British Medical Journal
06 June 2015(vol 350, issue 8011)
http://www.bmj.com/content/350/8011

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Editor’s Choice
A test of our humanity
BMJ 2015; 350 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h3031 (Published 04 June 2015)
Navjoyt Ladher, clinical editor, The BMJ
Last week UK newspapers carried reports from the Greek island of Kos, with anguished British tourists complaining about their holidays being spoilt by Syrian refugees fleeing to the island and declaring they would go elsewhere for their summer break next year. If the reaction from these holidaymakers has you wondering about our compassion, the Australian government’s response to the migrant crisis makes for grim reading.
As part of Australia’s “stop the boats” policy, people arriving by boat in Australian waters are moved to offshore immigration detention centres on Pacific islands. Healthcare workers have described conditions in these centres as “appalling,” with reports of substandard medical care, abuse of children, and unhygienic accommodation. As Michael Woodhead reports from Sydney this week (doi:10.1136/bmj.h3008), under new legislation enacted as part of the policy doctors face two years in jail if they raise concerns about mistreatment of asylum seekers in detention centres. Barri Phataford, co-founder of Doctors for Refugees and a GP in Sydney, said, “This policy is a fail on every level. Not only does it clearly compromise the safety and health of those in detention, it puts Australian registered doctors in an ethical and legal conflict.”
In an editorial this week David Berger and Kamran Abbasi call for moral leadership from Australia and other western democracies in their treatment of refugees (doi:10.1136/bmj.h2907). Berger and Abbasi look to the past and warn that turning a blind eye to the plight of refugees doesn’t make these problems go away: “They only get worse and eventually blow up in violent and entirely predictable ways, as the deaths of millions during the second world war and subsequently attest.”
What is needed from politicians? “Moral leadership and global statesmanship must supplant a self interested, parochial political agenda . . . The health and welfare of refugees is a test of our humanity, a test that we are failing once again.”…

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Editorials
Refugees: time for moral leadership from the Western democracies
BMJ 2015; 350 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h2907 (Published 28 May 2015)
David Berger , district medical officer 1, Kamran Abbasi , international editor 2
Author affiliations
Australia sets a disgraceful example in its treatment of refugees
Any observer of today’s spiraling refugee crises in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia must agree with Hegel that “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” At the Evian conference of 1938, the US encouraged representatives of 32 nations to find a solution to the Jewish refugee crisis in Europe but refused to relax its own, severely limited refugee quotas, as did Britain.1 2 The other participating nations followed suit, except the Dominican Republic, which agreed to take 100 000. In the summer of 1939, in the first act of a “stop the boats” doctrine that still plays out today, the St Louis, a German luxury liner carrying over 900 German Jewish refugees, was refused entry by Cuba, the US, and Canada and returned to Europe, where a large number of the would-be refugees were subsequently murdered in the Holocaust.3 This hypocrisy sent a clear message to Hitler that no one else cared about the Jews, or at least not enough to do anything, and he correctly concluded he was able to act with impunity…