Australia's mandatory detention laws remind meof the Penal Laws...

Australia's mandatory detention laws remind me
of the Penal Laws the British imposed on the Irish.

Edmund Burke described them as "well fitted for the
oppression, impoverishment and degradation of
a feeble people and the debasement in them of
human nature itself as ever proceeded from
the perverted ingenuity of man".

That's a perfect description for Australia's
Gulag Archipelago of refugee prison camps.

As is this description by Edmund Burke in
which I've replaced Catholic with Refugee:

"The law presumed every Refugee to be faithless,
disloyal, and untruthful, assumed him to exist
only to be punished, and the ingenuity of the
Legislature was exhausted in discovering
new methods of repression."

When I went ancestor hunting in Ireland with my
son we toured Kilmainham Gaol (one of the main
instruments of British repression of Irish hopes
for liberation from British tyranny) I didn't have
a video camera, but I did have a still camera.
I took a picture (dunno how it got there) of a
butterfly in a cell of one of the 21 Patriots
the British lined up - and shot on Easter
Sunday (the most holy day to Catholics)
which lead to a successful revolution.

I called the photo "Fly Free" which is what I hope
all Aussie-caged refugees can soon accomplish: