An evening of Truth & Lies
Sydney’s JewishCare has hosted an evening of divulging international truth and lies about refugees, at which former Federal judge Marcus Einfeld shared many controversial situations.
Marcus Einfeld and Music for Refugees/Jews for Refugees Philip Feinstein
Marcus Einfeld was appointed to the Federal Court in 1986. He was also a Justice of the Australian Capital Territory. He retired as a judge in April 2001. Einfeld was also the founding president of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
Einfeld was speaking to the JewishCare Friendship Group – Sunday Discussions @ Random
Firstly Marcus Einfeld focussed on the new Italian government, which is opposed to mass immigration, despite almost 70,000 refugees from Tunisia and Libya having Italy in their sights. “I shudder to think what their future might be,” said Einfeld.
He said the Polish government is sacking judges who do not implement its policies. Meanwhile, Britain has decided to deport asylum seekers to the African country of Rwanda, despite the current unrest in neighbouring Burundi.
Einfeld pointed out that Germany is an exception to this ill-treatment of refugees, where the previous Chancellor, Angela Merkel, allowed almost a million refugees to settle.
JewishCare Friendship Group – Sunday Discussions @ Random organising committee celebrating their 5th Anniversary: L-R: President – President-Tanya Fox, Leon Price, Hilary Katzeff, Jane Chaytor, Shoshana Cochrane, Raymond Garfield, Diane Seeto
In the United States, former President Donald Trump still advocates that the previous election was illegal and stolen from him. He still has many congress members who agree with his stance.
Meanwhile large numbers of Mexican children who supposedly never had the correct paperwork have been kept apart from their parents for several years. Still, in the US, there are about 150 people incarcerated in Guantanamo despite never having been given a chance to defend themselves in court.
In looking at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thousands of buildings, care centres, schools, and even hospitals have been destroyed. “It is a breach of human rights law to attack such places”, he stated.
He pointed out that there are many other countries in the world where human rights do not exist. Examples given were North Korea, Nicaragua and Myanmar (Burma), where some elected government members have been sentenced to 60 years imprisonment.
Then it was Australia’s turn: Einfeld pointed out that 70% of inmates in our prisons are indigenous people, many of whom were incarcerated because of minor offences and should not be there. They now have a prison record which becomes detrimental to any future employment. Upon release from prison, many of them, being untrained and unable to find employment, would resort to crime resulting in recidivism. A very cruel cycle indeed. “If we can’t improve this situation, then perhaps we should give up calling ourselves a fair, just, and benevolent democracy”, added Einfeld. He covered various other poor situations about Aboriginal people, including the fact that most of them had never seen a dentist.
When the subject of refugees came up, Einfeld said: “Australia is the only country in the world that practices permanent, indefinite, indiscriminate detention of asylum seekers who come here by boat.” And we lock many of them up in far-away places like Nauru, PNG and Christmas Island. There are currently 70 asylum seekers locked up in a Melbourne hotel, some for 8/9 years. Unlike Novak Djokovic, these people have no right to go to court to state their case.
Australia has a huge shortage of workers. Many currently incarcerated people in our various detention facilities have not committed any crime. They could be used to fill these vacancies. Many are qualified in various fields and could become assets to Australia, but our past and present governments do not see this.
The organising Friendship group Sunday Discussions @ Random was founded in 2017 within B’nai B’rith.
This consistently growing group meet regularly on the 2nd Sunday of the month (on Zoom during COVID), all the while presenting interesting high-profile speakers – topics included so far have been drug & alcohol issues, health, spirituality, film, Judaism, Israel, China, climate change, ecology, social justice, refugees, finance, Jewish community issues, Olympics, and much more.
It celebrated its 5th birthday at this function.
Report from Philip Feinstein
