Senator Andrew Bartlett
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
 
Public Comments on hunger striking asylum seekers
I thought some readers may be interested in the level and nature of the feedback I've received over the last couple of days (if you're not, then read no further).

By late Monday evening, I'd received 96 email messages about my fast in support of the detainees.

I'm aware of 19 phone calls to my office about it too, but this may not be a complete total, as I didn't check with all my hardworking and wonderful staff. Of the 19 phone calls, 6 were negative and 13 were positive.

I received a larger amount of media calls on this issue over the last day and a half than I can recall on any other single matter this year. This includes at least 9 extended radio interviews today (as opposed to the 'quick grabs' for the hourly news bulletin type of interview) in all states except Tasmania. There were also 3 TV news interviews.

There were 3 main categories of emails - supportive messages from Iranians overseas, and positive and negative messages from people in Australia.One type of feedback I didn't expect was from people overseas. A report by Reuters news came to the attention of some of the Iranian diaspora in various parts of the world and a number of them wrote in with messages of support and thanks for drawing attention to the serious human rights abuses of the current Iranian regime.

I received 39 messages from overseas. 19 of these were from the USA, 7 from the UK, 4 each from Canada and Sweden, and the rest from Italy, Netherlands, India and Japan.Of the 57 email messages I've got so far from Australians, 46 have been positive and 11 have been negative. Of the negative ones, 10 were critical towards asylum seekers and/or Muslims, or abusive of me and 1 expressed concern at the use of hunger strikes as a form of protest.

Below is a link to a sample of the email messages I received. It gives an idea of what sort of responses a politician can get to something like this.

There's no doubt that email can bring out the abusiveness and obnoxiousness in some people, but it's still useful to know how people feel. The comments have not been edited, apart from ensuring there are no identifiers and cutting some references to other matters.

I should warn readers that a few of the negative ones do vilify Muslims. I do not support or endorse these comments in any way at all, they are included to ensure an accurate snapshot of the comments received and because it is in the public interest for people to be aware of what sort of views are out there.

COMMENTS

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Tuesday, December 21, 2004 Permalink
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