Guilty When Innocent. Australian Government’s Resistance to Bringing Home Wives and Children of Islamic State Fighters

Joumanah El-Matrah,Kamalle Dabboussy

doi:10.3390/socsci10060202

Abstract

Currently there are 20 Australian women and 47 children being held in the Al-Roj camp in Northern Syria, who are the family members of Islamic State fighters. The Australian government argues that it is both unsafe for government officials to rescue those held in the camp and unsafe for Australia to repatriate these women and children. This security rhetoric is commonly understood as Australia’s abandonment of its citizens and their entitlements to protection and repatriation. This paper argues that the Australian government is condemning its citizens to a condition of statelessness and displacement, simulating the following conditions under which refugees and asylum seekers are forced to live: murder, violence, deprivation of adequate food and shelter, disease, and the potential hazards of the COVID-19 infection. Rendering its citizens to a condition of statelessness and displacement constitutes both punishment meted out on those deemed guilty by their presence in Syria, and provides the Australian government the opportunity to revoke the citizenship of women and children. Three Australian women who travelled to Syria have already been stripped of their Australian citizenship. This paper explores the conditions and methods by which the Australian government has erased the entitlements, protections and certainty of citizenship for Australian Muslim women and children.

Highlights

A Uniquely Australian ApproachIn a public broadcaster television program on Australian women and children, in the Al-Hawl camp in Syria, Dylan Welch asks the following insidious question:“Whose responsibility are they now?” (Four Corners 2019)
This paper argues that the Australian government is condemning its citizens to a condition of statelessness and displacement, simulating the following conditions under which refugees and asylum seekers are forced to live: murder, violence, deprivation of adequate food and shelter, disease, and the potential hazards of the COVID-19 infection
While the Australian government has constructed multiple narratives around the criminality and pathology of women, this paper argues that it has pursued its ultimate aims, which are to both erode citizenship rights and revoke the citizenship of as many Muslim women in the Al-Roj refugee camp as possible

Summary

Introduction

In a public broadcaster television program on Australian women and children, in the Al-Hawl camp in Syria, Dylan Welch asks the following insidious question:. “Whose responsibility are they now?” (Four Corners 2019) The insidiousness of this question resides in the fact that there is no question as to who has responsibility for these women and children, it is the Australian government. Zahab’s question, perhaps more than any other question posed on the plight of the women and children currently being detained in refugee camps in Northern Syria, is both the most compelling and prescient. Despite the dire situation that the Australian government has continued to subject its citizens to, this question has, to date, received no meaningful interrogation in Australia.

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