A few months ago, a headline came out out of Australia — aboriginal Australians who were not sick with Covid were being transferred to a quarantine camp.

A heated debate exploded as many people, myself included, were disturbed by this news. Forcible removal of indigenous people to a camp isn’t something most of us have seen in our lifetimes. The fact that they were not even sick made the story more alarming. What is going on?

“Why do you care when you don’t live in Australia?”

I got this question a lot on Twitter. I don’t really understand the question, to be honest. When you become aware that something bad might be happening to people, isn’t it normal to care? What difference does it make where they live?

Yes, I care about Australians. That doesn’t mean my concerns are completely detached from the bigger picture. This precedent could certainly spread, and change things everywhere. Australia is a free country with liberal, western values that I thought we all agreed on. Are we changing the rules of living in a free society? Being sick or exposed to a sick person will result in detainment in a camp from now on? I think this is worth a serious conversation.

Australia isn’t the only western country with facilities or policies like this. The question of quarantine facility ethics is important, and it’s not confined to one camp in one country.

“Nobody was forced.”

I tried to make sure I knew all the facts before getting too opinionated about what is going on, and this was difficult at first. I kept hearing, “nobody is forced,” from people who were trying to reassure everyone that nothing questionable is taking place.

I can accept that the detainees may have stepped into the van without resistance. But as someone who has volunteered with anti-human trafficking organizations, I’m aware of how little this actually matters. Many people are coerced into captivity. How a person behaved while they were being apprehended matters less than whether or not they’re free to go once they arrive. All that mattered to me is whether or not these individuals were voluntarily detained.

I won’t rehash everything that happened on Twitter during the two or three weeks that this was a hot topic. The distractions and deflections were abundant and abundantly stupid: The bikini photos from inside the camp; the infamous “Luke Ellis” thread from a supposed camp detainee who told us that expressing concerns about indigenous people is “hurtful” (which sounded eerily similar to CCP propaganda featuring Uyghurs); the dramatic video of a hysterical aboriginal woman rambling on about genocide; the drama between Tim Pool and Claire Lehmann about whether or not Holocaust comparisons should be invoked; T-shirts and posters being sold online.

There was a lot of nonsense.

Some of us had one simple question—is it voluntary? Yes or no? When the news broke that some of the detainees escaped, it became clear that this was not voluntary, and that the people trying to convince me that it was were not being honest.

Why does it matter if the detainment is involuntary?

It is hard for me to know how much this needs to be explained. Some of the camp defenders clearly know how much it matters, since they deceptively said that “nobody is being forced” to reassure people who were asking the question.

I do think the concern is pretty straightforward for most. We all know that human captivity is immoral unless it is clearly warranted and justified. We also know that people don’t respond well to captivity, emotionally or psychologically or physically. It takes a toll and can be harmful in ways that we rarely consider. Human beings resist bondage. This is known.

Freedom is a fundamental human right that can be removed, to be sure. We have laws. You can’t violate the agency, property or autonomy of others. You can’t harm other people. You’re imprisoned if you break this social contract. And, we have a process of justice that is fair, at least here in the US. You have the right to a trial and a jury of your peers. Evidence has to be presented. You are presumed innocent, and must be proven guilty to be held captive by the state for a considerable length of time.

Detaining a person without a conviction, a trial, or a process is serious business. I’m not sure historical examples need to be invoked to make this case. Most people understand that detaining people against their will, when they have not been charged with a crime, is a big deal.

“But this is just quarantine,” some argued. “It’s normal to quarantine people in a pandemic.”

Okay. Let’s talk about that.

I have questions.

I am willing to concede that there may be situations when involuntary quarantine is necessary. Quarantining people who aren’t sick doesn’t seem like one of them, though. And holding non-COVID positive people in the camp for an extra week just because they’re unvaccinated seemed more punitive than scientific. Especially now that we know that vaccinated people can also carry and spread the virus.

I could write a whole separate article about whether or not quarantine is justified in this particular pandemic (I don’t think it is), but for the purpose of this article, I’m going to focus on the ethics of any camp, in any pandemic.

For any quarantine camp, here are some questions I have:

• What laws are in place to ensure the quarantine period will never exceed a certain number of days or weeks?

• Is there a bill of rights that is read aloud to every detained person?

• What happens if a detained person is abused by a facility staff member? How do they report abuse and what are the consequences?

• What if a person who wasn’t sick becomes sick in the camp because they were exposed to sick people? Can they sue the facility? Staff members?

• Was anyone who was apprehended separated from their children? Were the children scared/upset? Did any emotional trauma result from this process?

• What happens if an interned person has mental health issues that are triggered by the experience of being detained against their will? Are there on-site counselors? How are they receiving care?

• What happens if someone wants to leave?

• What happens to a person who tries to escape?

  
  I’m sure you could come up with excellent questions that I missed.

The ethics of detainment.

Many of these conversations come down to ethics, and the value we place on the life and experiences of one individual. Camp defenders are ethically focused on the big picture. It’s about the greater good, public health, protecting people, saving lives. And on that level, I get it.

But if we think about what might be happening to a single person as a result of these policies, we may not like it. If we imagine an indigenous mom being removed from her house while her kids are crying, we may be troubled by the scene. If we think about the kids who escaped the camp and ponder what events, thoughts or feelings led them to risk being captured and forced to stay even longer, we may feel concerned. If we further consider that they aren’t even sick, and are in fact healthy enough to run several miles, we may think twice about whether or not their detainment made sense. If we consider that abuse may be happening without anyone’s knowledge, we may want to insist that tighter parameters, more transparency and a bill of rights for the detained are in place.

We can put all of this out of our minds by focusing on the big picture and choosing to trust the authorities. We can look at photos of women in bikinis and assume everyone at the camps is having a wonderful time. We can imagine that not one person is being mistreated or traumatized in any way.

It just doesn’t seem likely to me that individual rights would be perfectly protected and no abuse would take place. Any time you have a situation where people are held against their will, you have ample opportunity for abuse, trauma and neglect. For those of us who seek reassurance, where can we find it?

Not on Twitter, that’s for sure.

How to NOT reassure me in 5 easy steps.

I said repeatedly that I would be reassured by seeing the bill of rights for the interned, and an outline of the laws and policies in place that protect their rights. If those documents were transparent and publicly shared, it would have put the discussion to rest for many people.

Instead, I had people “reassuring” me in this way:

1. By scolding Amnesty International for simply requesting that no aboriginal people be traumatized in the process of transferring them to camps. (Uh…)
   

2. By sharing photos of people in bathing suits that were taken several months ago.
   

3. By promoting a thread from a small, unverified account that mimics CCP propaganda and asking me to believe not only that he’s legit, but that he speaks on behalf of every person who has been interned there.
   

4. By accusing everyone who expressed reasonable concerns of being hysterical, hyperbolic and “insane.”
   

5. By referring to the people who were transferred to camps as “cases” instead of “people.” (If you’re going to put people in camps, I’d feel much better if you referred to them as people. I shouldn’t have to explain why this is important.)
   

Demanding accountability and transparency.

What happens to an individual matters to me. It matters to me if one person is abused or harmed. It matters if the measures are too extreme and unwarranted based on the severity of the virus, and as a result, people are detained when they shouldn’t be. It matters if tight laws are not in place to prevent abuse and protect the detained. It matters if precedents are set without parameters to protect people who haven’t committed any crime—not even the “crime” of being sick.

We need to keep having this conversation, and not allow it to be shut down by side show theatrics on Twitter that reduce the discussion to “Is this the Holocaust or not?” or “Is Australia holding people down and jabbing them by force?”

Quarantine camps have been built. They’re not going anywhere. What happens next will depend largely on how well we hold our governments accountable.

It’s on us to keep them in line.