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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
Some of the most high-profile indignities suffered by the world's displaced noncitizens in recent times offer a picture of how human lives are coerced and disavowed against a background of profoundly inequitable economic organization in a globalized world. In July 2014, the Australian government donated two patrol boats to the Sri Lankan government so that this developing nation could assist one of the world's most wealthy in implementing Operation Sovereign Borders. This military-economic transaction, commissioned during a state visit to Sri Lanka by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, coincided directly with Australia's interception at sea, outside Australian territorial waters, of an asylum seeker vessel and the government's subsequent Tampa moment, whereby the 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers were detained on a customs vessel in an undisclosed location outside Australian waters whilst their fate was wrangled in the High Court and in diplomatic discussions with Sri Lanka and India. Australian human rights lawyer Hugh de Kretser explained during the episode:
It's a zone that is outside of Australian territorial waters but in which Australia […] can exercise power to prevent the entry of vessels. The Australian government is effectively arguing, ‘we can exercise power in that zone but we don't have responsibility for the exercise of that power’. […] It's very difficult to predict what will happen. […] It's extraordinary what's happening; it's taking the ‘stop the boats’ mantra to a whole new level. (qtd in Morris)
When asked in a television interview to confirm that the asylum seekers would not be returned to Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Tony Abbott declared, ‘I will confirm today, as I always will, that we will operate in accordance with our legal obligations, and we will operate in accordance with safety at sea’ (qtd in Morris). The prominent Australian barrister and human rights activist Julian Burnside stated that the interception may amount legally to piracy (qtd in Borello).
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