The Line in the Sand

Peter Nicholson’s cartoon, which ran the same day a bipartisan group of MPs convened to attempt to find a solution to the political impasse on asylum seeker policy, suggests that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Greens leader Christine Milne watched the situation unfold with few real solutions.

In his response to this cartoon, Behrouz Boochani considers how asylum seekers can lose their individuality when reduced to numbers of deaths at sea:

This work shows the tragedy of drowning and dying of refugees on the sea. People who left their countries because of war, persecution and discrimination. The border line is highlighted in this work, as is how people who live in safety can hide behind the line and look at the reality of tragedy on another side of the border, but not have any idea about the refugee’s background. Refugees are often seen without individuality and identity; they have just been reduced to numbers. However, each refugee has a different story, and each story is a tragedy within this context.