Thread: Sanctuary Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Tukai (# 12960) on
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The Australian government, as part of its policy to "stop the boats" deports anyone who arrives by boat and seeks asylum. These people are sent to what are effectively concentration camps on two Pacific Islands: Nauru and Manus Island (part of Papua New Guinea). And as a matter of policy, the Australian Government says that no such people will be admitted for resettlement in Australia, even if they are found to be "genuine refugees" according to international law (as set out in the UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia is a party).
Although the guards at these camps are fully funded by the Australian Government, the guards are supplied by private security companies under contract, and are not officials of the Australian Immigration Department. However some of these asylum seekers, who have been raped or become ill or pregnant in the camps have been allowed into Australia for medical treatment. In fact 37 babies have been born in Australia to mothers who were temporarily admitted for childbirth.
The High Court ruled last week that it was in fact legal for Australia to send all these people ,including the babies, "back" to the Nauru or PNG as soon as they are fit to travel. Numerous churches in Australia have decided that while such deportation may be legally OK it is not morally OK, and accordingly have offered sanctuary to any of those threatened with such deportation. (See here for one of many such stories.)
So, do shipmates think to offer "sanctuary" in this way is part of the core business of a church? Sanctuary in a church was certainly part of the civil law in mediaeval Europe, but does it have any legal force today? The Australian Government claims that its policy of not offering refugee settlement to any asylum seeker who arrives by boat in justified on "humane grounds" , namely that it deters people from taking ship in a leaky boat and thus running the risk of drowning at sea. Is this a good ground, bearing in mind that a voyage from Indonesia to the nearest part of Australia is hundreds of kms ,i.e much further than a voyage from Turkey to Greece?
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on
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If I remember correctly, the medieval concept of sanctuary was time-limited to 40 days. It wasn't indefinite hospitality and in some cases the person could legitimately be refused sanctuary, i.e. if they turned up armed or had robbed another church. The idea was to give the person claiming sanctuary time to figure out what to do next and make arrangements to move on. After time was up nobody was allowed to help him.
It isn't generally known that the fugitive could sometimes do a deal with the authorities, and if he was prepared to surrender all his assets could be deported.
Whether the old medieval concept could still be invoked in this case is difficult to say, as there's unlikely to be any formal legal provision for this in a country that wasn't discovered until much later and never had the medieval justice system. How much of it could reasonably be adopted is something that would probably give lawyers a lot of food for thought.
Is it a church's remit to do this - popular opinion would probably say that it is, but as the article says it isn't likely to have any legal validity. The other thing about sanctuary is that it had to be actually in the church premises, so putting refugees up in your house when they aren't supposed to be in the country would probably only count as harbouring illegal immigrants. There are also practicalities in having large numbers of people actually living in a church, rather than just one or two men at a time.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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ISTM that one of the main functions of sanctuary in Medieval churches was to provide time. Time for someone to prove their innocence, time for tempers to die down and a fair trial to be arranged rather than a lynching by a mob. Not a place for criminals to escape the consequences of their crimes.
But, the current questions are slightly different. Refugees are not criminals. The deportation of people in desperate need from a place with ample resource to care for them is a gross injustice, incharitable and an offense to the good news of Jesus Christ. It is, IMO, part of the mission of the Church to oppose such evil, and if that includes providing sanctuary then that seems to be a good use for our buildings. Of course, such sanctuary is more symbolic than having any legal basis. But, in our nations where our politicians make a play on their Christian faith (or, at least, some attendance at church) or even make claims about us being Christian nations then the Church acting is such a manner is highly prophetic.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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I'm getting to the point in all of these matters in that the consideration of the privileged, i.e. me and nearly all sets I'm part of, is irrelevant. Utterly irrelevant. Therefore whatever the state does, just like any oligarchy, is irrelevant. My responsibility is to be open handed and support all non-violent measures that promote equality.
I therefore support this idea.
The state, the rich, privileged populations in gated communities (like the UK, Turkey - it refuses to let refugees work or even cross the privilege border now - the US; not just Chelsea, ... Countesthorpe) are ... Babylon.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Martin60: The state, the rich, privileged populations in gated communities (like the UK, Turkey - it refuses to let refugees work or even cross the privilege border now - the US; not just Chelsea, ... Countesthorpe) are ... Babylon.
Any Rasta could have told you that.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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Really? I got to be 61 before I knew they could? Or I finally unconditionally agreed with them?
Posted by Bibaculus (# 18528) on
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The medieval idea of sanctuary was to do with jurisdiction. The bishop or Abbot had jurisdiction over church space, not the king or other secular lords. The '40 days' rule was not universal, and certain places, the precincts of Westminster Abbey for example, became veritable towns of outlaws of one sort or another. A lot of it also had to do with the right to levy fines and taxation.
Then we had the Reformation, and all that was swept awy.
Whatever churches in Australia are doing it has nothing to do with the concept of sanctuary as it existed in the middle ages, ISTM.
That's not a comment on if its a good or a bad thing, just a historical observation.
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on
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As I understand sanctuary (mainly from Brother Cadfael books and similar), it was a chance to be safe from vengeance and retribution for a limited period while they could seek to prove their innocence (or while proofs of their innocence or mitigation were gathered).
I think it is a valid concept today, that some body* with no political connections can fight for justice - not taking either side, but seeking to find the truth. In the case cited, this is a whole lot more complicated. It is not about "is this person guilty or not", it is about "Is it morally right to deport them".
So while I think it is absolutely right for the church to take a moral stance against the legal position, I am not sure this counts as sanctuary in the medieval sense.
*While the church is the traditional body for this, I would question whether it is, actually, the right one, because it is no longer politically neutral.
Posted by DangerousDeacon (# 10582) on
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My Cathedral has confirmed that it is a place that will offer sanctuary to asylum seekers. We are working on the basis that sanctuary in 21st Century Australia is primarily a moral rather than legal concept. We are now working our way through the practicalities of all this!
Posted by Ariel (# 58) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
So while I think it is absolutely right for the church to take a moral stance against the legal position, I am not sure this counts as sanctuary in the medieval sense.
Precisely: the modern version is an undefined idea based on a partial memory of the concept. And there'll be a lot of practicalities to work through!
Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on
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IIRC there was a case of an asylum seeker in the UK taking sanctuary in a church in East London while his case was being heard. This meant that he would not be deported until he left, but I am not sure whether this was an official sanctuary agreement or an acceptance that the officials would agree to leave him alone while he stayed there.
I think, if they had wanted, they could have taken him from the church, but they chose not to.
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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There was Josette Ishimwe in Bristol, but I can't find what happened to her. The relevant government department said that if her case was found against her she would be expected to leave.
There is something rather nasty about somewhere with the backstory of Australia, where there are people (my sister met some out there) who would rather the real Australians weren't there, taking the government attitude they are taking, doing the things they are doing, and being admired by some people here, who say that we should copy them.
Well done the Aussies who think differently.
[ 07. February 2016, 14:05: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posted by Bibaculus (# 18528) on
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I think it only works, when it does work, because the authorities decide that the resultant bad publicity of dragging someone out of a church by force is not worth it. It is a case of asymetric warfare in that regard.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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quote:
Originally posted by DangerousDeacon:
My Cathedral has confirmed that it is a place that will offer sanctuary to asylum seekers. We are working on the basis that sanctuary in 21st Century Australia is primarily a moral rather than legal concept. We are now working our way through the practicalities of all this!
I think you should work completely on the basis that it's a moral rather than a legal concept. One of the commentaries on this affair said that it was legally abolished... sometime in the 1600s I think it was.
Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on
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I like that some of our churches are offering sanctuary to refugees.
I am worried by my recollection from various history podcasts that noble lords were routinely yanked out of churches and beheaded after claiming sanctuary during the Wars of the Roses. Further, I am very worried that a crusader army surrounded a church with flammable materials in a town taken by storm at the start of the Crusade against the Cathars and burnt every one of the people seeking sanctuary to death.
Nobody tell the Australian Government this.
Posted by DangerousDeacon (# 10582) on
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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by DangerousDeacon:
My Cathedral has confirmed that it is a place that will offer sanctuary to asylum seekers. We are working on the basis that sanctuary in 21st Century Australia is primarily a moral rather than legal concept. We are now working our way through the practicalities of all this!
I think you should work completely on the basis that it's a moral rather than a legal concept. One of the commentaries on this affair said that it was legally abolished... sometime in the 1600s I think it was.
1624. In any event, unlikely to have survived the confirmation of disestablishment in New South Wales in the 19th Century. Hence my use of the word "moral", although there has been an interesting argument advanced that there may still be a legal basis due to Australian court decisions on the free exercise of religion. I will leave all this to the lawyers!
In practice, hard to imagine immigration officials breaking into a Cathedral to forcibly remove a family with young children. The authorities would probably "wait it out". So whilst it is unlikely that anyone will take us up on the offer, it is still possible, and it would probably become a very drawn out affair.
Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on
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Have you got room for Julian Assange? ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by DangerousDeacon:
My Cathedral has confirmed that it is a place that will offer sanctuary to asylum seekers. We are working on the basis that sanctuary in 21st Century Australia is primarily a moral rather than legal concept. We are now working our way through the practicalities of all this!
I think you should work completely on the basis that it's a moral rather than a legal concept. One of the commentaries on this affair said that it was legally abolished... sometime in the 1600s I think it was.
I think probably in the 16th century rather the 1600s. It would probably have found its death knell in Henry VIII's praemunire. On the train home so can't readily check anything.
What Darwin Cathedral and other churches is doing has no legal effect at all, and I wonder how many will in practice find their way to a self-proclaimed sanctuary. Neither of these points matters - it's the bad publicity that the government will receive that will acrry weight.
[ 08. February 2016, 07:18: Message edited by: Gee D ]
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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Actually it was James I who got rid of sanctuary, and that was for criminal cases only.
The right to claim sanctuary in civil cases went in 1723 - I think it may have had something to do with people being sued for damages or the like relating to the Jacobite rebellion of 1715?
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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Thank you - shall try to check this evening when I get home.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
So while I think it is absolutely right for the church to take a moral stance against the legal position, I am not sure this counts as sanctuary in the medieval sense.
Precisely: the modern version is an undefined idea based on a partial memory of the concept. And there'll be a lot of practicalities to work through!
It seems to me that the modern version, which I remember going on in the US in the 1980s, is essentially a form of civil disobedience.
Posted by DangerousDeacon (# 10582) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Nick Tamen:
quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
So while I think it is absolutely right for the church to take a moral stance against the legal position, I am not sure this counts as sanctuary in the medieval sense.
Precisely: the modern version is an undefined idea based on a partial memory of the concept. And there'll be a lot of practicalities to work through!
It seems to me that the modern version, which I remember going on in the US in the 1980s, is essentially a form of civil disobedience.
Yes, that is the view of many of my parishioners. But when confronted with evil, civil disobedience is conferred with honour and morality.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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posted by DangerousDeacon quote:
...when confronted with evil, civil disobedience is conferred with honour and morality.
Very true, but that cannot be used as an argument in the case of Mr Assange: first, I doubt if anyone would describe the justice systems of either Sweden or the UK as inherently 'evil', and nor do I think any reasonable person would describe a decision to skip bail in not one but two countries, and an outright refusal to submit to questioning, even within the embassy, on allegations of two serious sexual assaults as displaying either honour or morality.
Throughout this whole, tawdry saga, Mr Assange has done nothing other than court publicity by positing a scenario - possible extradition to the United States - which has never been hinted at by either the FBI or the Swedish Justice Ministry.
At first, Mr Assange blustered that he was entirely innocent of the charges about which the Swedish police wish to question him - but that was before his supporters in the UK were made aware of the nature of the alleged offences. Once it was brought to the attention of Jemima Khan and his other UK backers that the charges related to sexual assaults, he rapidly backfired and refused to answer any questions, launching a wholly invented scenario about the FBI wanting to extradite him, before fleeing into the Ecuadorean embassy.
Mr Assange has behaved without honour towards his UK backers; the details of the sexual assaults show that he has questionable morality at the very least, and his manipulation of innocent people has been so sustained and grotesque it might be construed by some to be verging on evil.
Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on
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Although the situation with Mr Assange is somewhat different to refugees being refused safety. Political asylum within another country (or embassy of another country) is different from providing those facing deportation (non legally binding) sanctuary in a church building.
Posted by deano (# 12063) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Tukai:
These people are sent to what are effectively concentration camps on two Pacific Islands:
Oooh... do they gas them or burn them in ovens?
If not are you engaging in hyperbole and misusing the term thereby insulting the memory of six million dead Jews?
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by deano:
Oooh... do they gas them or burn them in ovens?
If not are you engaging in hyperbole and misusing the term thereby insulting the memory of six million dead Jews?
"Concentration camp: A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group the government has identified as suspect"
You should read a dictionary you might learn something.
[ 09. February 2016, 13:23: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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Neither of those things were done in the first concentration camps, whether in the American Civil War, or our actions against the Boers. If you are concentrating people in camps where they don't want to be, and where they are being abused, what other name should you use?
And you are forgetting the disabled, the gypsies, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the gays, and the rest of the victims of the extermination camps.
Cheap.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
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quote:
Originally posted by deano:
quote:
Originally posted by Tukai:
These people are sent to what are effectively concentration camps on two Pacific Islands:
Oooh... do they gas them or burn them in ovens?
If not are you engaging in hyperbole and misusing the term thereby insulting the memory of six million dead Jews?
I think you're confusing a concentration camp and an extermination camp, and thereby insulting the memory of six million dead Jews.
Posted by deano (# 12063) on
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Tell you what, let's have a thought experiment.
Imagine you are on the High Street of any largish town in Britain and you stop a hundred passers-by at random and ask "What did they do in conentration camps?"
What percentage will say something along the lines of "they gassed jews"?
What percentage will make a distinction between concentration camps and extermination camps?
Is the phrase "concentration camp" loaded along those lines?
I believe so.
So would the High Street sample. They would believe the OP is engaging in offensive hyperbole.
[ 09. February 2016, 13:44: Message edited by: deano ]
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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hosting/
Stop trying to derail the thread.
The OP referred to what concentration camps are, not what they do. If you want to take the OPer to task for being (as you see it) offensive, take it to Hell.
/hosting
Posted by Tukai (# 12960) on
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On the definitional issue, Doc Tor has said what I would have said, and indeed what I meant.
Back on the main topic, I am pleased to report that my own church congregation, like many others in the Uniting Church of Australia, has declared that we too stand ready to offer sanctuary to these asylum seekers. Like the others, we are are more concerned with making a moral challenge rather than a legal one, though as others have said upthread, no democratic government would welcome the publicity of "we stormed the church to drag out innocent people".
But we have also considered at least some of the practicalities, of which the two most relevant are (1) our church building comes complete with kitchen and bathroom/ shower facilities, and (2) as far as we know none of the 267 people in question are detained within 200km of our location, which is in fact in the national capital. I think DD for one has an internment camp rather closer to his church.
On a legal point, it is a clear contravention of the UN Refugee Convention (i.e international law) to refuse to even consider the application of someone who seeks asylum as a refugee under the Convention. The Australian Government has done just that to many (most?) of these "boat people" , so even if the mediaeval sanctuary rules were just a stay to allow a fair hearing , there would be a strong case to offer them that.
Posted by DangerousDeacon (# 10582) on
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Thanks Tukai - and well done to the Uniting Church. Our Cathedral has an enclosed passage way to toilets, showers, kitchen, etc. so is well placed in that respect. There is a large detention centre about 40km from where we are, though no one in community detention.
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
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Somewhere in URC headquarters, there must be some files on the notion of sanctuary with respect to asylum seekers. I say this because a number of congregations in Manchester gave refuge to failed asylum seekers back in the 1980s.
If I remember rightly there was no legal basis for the refuge. That would anyway only apply to CofE buildings and it had long been in abeyance. Rather the sanctuary given relied totally on the amount of press coverage a forced removal of an unarmed person from a church building would produce and the theological workings of the local congregation.
Jengie
Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on
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I remember a chap from Sri Lanka who took sanctuary in a church in Manchester back in the 1970s or 80s. I can't remember his name now, or the name of the church, but I do remember that he was arguing the Sri Lankan government would kill him if he went back.
When he was finally (after about four years) removed from the building and put on a plane, he was murdered within 48 hours of touching down in Sri Lanka.
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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No he wasn't.
Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on
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Oh, do you remember the case? I was pretty sure that was the way it happened, but my memory may be faulty.
Posted by mertide (# 4500) on
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Viraj Mendis
Posted by Eigon (# 4917) on
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Thanks for that - for some reason I was convinced he'd been killed, and I'd forgotten his name so I couldn't look him up.
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
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Do not think he was the only one. Sorry, my memory is not very clear but if you scroll down this page you will get an account of one case I think I am recalling. I think my own congregation at the time may have been involved in another case. I cannot google it as the congregation is long gone.
Jengie
[ 13. February 2016, 18:58: Message edited by: Jengie jon ]
Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on
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And nowt happened to her either.
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