OPINION: Tony Abbott getting it wrong on the Rohingya

Something is very rotten in the state of Myanmar. By any measure and any definition, a tiny ethnic minority of Myanmar is the subject of genocide. This is not something recent, even if it has been largely ignored by Western governments and media. It has been going on for more than a decade.

Something is also very rotten in the Commonwealth of Australia. Our nation is a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention. Previous Australian governments have cited the convention to provide refugees from across the world, from Bosnia Herzegovina to Vietnam and Cambodia to China to parts of the Middle East. Some have come by boat, others by plane. But since the Keating government introduced mandatory detention of asylum seekers, the rot has set in.

So who are the Rohingya? And why, as Tony Abbott has so eloquently put it, can't they

... come through the front door and not through the back door?

Quite simply, as is the case for most refugees, pretty much all doors are shut. No queues are established for them to stand in a neat line. Other ethnic groups (such as the Karen and Shan) have also been persecuted by Myanmar's military junta, some even taking up arms to protect themselves.

The Rohingya live mainly in the Rakhine state of western Myanmar, a region they have called home for centuries. Though numbering barely one million, they have been stateless since they were collectively stripped of their citizenship in a 1982 citizenship law that recognised 135 ethnic groups. Since then they have been driven out of their homes and forced into virtual concentration camps and small villages where they are deprived of medical care.

But don't take my word for it. In April 2013, Human Rights Watch released a report accusing Myanmar's sort-of civilian government of "crimes against humanity" and "ethnic cleansing". Some 200 people were killed in one incident in which Rakhine Buddhists attacked Rohingyas with state authorities standing back. The report mentioned attacks in some 13 townships. The dead were buried in mass graves.

When they are not being burned alive and raped, ethnic Rohingya are being driven from their homes into enclaves at the mercy of religious chauvinists led by a highly organised Buddhist movement. Just about every respectable human rights body has documented this.

These people are regarded as "Bengalis" by the Myanmar government and hence are denied citizenship despite their ancestors living in the area for centuries. Bangladesh (literally "home of Bengalis") regards the Rohingya as Burmese. Some Rohingya refugees are living in camps in Bangladesh as stateless persons. Unlike Australia, Bangladesh hardly has the resources to permanently settle them.

Conditions in the camps are atrocious. Aid workers from Doctors Without Borders and the UN High Commission for Refugees have been detained by authorities. The camps are squalid and disease-ridden.

Among those at the forefront of anti-Rohingya rage in Myanmar civil society are Buddhist monks like Ashin Wirathu, who describes himself as the "Burmese bin Laden" and uses the same rhetoric as used by the likes of Fox News presenters and our own Reclaim Australia.

Not even Myanmar's otherwise brave opposition leader Nobel Prize Winner Aung Sang Suu Kyi has much to say in defence of the Rohingya. And neighbouring countries, keen to cash in on Myanmar's liberalised market, are too busy imagining the dollars and rupiah and ringgit.

So the Rohingya have no army and no policy force to protect them. Their sources of humanitarian aid are harassed by local authorities. They are constantly attacked by religious fanatics. There is no queue for these people to jump. No country in the region wants them. Even the governments of allegedly Islamic countries have little pity for them, offering little more than some kind of temporary protection.

They are to today's south-east Asia what European Jews were to Europe during the 1930s and '40s. The numbers were much larger in Europe, and the history of Christian persecution of European Jewry was much longer and more brutal. But the ideology was much the same. Even the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, part of the US Holocaust Museum, warned that the Rohingya were a

... population at grave risk for additional mass atrocities and even genocide.

Their fact-finding mission in March found

... early warning signs of genocide.

Genocide. In our own backyard.

But Tony Abbott simply refuses to allow any Rohingya to settle here. Nope nope nope. It sounds as tacky as the old Rosella advert. "Not Reffos again". No No No. "Not Mozlems again". No no no. 

We're often told that being sympathetic is a leftwing fetish. Those of us (like me) who see ourselves as more right than left (or indeed than wrong) feel we have to be tough on boat people. When pressured to show some compassion, we talk about nasty people smugglers. And it's true that they are nasty.

But as conservative American writer and humourist P.J. O'Rourke says, we are the ones who miss out when we close the door on the desperate. As he told his Q&A audience in 2009:

You know, my people came over to the United States in a completely disorganised way. Doubtless by way of people smugglers [...] I really believe in immigration ... Let them in. Let them in. These people are assets. [O]ne or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later ... Oh, I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do. 

Tony, you're getting it wrong. Close the doors? Lock the gates? Miss out on good future citizens? Showing less humanity than a country with no hesitation to execute our reformed smugglers? Nope. Nope. Nope. ​

Irfan Yusuf is a PhD candidate at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation Deakin University. This was first published in the Canberra Times on 22 May 2015.

OPINION: The Gift of Right Wing Humour

The following article was first published in NewMatilda on 30 April 2009.

_______________________

Political satirist PJ O'Rourke was warmly welcomed by conservatives on his recent visit to Australia. That is, until he cracked that joke about how we should open our borders to asylum seekers.

The problem with the Right is not that it is at odds with progressives or Democrats. The problem with the Right is that it is at odds with reality. It is at odds with facts, with evidence, with science. And that’s why it has been so dangerous. And that’s why it has been so discredited.

That assessment of the Right by former Republican Party partner (and now new-media matriarch) Arianna Huffington before the last US presidential election might easily be applied to Australian conservatives, be they political parties, publications or even think-tanks.

But Australian conservatism has a different kind of parochialism to its American equivalent. Our conservatives aren’t just pro-life and pro-war simultaneously, nor are they uniformly anti-science and obsessed with the teaching of "intelligent design" in schools. Our conservatives manifest their parochialism somewhat differently.

When they’re not beating their chests about religious and cultural issues, some conservatives prefer to pretend they’re radical by challenging what they see as the new orthodoxy of a nebulous group known as "the Left". The editorial writers for The Australian, that elite bastion of anti-elitism, heralded the arrival of American humorist PJ O’Rourke in an editorial published on 25 April. They claimed that "much of what [O’Rourke] said this week would have upset supporters of the accepted wisdom" in relation to the free market and the role of governments in helping us out of the recession. Unlike Kevin Rudd, and like New Zealand’s PM John Key, O’Rourke understands that "economics is about the way the world is, not the way we want it to be".

Janet Albrechtsen, leaping at the opportunity to talk about how clever and witty the Right can be, gleefully cajoled "the hard left of politics" (as in one Margot Saville) to "laugh with us". PJ’s visit is perhaps the first time she’s had a good laugh since her "man of steel" lost the federal election and his own seat, and since US voters elected a man whom Janet’s side of politics doesn’t exactly like.

Still, why should I be surprised? I mean, who better than the employees of an American-owned newspaper to toast a visiting American? I myself am not an American, nor am I employed by Americans. Indeed, the only passport I’ve ever held is an Australian one, and I’m not about to give it up even for the pleasure of owning a few US media assets. But as a long-time fan of PJ O’Rourke, I also wish to join in the chorus of those having a good chuckle at his gags.

However, my aim isn’t to laugh with Janet Albrechtsen and her buddies. Rather, I want to laugh at them. Janet has been among those leading the charge against nasty Afghan, Iraqi and Sri Lankan asylum seekers jumping the invisible (and indeed fictitious) queue and paying people smugglers to transport them to our shores.

PJ happily challenged supporters of the accepted conservative wisdom on asylum seekers and miscellaneous dark-skinned riff-raff when he appeared on ABC TV’s Q&A program last Thursday. In what was a very wise and very funny performance, O’Rourke’s analysis on the show about how we should deal with asylum seekers outshone even David Marr’s.

So what does PJ say about asylum seekers? What does he say about how conservatives in America deal with the issue? While fellow panellist Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop was frothing at the mouth that "since last August there has been an increase in the number of people arriving by boat" and how "the people smugglers are back in business", PJ had this to say:

You know, we in the States have much, much more experience with being all wrong about immigration than you do. I mean 36,000 you said in Italy? … We laugh. That’s a day in the United States. And we are so wrong about it. I mean, build a fence on the border with Mexico, give a huge boost to the Mexican ladder industry, you know […] the thing is when somebody gets on an exploding boat to come over here - they’re willing to do that to get to Australia - you’re missing out on some really good Australians if you don’t let that person in.

With righteous indignation, Julie Bishop made some indistinct noises about smugglers. To which PJ responded:

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. You know, if you open your borders, you don’t have people smugglers.

Then PJ did something that will probably put him in the bad books of many in Australia’s conservative establishment. He actually suggested Indigenous people might have something to say about all this.

I’m not seeing any Aborigines on the panel here. I am not a Comanche or a Sioux. You know, my people came over to the United States in a completely disorganised way. Doubtless by way of people smugglers […] I really believe in immigration … Let them in. Let them in. These people are assets. [O]ne or two of them might not be, but you can sort them out later … Oh, I think conservatives are getting this wrong all over the world, I really do.

And when Bishop finally pleaded for an "orderly migration system", O’Rourke wondered whether such a system would have turned back his ancestors.

O’Rourke’s commonsense approach may be the kind of feel-good pinko-lefty elitist inner-city nonsense one would expect of the Fairfax/ABC cabal. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why, when the Australian had so much else to say in support of PJ’s take on the world, that paper didn’t even canvass, let alone champion, PJ’s views on asylum seekers. Weren’t the jokes funny enough? Or is PJ just one of those "moralising elites"? Do Janet and her colleagues lack a sense of humour? Or (to use Huffington’s analysis), are they simply at odds with facts, with evidence and with reality?



Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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RELIGION: Have faith in the fridge!

My favourite conservative satirist PJ O'Rourke explains here why he'd rather believe in God than science. Or rather, in scientists. Whatever. It makes superb Ramadan-eve reading. His reported conversation with his physics teacher is most instructive ...

The physics teacher had just explained how electricity makes a refrigerator work. I raised my hand.

Me: “Electricity is energy.”

Physics teacher: “Yes.”

Me: “Energy is heat.”

Physics teacher: “Yes, heat is one way to measure energy.”

Me: “A refrigerator is cold.”

I graduated only because the physics teacher suddenly remembered that he was also the summer school physics teacher and that if I flunked I’d be back in his class in July.

O'Rourke writes the kind of stuff in this article that a certain 7th century Godly chap may have been referring to when he said "Wisdom is the lost property of the believer. If you find it somewhere, just grab it."

O'Rourke is a real humorist, a genuinely funny writer. What's more, PJ is happy to poke fun at his own side of the political fence. Other so-called humorists (like that pompous wacko Mark Steyn) don't even come close.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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COMEDY: Performing comedy isn’t funny …

Around a month ago, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and give the Triple-J Raw Comedy Competition a shot. I did next to no preparation, expecting it to be a similar process to writing funny stuff (something I’ve apparently not bad at). The only preparation I did was to spend the entire week leading upto the heat reading the following bloody hilarious books:

1. Run Johnny, Run: The Story of the 2004 Federal Election by Mungo Maccallum;

2. The Education of a Young Liberal by John Hyde Page; and

3. Age & Guile Beat Youth, Innocence and a Bad Haircut by PJ O’Rourke.

I also jotted down some notes while everyone else in my heat (I was last) was performing.

As I soon found out, performing comedy is no joke. I went out on stage and thought I was just engaged in some animated public speaking. No way. This was much different and much harder than I expected. I walked off that stage wondering why I had bothered.

Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have an MC (Corinne Grant) who was very supportive and encouraging to all us amateurs. Quite a few of those in our heat sounded like seasoned professionals who had done this on many an occasion.

(That, or they brought along some huge cheer squads with them.)

But it seems performance jitters can happen to even the most seasoned and natural performers. In today’s The Oz, Corrie Perkin writes about the experiences of a number of Australia’s top comics. I might as well reproduce the whole article ...

IN the Sydney Opera House car park last Tuesday night, comedian Wil Anderson cried.

Alone and exhausted after his one-hour stand-up performance, the man once labelled "the rock star of Australian comedy" was disappointed that, during the show, he'd lost concentration.

"I skipped a bit, then as I was telling another joke I realised what I'd forgotten," he tells Inquirer. "And then you're playing catch-up. You're like a kid waiting to get in the skipping rope, waiting for the rhythm, waiting to find the place where you can get in. After 12 years, that really disappointed me."

After its Playhouse run, Anderson's new show BeWILdered moves to Melbourne for the International Comedy Festival. Its creator is still moulding the show and trying new things, but he says that's no excuse for not "executing it the way I wanted to execute it".

"People pay 35 bucks to go to the Sydney Opera House to hear you talking, they're taking a night out of their lives," he says. "I see that as a real challenge and a privilege as a performer, and if I don't do it in a way I expect of myself, it genuinely upsets me."

Welcome to Australian stand-up in 2008, a thriving sector where stress, tension, tears and late nights are all part of the comedy journey. But with audiences hungry for the next laugh, the next new show, the next big thing, performers are under intense pressure to produce. There is also a lot more competition, and comedians have to work harder to create original material and find a performing niche.

Added to that is the art form: personal, easily scrutinised (if your audience doesn't laugh, you're not funny) and with nothing - not even a few props - to hide behind.

"They say the biggest fear people have is public speaking, they fear it even more than death," says television host Rove McManus, whose new show opened this week at the Adelaide Fringe.

"If the biggest fear people have is public speaking, imagine that plus the fact you are speaking to a complete bunch of strangers, and now you've got to make them laugh."

But if you are successful, it's a bull market. These days, Australia's top comedians can stage sell-out shows at the Sydney Opera House, earn big bucks as FM radio hosts and be mobbed in a suburban shopping centre by teenagers who love your eight-part TV mockumentary set in a suburban high school.

During a recent chat about celebrity culture, Summer Heights High creator Chris Lilley recalled a promotional visit to Chadstone in Melbourne's east last year. Lilley was overwhelmed by the vast crowd that had gathered to meet him. What really surprised him, though, was the queue of people wanting so see Celine, the chihuahua who belongs to his Mr G character. "Celine turned up at Chadstone and was a massive hit," Lilley says. "I have some funny photos of her being surrounded by adoring fans. People were even lining up to have their photo taken with her. It was a very surreal moment."

Stand-ups are everywhere: Anderson, McManus, Dave Hughes, Glenn Robbins, Wendy Harmer, Adam Hills, Peter Helliar, Corinne Grant, guests who appear on shows such as Thank God You're Here, Good News Week and Spicks and Specks, breakfast radio, afternoon radio, plus the opportunities afforded by award nights such as the Logies, the Arias and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival: the gigs are plentiful, allowing Australia's funny men and women to build secure fan bases.

Ted Robinson, producer of the Ten Network's Good News Week, has been working in TV comedy since the early 1970s. One of the big differences between today's comics and the earlier but equally talented group is "it's possible to make it a career in comedy now, whereas when we all started it was a job for dropouts and layabouts". Another factor, Robinson says, is comedians' access to different media outlets.

"It's just kind of spun off into the ether and become this pan-global art form that is just everywhere, and it's extraordinary," he says.

A growing appreciation of comedy among young people is another factor.

"There's a whole generation who are getting their cultural critique and commentary through comedy," says Sue Turnbull, associate professor in media studies at La Trobe University. "Programs like The Glass House, Good News Week, The Chaser's War on Everything, that's where young people get to know about public figures, public events."

Turnbull cites Kevin Rudd's decision during last year's election campaign to go on Ten's Rove as an example. "Young people felt largely disenfranchised by what was going on and (John) Howard didn't talk to them at all," Turnbull says. "They found these comedy shows and the criticisms directed at the government as a way into understanding John Howard. By appearing on Rove and generally displaying a sense of humour, Kevin Rudd was able to connect with them." Various YouTube comedy sketches featuring Rudd, including the widely circulated Kevin Rudd Chinese propaganda video, also did no harm to the then Opposition leader's profile.

Australian comedians have also found favour with commercial TV and FM radio executives. "Like with anything, the market weeds out what's necessary, what people want," says Anderson, who co-hosts Triple M's afternoon show with Anthony Lehmann.

Each weekday Anderson and Lehmann go up against Fox FM's success story Hamish Blake and Andy Lee. Anderson relishes the FM radio culture that celebrates comedians. "If Hamish and Andy are doing really well on radio, then other stations want a Hamish and Andy," he says. "Every time a comedian is successful, it's good for other comedians. And the effects of something like Chris Lilley or the Chasers are enormous. Networks say: 'Hang on, smart comedy can work.' So the next time you walk into a meeting with a smart comedy idea you want to pitch, suddenly everyone's very receptive."

The Adelaide Fringe and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival have also helped spread stand-up's popularity. The comedy festival's recent growth spurt highlights the public's increasing regard for the art form: in 1998, 177,858 people paid to see their favourite comedians. In 2007, the crowd had increased to 400,003.

Box-office takings also jumped, from $3.03million in 1998 to $9.2 million last year.

Adelaide's Fringe wraps up tonight and organisers estimate more than 800,000 people will have attended the free and ticketed events. Comedy made up 120 of the Fringe's 543 shows, making it the most popular genre. (Following closely were visual art with 111 events, theatre with 104 and music with 101.) Comedy's presence in fringe festival programming prompted one observer this week to describe it as "the cane toad of fringe festivals because it's so cheap to produce".

Melbourne International Comedy Festival director Susan Provan argues there is "a perception that is the section of the program that sells more easily, that people will go to the comedy section first because they expect it to be accessible or fun". She rejects the cane toad theory. "There probably is a lot more stand-up comedy going into festivals these days, but there's a lot more visual arts and everything else, too.

Then there is the role of new technology. The number of hits to the MICF site, for example, has increased from 22,000 visitors in 2003, to 605,829 visitors in 2007. YouTube, MySpace and other forums mean people such as Sydney-based comedy critic Dom Romeo have many more stand-up performers to watch and assess.

"The internet is even more interesting because it's harder to be across everything, but there's actually more material that's pleasing to you, and that's a good thing" he says. Romeo, whose website www.standand deliver.blogs.com covers the comedy scene, says YouTube means "anyone with a video camera, a good idea and some mates who have an afternoon to spare can get something up on the internet that may just get a following. That may lead to television, or it may just mean ongoing appearances on the internet, which is OK, too".

But is there a danger that too much comedy will dilute the quality of work? Is stand-up ubiquitous? "I personally don't think so," says British comic Stephen K. Amos, who is touring the Fringe and Melbourne festivals. "I think what we're seeing is that everyone has a stressful life, people who work nine to five have stressful jobs, and they want to let go, they want to forget. If that means listening to someone who's funny, or who has a different take on things you've already thought about, then that's a very good thing."

Veteran comedian Grant agrees. "Funny's always funny," she says. "People always want to laugh, as long as there are good quality performers out there." Grant says stand-up's popularity goes in cycles. "When comedy's going well in TV and radio, it tends not to go so well in the smaller clubs."

Good News Week's Robinson agrees. "It's paradoxical, and I don't know why, but my understanding of it is that there has been a diminution of clubs and pubs that are doing comedy," he says. "I've been a bit concerned about where is the next next wave coming from if those venues aren't available for them. But, on the other hand, the proliferation of comedians into radio and television, and into shows like ours, is fantastic."

He adds: "I know these things come in waves and if you create a vacuum something will come along to fill it. That's also partly why comedians are finding new ways to present their material, like going into the Opera House. A few years ago the only kind of comedian you'd expect to see at the Opera House was Billy Connolly or Dave Allen."

Robinson has great faith, however, in events such as the Adelaide Fringe and the Melbourne comedy festival that nurture new talent. "It gives younger ones a chance to spread their wings longer than a five-minute routine in a pub. Suddenly they have an hour, they have to craft something with a beginning, a middle and an end. It's a great way for them to extend themselves in a way that makes them think about the form, and what they can bring to it that makes them different to everyone else (who is) performing in 20 other rooms around the city."

The thing about standing up and performing is that you cannot just rely on the power of wordplay. With the written word, the words remain static on the page. You can re-arrange words and play games with them, and you know (or at least hope) that the voice inside the reader's head will read the words in an amusing manner. Especially if you bring in an idea completely out of left field.

One writer who is the master of this kind of humour is Peter Ruehl, who writes a column twice a week in the Australian Financial Review. Ruehl comes up with these comparisons that just sound so delightfully irreverent. In one column, he compared something to "booking Mecca for a Spice Girls reunion". Some months back, he managed to find some way to drag Eminem into just about each column, always in the most unexpectedly funny way.

But performing comedy requires enormous energy and impeccable timing and placement. So much of it is pure theatrics. Little wonder so many upcoming comedians combine stand-up with acting - Maz Jobrani and Ahmed Ahmed come to mind.

Of course, some people are fortunate enough to be able to combine both performed and written comedy. You only have to read her columns in the New Statesman to know that Shazia Mirza is master of both.

Words © 2008 Irfan Yusuf


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