SBS Go Back to Where you Came From re: Syria
Australians are very naive about the world. It is true to say until you walk in the shoes of another you cannot know how horrendous the real experience is. We get misled by biased media, government bias and agenda’s, lack of understanding, inhumanity that is encouraged by simplistic arguments that care nothing for those suffering. I am deeply aware these days that people increasingly do not care, disconnect or action a shared humanity.
I see them as my family. I see every nation as my own. I believe we have to reach out across the world and care for those suffering. We have to question our leadership and not believe what is said but investigate. I have a vision of a future where we are each other’s keepers, where truth becomes integrity, where lies are exposed and we find ways to solve our problems when we disarm from our fear.
There has to be a transformational change in governments around the world. Force does not work and we have to take responsibility for the wars that are driving refugee flows when people do not want to leave their country but are saving their families lives. It is cruel to demonise vulnerable people who are fleeing for their lives. Our country has not shown compassion or empathy but added to the pain and agony of refugees. We have to ask about our military interventions in overseas wars where we are not directly threatened but based on alliances with questionable leadership and a military-industrial complex with a vested interest in profiting from war. This is very concerning if peace is our goal. Only peace building, mediation, intentions for peace will we be able to stop the wars. To supply weapons is not going to de-escalate conflict and when civilians are the predominant victims, this becomes genocide. Do we celebrate this and call it courage?
I am impressed with the SBS series and it is good to see people change their views when they meet people and see the reality on the ground. It is only through experience that we understand suffering. I have seen this clearly in my own experience.
There is a lot we can do. The times we move through are about who we are and can we walk in the shoes of others and feel empathy for their plight? They are me.
SBS has done Australia a great service. This is the power of independent television.
(click above to access videos below)
Confronting footage from SBS’s ‘Go Back To Where You Came From’: Jacqui Lambie fires an AK-47 in Syria
JACQUI Lambie has an uncomfortable dinner with a refugee family and finds herself in the middle of a war zone in SBS’s new series.
FOOTAGE of outspoken politician Jacqui Lambie unloading an AK-47 in a war zone in Syria is set to light up television screens around Australia tomorrow night.
Lambie is taking part in SBS’s Go Back To Where You Came From Live TV event. As part of the show she has been sent to the Syrian war zone with Sydney immigration lawyer Marina, 28.
Along with six other participants, Lambie and Marina will have their preconceived ideas about refugees challenged as they get a first-hand experience of the global refugee crisis.
Australia can watch on in real time over three nights from Tuesday to Thursday.
Immigration lawyer Marina, 28, has been partnered with politician Jacqui Lambie for a trip to Syria.Source:Supplied
Immigration lawyer Marina is a refugee advocate who believes Australia is not making a great enough contribution to the global refugee crisis.
“What we are doing wrong is demonising the act of seeking asylum,” she says.
“We are focusing on vulnerability of forced migrants refugees rather than their strength, their potential and their contribution to Australia.”
Her personal experience as a refugee of the Bosnia War, fleeing Sarajevo with her mother and spending time in a refugee camp as a child before arriving in Australia, has greatly shaped her opinions: “My family fled war, so I know what it means to be a forced migrant and to be accepted as a refugee.”
In stark contrast, Lambie was a Tasmanian Senator from 2014 — 2017 and during her time in parliament campaigned on foreign affairs, veterans’ affairs and youth unemployment issues. She has been highly critical of Islam and has campaigned to ban the burqa in Australia. Before her political career, Jacqui served in the Australian Army and the Royal Australian Corps of Military Police.
Lambie believes that Australia should direct resources to fixing its own problems, rather than refugees, and is also concerned about new migrants to Australia not integrating.
“We need to worry about our own backyard first,” she says.
“You have the Chinese in one place, the bloody Muslims in one place, the Indians are taking over the suburbs. That’s not integration,” she says.
Jacqui Lambie.Source:News Corp Australia
News.com.au has been given two sneak peeks at Lambie and Marina’s appearances on the show.
In the first clip (that you can view at the top of this post) the pair stay with a family of Syrian refugees in Australia. It makes for some awkward viewing.
After the matriarch of the family explains that one of their family members was beheaded by ISIS before they fled Syria, Lambie explains her theory that traumatised refugees bring “problems” to Australia.
“When you’re seeing dead bodies … and people getting their heads chopped off, it’s just human psyche, you become very desensitised to it. But you are also damaged and that really bothers me. If we can’t throw the services at our own veterans, then I just have to ask ‘how are we going to do it for others?’”.
A younger man at the table says to Lambie, “I actually searched your name and saw that you’re a politician and you’re against Muslims, so I am wondering why you are against them and why you don’t want them here?”
Lambie responds: “There is some migrants and whether they’re Muslim or not they come here and they don’t appreciate what we have to offer them and sometimes that can come back to bite us.”
Awkward dinnertime conversation between a Muslim man and Jacqui Lambie. Picture: SBSSource:Supplied
Immigration lawyer Marina objects to Lambie’s comments, saying, “Can I just say that to me we’re making terrorism national security synonymous with people who are seeking protection and I think there needs to be a very clear distinction.
“Refugees and people seeking asylum form 3 per cent of our migration intake to Australia, but form about 98 per cent of our discourse about immigration in this country”.
Lambie responds: “You’ve gotta put your safety first, and sometimes you’re going to have to make tough decisions which people aren’t going to like … but you’ve gotta make those decisions and think ‘these people are in my own backyard what’s the best way I can protect them?’
“First and foremost I’ve gotta worry about the national security and put this country first and that’s the way I am and nothing is ever going to change that.”
The second clip below shows a visibly nervous Marina and Lambie making their way through a war zone in Syria.
Military-trained Lambie barely flinches as she fires an AK-47 rifle and looks at a decomposing body on the street:
Go Back To Where You Came From- Syrian Frontline
Other participants who will also travel to some of the most dangerous places on earth on the show include comedian Meshel Laurie with ex-AFL player Spida Everitt; writer and performer Gretel Killeen with prison youth worker and anti-refugee provocateur Steve; and fence-sitter student Gareth with young conservative Dannii.
This year’s Go Back To Where You Came From Live participants include Jacqui Lambie, Spida Everitt, Gretel Killeen and Meshel Laurie. Picture: SBS-TVSource:Sunshine Coast Daily
Journalist Ray Martin and SBS World News presenter Janice Petersen will be stationed in the “Nerve Centre” in studio in Sydney, as the stories unfold through a mix of documentary elements and live crosses to participants on-the-ground in conflict hot spots and front lines across multiple continents, witnessing the complexity of mass human migration and its ripple effects in 2018 in “SBS’s most ambitious television event to date”.
Go Back To Where You Came From Live airs over three consecutive nights from Tuesday at 8.30pm on SBS and streaming live on SBS On Demand.