News

Lyndelle Lawrence
Public relations editorial assistant
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia

A national newspaper has published an Avondale College lecturer's response to an article comparing Australia's treatment of asylum seekers with that of early civilisations.

A letter by Dr Steve Thompson, a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Theology, appears in the "Higher Education" supplement of The Australian on May 6. It is in response to an article called "The ancient art of hospitality" by Dr Alastair Blanshard, a lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. The letter notes the "confusion between strangers seeking hospitality and asylum seekers intending to stay longer" in Blanshard's article, which appeared in the supplement the week before.

Blanshard's article claims the treatment of asylum seekers by Greek and Roman civilisations differed greatly to treatment in our time. "When people were washed up on your shore, you fed and clothed them, and offered them a helping hand," writes Blanshard. He notes how citizens of the island of Samos brought food to a group of young men who sought sanctuary at the local temple, putting "their bodies between guards and their captives." He then provides illustrations of Odysseus's encounters with man-eating giants and Cyclops, a one-eyed giant that killed Odysseus's men, before adding in "the ancient world, it is only monsters that don't provide hospitality." Blanshard concludes: "Our reluctance to embrace uninvited visitors was not shared by early civilisations."

However, Steve argues the "ancient convention with which to compare the detention of asylum seekers by contemporary states is . . . not hospitality to stranger as Blanshard's article implied, but 'foreign settler.'" He makes a clear distinction between "strangers seeking hospitality" and "asylum seekers intending to stay longer." Strangers received shelter, food and drink, medical help and after a short time were required to leave. On the other hand, asylum seekers and refugees were treated "under a separate religious, social and legal convention." They had limited freedom, were subject to greater taxation, had mostly menial employment opportunities and faced the possibility of sudden expulsion, which was very frequent in Rome.

The essence of the response? "Asylum seekers were not that much better off in the ancient past."