SIEV X Inter-Faith Service, Canberra 18 October 2003

 

This remembrance service was held in a beautiful and appropriate location, the Japanese Garden behind the Albert Hall, near Lotus Bay on Lake Burley Griffin.

 

Speakers were Catholic Bishop Pat Power, Anglican Bishop George Browning, and Canberra Islamic Centre President Ahmed Youssef. Their taped words (transcribed by me) are below. After the service, Steve Biddulph spoke at my invitation, acknowledging JANNAH THE SIEV X MEMORIAL website,  and outlining the SIEV X Schools Memorial Project.

 

About 100 people took part. The service was organised by Susan Kinley of Canberra Refugee Action Committee. My thanks to everyone who supported this deeply moving and consoling event.

 

TK      23.10.2003

 

Bishop Pat Power:

 

I think back to the year 2001 with a great deal of pain and bitterness.  I think how hopefully the year began.  We had hosted the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and welcomed people from all over the world.  Volunteers, ordinary Australians, had played a significant part in the success of the Games.  And it wasn’t just about winning.  Every athlete was applauded for participating.  There was everywhere a spirit of welcome.

 

At the beginning of 2001, Australia celebrated its centenary of Federation.  Right around the country, with parades, dance and song there were moving tributes expressing pride and joy in Australia being a multi-cultural and multi-racial society.

 

But as the year went on, we began to lose our nerve.  We became threatened by the fact that people were risking their lives and arriving on our shores in leaky boats.  Politicians began talking about border protection.  The tabloid press and talk-back radio whipped up fear in the Australian community.

 

It is little wonder that in August when the Norwegian freighter, the “Tampa” came to the aid of a distressed boat carrying asylum seekers, the Australian Government drew its line in the sand and refused to accept the hapless people into our country.

 

After the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Australia joined its American ally in declaring war on terrorism.  To this day, I still don’t understand what is meant by a war on terrorism.  It is a vague enough notion to whip up fear in all sorts of places, hardening our hearts against those to whom we should be reaching out and embracing.

 

When the SIEV X came to grief on 19 October 2001 with the loss of 353 innocent lives it should have been recognized as a day of national disaster and mourning.  It was truly a day of shame.  Yet I don’t recall any great outpouring of grief in our national Parliament.  I don’t recall any prayer service in the Great Hall of Parliament House for those innocent lives lost.  I don’t recall any official intensive investigative process aimed at determining the causes of such a loss of life on a grand scale. I know there was a Senate inquiry, but I think that was more a cover-up, rather than looking to ascertain the real facts.  It has been left to individuals of great integrity such as Tony Kevin to try to bring those responsible to account.

 

The only official reaction that I can recall has been one of relief that a signal has gone out to people smugglers and others that there is little chance of piercing the net surrounding the Australian coastline.

 

As a nation, we have closed our borders and our hearts to desperate people in need of a home and security.  How can the same Government that justified going to war in Iraq to liberate its people continue to justify its position of refusing Iraqi and other asylum seekers entry into Australia?

 

Those of us gathered here this morning join with fellow Australians around our country to say that we stand for something different.  We grieve for the loss of 353 innocent lives on the SIEV X.  We express our shame that so little has been done on an official level to find out the causes of those deaths and to make some reparation.  We uphold the value of every human life;  we recognize that we belong to one human family;  we say that the strong should protect the vulnerable;  that the more affluent should share their resources with the needy;  that every person is our sister or our brother.

 

We come together to pray – as Christians, Muslims, members of other great religions, or maybe people struggling with faith, unable to see God’s goodness reflected in the world and people around them.  We come together as people of good will wanting the best for every human being.

 

Can I finish on a personal note?  Today causes me great sadness because 18 October is my late parents’ wedding anniversary.  My father’s ancestors were convicts from Ireland;  my mother’s parents came to Australia from Lebanon to find a better life.  My parents not only gave a home to their five children, but living in Queanbeyan in the forties, fifties and sixties, they welcomed into their home and their lives many of the refugees who found a home in Queanbeyan in the wake of the Second World War.  I would hope that as Australians we can get back to our roots and re-discover and reclaim our best values.  We should then send that strong message to our political leaders.

 

This prayer is a little long, and it’s not directly on what we are commemorating today, but I hope that you will understand the spirit of it.

 

Oh my heart’s heart, in love and anger I will turn to you,

for my soul cries out, “Where is justice,

When will the balance be redressed

for the fearful dreams of children who sleep with knives,

for the beaten women, and the shamed and helpless men?”

Where is justice ?

For the agony of hunger is not to be set

against the insatiable appetites of jaded palates.

 

In the villages and camps, the children lie bleeding,

and great wounds gape in their throats and sides.

In the city, there is no safety for them;

as the leaves blow through the night streets,

they are swept  away, they disappear without trace

as if they had never been.

 

In the marketplace, weapons are bought and sold;

they change hands as easily as onions from a market woman,

and killing comes lightly everywhere.

The value of people is weighed out on crooked scales

and found wanting,

they are discarded like bruised apples

because they lack the appearance of perfection.

 

But you, my heart’s heart, you are careful;

like a thrifty housewife who sees no waste in anything,

you gather up that which has been cast aside,

knowing its sweetness,

and take it home with you.

 

And I will see you in the camps and villages,

working late into the night,

showing patience in the midst of confusion,

reweaving the web of life.

I will see you in the cities,

seated in a circle, making new plans,

drawing attention,

naming the forgotten names.

 

I will see you in the marketplace,

dressed in black,

with the carved face of an old woman crying “no” to war,

and you will stand your ground,

and you will seem beautiful to me.

For you are my sanctuary and my light,

my firm ground when the earth cracks

under the weight of warring gods.

As a woman in mortal danger flees to her sisters

and finds refuge,

so you will comfort me, and dress my wounds with tenderness.

And when the flame of courage burns low in me,

your breath, as gentle as a sleeping child,

will stir the ashes of my heart.

 

Teach me to know your judgement as my friend,

that I may never be ashamed of justice,

or so proud that I flee from mercy.

For your love is never less than justice,

and your strength is tenderness.

You contain my soul’s yearning,

and in your encompassing, I am free.

 

-                     Kathy Galloway, (Iona Community) , “Prayers for the World”. Pages 367-8

 

Bishop George Browning :

 

I want this morning to focus my thoughts around a reflection of scripture which belongs to the Islamic people and Jewish people and Christian people

 

If I was to ask you all “What does the scripture say God did first?”,  I don’t know what you would say,  but I want to put to you that the thing that God did first and God does last is that God created a space. According to the Creation story, God worked for six days. In the first three of the six days, He created a space. He separated the light from the darkness and created a space. He separated the land from the water and created a space. He separated the water from above from the water from below and created a space. Then in the space that He had created, He filled it with life.

 

I come from a philosophical point of view which says that my vocation is to find out what God does,  and do that. And in my view, one of the vocations of Christian people, of people of faith, is to create space for one another and in so doing to bring glory to God.

 

The reality of the world in which we live today is that space is being taken away from people.  People don’t move from their homeland voluntarily or if they had free choice. There is too much of a connection with home,  with land, with people, with family, with ancestors, with children yet to be born, for people to choose to leave. The reason why they leave is because their space has been all swallowed up: because of environmental reasons,  because of war, because of various forms of injustice. There are many reasons why the space has gone.

 

And so on the SIEV X there were 300-odd souls for whom space had been denied , who were travelling across the world and found themselves in a very enclosed space, on a boat that was not fit for human travel let alone for so many people. And so these poor folk from various countries in the world had sought another space, which was denied to them.

 

I want for just a moment to talk about the space from which they came and then the space to which they hoped to come.  The spaces from which people travel today are on all continents of the world. There is no continent of our world today where people are not moving away from it. It includes Europe – we are familiar with Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia etc. But we are also familiar with the Congo, with Ethiopia,  with Zimbabwe in Africa, and with numerous countries in Asia..

 

And in those spaces, enormous injustice is being done to human beings by other human beings. And the injustice I think can be summed up by the way in which we deny the God-given gift of space to other human beings. I visited Soweto in South Africa earlier this year, to find three million people in an extraordinarily small space. Ten people on average living in a space around 7 meters by 5 meters. And in some of them, 80% of the people with HIV-Aids. An extraordinarily confronting experience.

 

So when people are in an enclosed space, one of the things you do is that you thrash around and you do things that are violent to yourself, to the thing that is enclosing you, and perhaps to others. It shouldn’t surprise us that in the world today there are many people who find there is no alternative in their lives other than to perform acts of violence, not because they are necessarily violent people themselves, or because they are evil people themselves,  but because the environment in which they lived had been enclosed is so terribly life- denying that the only human reaction left - it is not a good one – is to express some form of violence in reaction.         

 

I wanted to say that.  because it seems to me that in the world in which we are living at the moment, there is so much condemnation of terrorism and rightly so, but so little understanding of the reasons that lie behind why it happens.

 

And I know that you cannot really say that one place in the world is better or worse than another.  But symbolically at least, because it is the cradle of civilisation and the cradle of the great three religions of the world, what is happening in the Middle East is the worst place. And I believe that if the great and powerful nations of the world were actually to focus on that issue then many of the other issues would resolve themselves. But America absolutely refuses to do that -  and it is the country that can solve it - . While it refuses to do it, we will be confronted with many people in the world reacting against the space that has been taken away from them. And I  beseech you here this morning to pray for peace in the Middle East and  justice for the Palestinian people .

 

And so here we are in a very beautiful place set in a beautiful garden – and what a tragedy occurred not far away from here when the old hospital came down – but nevertheless this is a beautiful place, and why wouldn’t we want to share it with others, and why wouldn’t others want to be here ? And so it is a terrible thing that the Australian community – yes, since the government is part of our community - should have turned back 300 people,  and that they should have lost their lives so terribly on the ocean. 

 

So I am very grateful to Tony and to Susan and to you all for being here, because we honour the space that they leave in our midst .  We all know that every human being potentially touches the lives of every other human being. And if you and I are not sorrowful over the pain of another, then our own life is diminished.  And if we can’t sing with those who are joyful, then our own life is diminished.

 

So we are here today partly for our own sake as well as for the sake of others, that their memory should not be lost for ever, that they must be remembered, for their sake, for the world’s sake, so that other things like it do not happen again.

 

And it is most appropriate that a memorial site be placed on our land,  so that other people can recall that just as 80 or so people who died in Bali who were connected to Australia, so four times that number of people died anonymously, without sight, in the ocean between here and Indonesia.

 

So,  brothers and sisters, it is great that you are here today, and I’m privileged to speak, and to honour the reality that we are all children of the one God, and that God creates space for us, and that we in our acts of equity and justice must work to return space to those for whom it has been denied, both here and overseas. We must be welcoming in hospitality, we must be generous in our giving, we must be open in our understanding, we must - as God gave us two ears and only one mouth – listen more than we speak.

 

So may God be with us as we gather today. May we hold sacred the lives of those who were lost at sea. May their memory stir us to greater acts of generosity and hospitality and faith,  in the world in which we live today.

 

Gracious God, thank You for making us one family on the face of the earth. We recall with humility and sadness the lives of those who were lost on SIEV X. And we pray, gracious God, that their memory may be sacred to us, and eventually sacred to this country, and to the world of which they will always be a part. We pray these things through Christ our Lord -

 

Amen

 

Ahmed Youssef:

 

Dear brothers and sisters in humanity, peace be upon you all.

 

As usual, there are two groups who are not around – the fair media, and the politicians. And we should have some courage to say that this way of acting towards those who are in need is disgraceful.

 

We should remember that whatever we have of health and wealth and family and authority is a trust from God, for a certain time, and it can be easily withdrawn in a few minutes. And those who suffered in the last bushfire [in Canberra] know exactly what I mean. They know what is the feeling of being a refugee in your own country, in your own land.  They know how health and wealth and effort cannot stop the decision which came.

 

So let us remember that being compassionate is an act of humanity that we should practice as much as we can. Irrespective of politics and colour and machinations and selling of art, we should look at it as we are told by God:

 “If you thank, I will add to your bounties, and if not My revenge is huge”.

 

So God has the patience to leave us for years and years,  and maybe hundreds of years. But there is a Day of Judgement. On this day,  we will pay for everything and we will be rewarded for every good deed. So if we remember this on a daily basis,  then our acts will take another form.

 

It is not the fashion that we think about these religious topics. But it is very essential,  out of empathy,  that we should remember what is written: we are on a bridge between birth and death, and we are looking forward to whatever is after death. If we lose that insight, then we will turn into very vicious mean traitors.

 

So let us remember that miserliness and being so coveting to whatever God has given to us is not the proper way to live in human peace. Peace starts with us internally, from the heart. And if we don’t have this – forget about the rest. Peace is divided between us and God,  and then humanity, and then the rest.  If we don’t have this peace internally, we will never find peace on earth.

 

Remember that all these people who are seeking asylum in this country are the remnants of the pulverised peoples under the feet of colonisation. And I think every one of us has a certain connection in history with this movement of colonising other people and sucking their blood. So let us remember that we have also an obligation to pay back some of the coveted bounties which we have swallowed for hundreds of years.

 

These people sacrificed everything and they had nothing else to sacrifice. And then they came looking for a shelter. And this shelter was denied. And they would be left to drown.

Can we accept that for our sons and daughters? Can we accept that as a good act of protecting our borders against the invaders from other countries ?

 

So let us be aware of history, and let us re-exercise the examples of humanitarian aid without limit, otherwise we will have no mercy on the Day of Judgement.

 

May God accept my humble prayers, and we too pray to God to accept the prayers of those who sacrificed their lives looking for a better life. May Allah accept them, give them mercy, and give us also mercy.

 

Thank you very much. 

 

Steve Biddulph:  

 

I was not prepared,  but I’m very happy to speak after such clear expressions of what has happened,  and what remains to be done.  I belong to Rural Australians for Refugees and we - based on first the JANNAH site,  which is a website of memorials for the SIEV X victims -  decided that something more permanent was needed in Australia.

 

And then,  rather than simply place a monument somewhere like a piece of stone, that it should be a living thing, and that we should involve young Australians in the design of a memorial. So we are holding a national youth collaboration with art students in Grades 9 and 10 around the country, over the next two years,  to develop what form that memorial will take,  and to learn the story of what happened  - because most Australians just do not know what happened with the SIEV X .

 

And our hope is that within two years time, somewhere on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin,  because this is at the centre of our national life,  we will build something that will be a beautiful and fitting tribute to those people.  And we would love you to tell your friends about it and to give it your moral support, it would be wonderful. Thank you for the chance to say this.