Comparison condemned
A TOP psychiatrist has defended his comparison of “public numbing and indifference” towards Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers with that in Nazi Germany.
A TOP psychiatrist has defended his comparison of “public numbing and indifference” towards Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers with that in Nazi Germany.
Examining Australia’s Border Force Act, Dr Michael Dudley wrote in the journal Australasian Psychiatry that prolonged detention and policies aiming to deter irregular migration cause asylum seekers undeniable harms and show reckless indifference and calculated cruelty.
“Such policies misuse helping professionals to underwrite state abuses and promote public numbing and indifference, resembling other state abuses in the ‘war on terror’ and (with qualification) historical counterparts, e.g. Nazi Germany,” he wrote.
Dudley, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, also compared detention centres to Soviet gulags and asylum seeker policies to the White Australia Policy.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Robert Goot said it was disappointing a respected health professional would make comparisons, even in qualified terms, “between any Australian government and that of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, and compare the Australian people to the generation of Germans who supported Nazism and turned a blind eye to the systematic and brutal denial of human rights culminating in the butchery of millions of innocent people”.
“Australia and Australians are not perfect, but to liken them both to the most extreme cases of evil is clearly unwarranted,” he said.
“Whatever validity there is to criticisms of Australia’s detention centres, it is undermined by making such comparisons.”
B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich said, “The debate about Australia’s immigration detention policy is a legitimate one, and Dr Dudley is entitled to disagree with the government’s stance and to express his concern.”
But, he added, “Using inappropriate and painful comparisons to the Holocaust … to score a political point is misguided and odious.”
When asked to clarify by The AJN, Dudley said his words were chosen “with deliberate intent”.
“People are being placed in impossible ethical dilemmas. We have a responsibility to speak about policies that damage people’s health and render doctors powerless,” he said.
“We are behaving absolutely appallingly … [the comparison] was a deliberate attempt to make people think, ‘How far are we prepared to go with this?’”
He added: “I’ve been to the death camps, I’ve been to Yad Vashem and I was profoundly moved by the experience. I know it’s not the same as being sent to a death camp, I truly understand that difference.
“Historical lessons are incredibly important. [But] it doesn’t mean the events are in any way identical, they’re not.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
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