Go Back to where You Came From – How Paul Sheehan is ingoring ...

. Sheehan terms the show as being “a series strictly for the gullible”, “a false choice that is being carefully recrafted, repackaged and re-presented” and “an exercise in manipulation” as he ignores the fact that the show is about the push factors that force people to flee and the circumstances in which asylum seekers arrive on Australia shores. Instead Mr Sheehan sets a soliloquy against the horrors of people smugglers and “the refugee industry”. Sheehan states:

I partly agree with Mr Sheehan, the debate over asylum seekers has been built on falsity and lies but not from the sources cited in his article. The debate has been transformed from an issue over the plight of people fleeing humanitarian disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, in to one of the most passionate and enduring debates in Australia through sustained campaign of misinformation and manipulation directed against asylum seekers arriving by boat mainly by the Coalition, isolationist political parties and some conservative columnists. “Queue jumpers”, “illegal arrivals” and “asylum shoppers” are some of the nicer terms that have been used to hijack the debate in-spite of the fact that the asylum seekers arriving by boat are within their legal rights under international law, there are no queues for Afghan refugees in Pakistan or for the Tamils in Sri Lanka and a torturous trip of up to four weeks on leaky boats in deadly waters and an additional year in detention is certainly not a shopping trip. Prime Minister Howard’s government carefully rolled out stories such as “baby overboard” in the Tampa episode solely for the purpose of electoral gains through misinformation and generating public anxiety. The plight of hundreds of others shipped to the solitude of Nauru were ignored, the truth about the long detention of men, women and children were never included in the debate, journalist access to the detained asylum seekers were restricted; all to the service of political and electoral convenience for the party in power. As a crusader for the truth and even-handedness, Mr Sheehan must have written out numerous articles on the aforementioned lies and manipulation against the asylum seekers, right?

In the fifth paragraph of his article Sheehan criticizes the SBS show for not being literal enough:

Oh the irony of gullible viewership. Only someone as gullible as Mr Sheehan can criticize a TV show for being exactly that – a TV show. Sheehan fails to note that phrases such as “survived a sinking, burning boat” or ”at the last minute, the stricken boat is spotted” are mere small representations of what actual asylum seekers go through. If Mr Sheehan is a fan of literal suffering he should perhaps watch the dozens of asylum seekers being smashed against the rocks on Christmas Island since their tragedy is not “designed to enforce [empathy] to the maxim”. Perhaps he should read about the five dead Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers who drowned five days after Australian authorities learned it [their boat] had run out of fuel but did not endeavor to save them. Perhaps, if Mr Sheehan agrees, I can introduce him to hundreds of asylum seekers whose experiences and journeys are far more tormenting that anything described on the evening news.

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