In The Auckland Star it is said, or suggested, that the Falun Gung Ten won’t be let into New Zealand because they are ‘queue jumpers’ and they won’t get the visas they need to get onto a plane in Darwin.
‘The Queue’ remains an interesting concept, as unreal and evanescent and quivering on the edge of Being as God’s love or the Mercy that is not strained. It does not exist in Afghanistan, where it is sorely needed. Or in Gaza. Or Aceh. Or Fiji. Or Zimbabwe. How then can it be said to have been ‘jumped’? It does not exist is many, many places. How can you jump what does not exist? Is there one in Kasakhstan? Or Haiti? Lots of Haitians would like to be in it. Where do they line up?
An even more interesting question is who is at the head of it. Japanese restaurateurs with a million dollars, clearly. Hong Kong property developers with ten million. Mining magnates from America or Germany with twenty million. How can it be truly said that they are more deserving than Hazaras fleeing in terror of their lives from the Taliban, who are keen to cut their heads off? Yet it is the Hazaras — like the Bakhtiyaris, now, I am told, all dead — and not the mining magnates we send back. Why is this? What makes them inferior human beings to Gina Rhinehart? Religion? Skin colour? What?
I have thus far got 2,250 dollars to fly the Falun Gung Ten to New Zealand, where, as queue jumpers, they are not welcome, though many a Chinese purchaser of a winery or Hobbit Village or a sheep run is very welcome.
It is possible the moment has passed. They may now agree to be encarcerated in Australia somewhere and await word on whether the Chinese want them back to ‘answer certain questions’ relating to their illegal exit from a religion-hating Communist state. And on whether we will send them back.
I feel very depressed. There were a few hours when it might have worked.
And so it goes.
Name:
Auckland Star??! Bell bottom trousers,Chilean refugees…