Larvatus Prodeo

Australia has been asked to take 17 Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Held for the past 7 years, they were declassified as “economy combatants” back in 2005. They can’t go back to their home, in north-western China, because of the well-founded belief that they would be persecuted by the Chinese government. Malcolm Turnbull, of course, is terribly concerned about the risks they pose.

Well, here’s an idea. Let’s take these poor sods – who’ve been sitting in Gitmo for seven years for no good reason – as a simple matter of humanity. To keep the nervous Nellies amongst the Tories happy, let’s use some of the 1500 ASIO agents Australia now employs – to be 1800 by next year, triple what it was back in 1996 – to keep an eye on them in the unlikely event one of them does pose a threat. Perhaps they could could spare some of the agents who clearly don’t have enough to do, given their interest in chatting to people holding up banners outside coal-fired power stations (as discussed by Senator Scott Ludlam in Senate Estimates recently)?