Introduction

The death of Alan Kurdi illustrated the power of compassion as a force for mobilisation and as a channel for interrupting hostile immigration and refugee discourses. However, as discussed in previous chapters, the discourse of compassion has also been appropriated by governments in ways that have led to the accommodation and reinforcement of oppressive immigration regimes.

Through returning to the use of testimony in resistance (introduced in Chapter Four) Chapters Seven and Eight examine how migrant and refugee rights activists have reimagined and recovered ‘compassion’ to challenge violent and repressive immigration regimes and hold those responsible to account. This is considered, in this chapter, through a discussion of the campaign to end Australia's use of offshore immigration detention on Manus Island and Nauru. The focus in this discussion is on the #LetThemStay protests which took place in early 2016 against the deportation of refugees from Australia to the offshore detention centres, the protests by people detained in these centres, and the #BringThemHere campaign being waged by supporters in Australia (ongoing at the time of writing). This case study explores the power and limitations of the physical body as a mode of testimony. This addresses the context of the longstanding denial and discrediting of other forms of testimony by the Australian government, and the obscuring from public view, and physical proximity, of the violence of Australia's immigration and asylum enforcement. The case study outlines how protestors used the physical sites of their bodies and public spaces to protest the use of offshore detention. The discussion reflects on the challenge of enabling the face-to-face encounter that Levinas (1979) argued produces ethical responsibility, when so much of the violence of immigration and asylum enforcement is obscured from public view. It is posited that physical protests and bodily testimony have been mobilised to produce pathways to such an encounter. Meanwhile, in the context of the denial and discrediting of other forms of testimony and the appropriation of a discourse of compassion by the government, these protests have been used to rearticulate relationships of care and compassion, and to direct outrage towards the causes of suffering.

Attempts to alleviate suffering are crucial in the action-orientated emotion of compassion. Compassion should generate outrage (that other key moral sentiment in addition to compassion) and potentially shame (when reflecting on one's own culpability).