracting her voter base away from her. It”s part of a deliberate strategy, and it”s temporary.”

Temporary? It’s party policy! It’s dogma. It’s mandatory to promote the Pauline xenophobia. It’s been dragged out yet again by the Hansonite Kevin Andrews (wash my mouth out) with his ‘dirty filthy black diseased criminal African refugee rapist gangs’. Destroy Pauline Hanson? They’ve become Pauline Hanson.

In July we reported on Tony Kevin‘s interview with Richard Fidler on his advocacy about the SIEV-X issue when he said,

” I think my work achieved useful results going beyond SIEV X. It helped more people to see the truth behind the now discredited myth that John Howard is just another Australian politician trying to do his job more or less decently. Australians know the real Howard now. I think my SIEV X research and advocacy helped to expose the ugly truth about this man.

And it is such an ugly truth.