NOPE NOPE NOPE, YES, YES, YES

Letters to the Sydney Morning Herald

The excuse that the ‘boat-stoppers’ have always trotted out when accused of the policy's inhumanity, that ‘it saves people from drowning’, has now been exposed as hollow. People are still drowning in our region. Others are dying on boats of hunger and thirst. The boats have not stopped; they have just been pushed a little further away. Time to ‘stop the gloats’ and show some decency.

Al Svirskis Mount Druitt 

How remarkable and poignant it is that some of the poorest people in Asia – the Muslim Aceh fishermen – have shown a generosity and kindness to the Rohingya refugees, that has even forced their own government to display a minimal humanity and openness . Let us hope that the richest country at next week's talks, our own, will learn from them and display a similar compassion and sensitivity.

John Connell Bronte

Christlike, nope; humanitarian, nope; decent human being, nope (‘Nope, nope, nope: PM puts his foot down’, smh.com.au, May 21). I find it utterly amazing that people who claim to be devout anything can just toss those values aside and, in a case like this, with thousands of the poorest people in the world left to rot at sea, utterly indefensible.

Robert Franzos Vaucluse