Self-harm, unrest grows in refugee prisons

During the historic High Court challenge to the federal government’s so-called Malaysia solution, barrister Debbie Mortimer, representing refugees that face expulsion from Australia, said “fundamental rights were at stake” in the case.

“Liberty … freedom of movement and bodily integrity and the freedom from assault,” she said in court on August 22. “The proposed conduct of the Commonwealth interferes with all three of those rights.”

Mortimer took apart the federal government’s claim that Malaysia was a safe country for refugees.
She said the government’s claim refugees would not be deported again to a “more hostile” country by Malaysia ignored Malaysia’s human rights abuses and the actual risk posed to refugees, which Australia plans to deport without an asylum claim assessment.
She said many of the more than 335 refugees now held on Christmas Island in fact had legitimate “protection claims against Malaysia”, which is known to discriminate against Shia Muslims and does not have any laws that protect or recognise refugees.

Mortimer said Malaysia allowed “detention without trial”, the death penalty and judicial caning, which Amnesty International said was used on almost 30,000 migrants and asylum seekers over five years.

Richard Niall, who represented a 16-year-old refugee challenging his return to Malaysia, said immigration minister Chris Bowen would fail in his role as legal guardian of unaccompanied child refugees if they were expelled to Malaysia.

The case finished on August 23. The court will make a final decision on August 31.

Refugees that arrived after the Australia-Malaysia swap deal was signed on July 25 have been held in an isolated compound in the Christmas Island detention centre. The immigration department has assessed whether they can be deported, but has not looked at their claims to asylum.

About 90 are children and some are teenagers with no parents. The fear and distress of being sent to Malaysia has taken a damaging toll. Refugee lawyer David Manne said the refugees were “very vulnerable people” who were “petrified of being sent to Malaysia”.

A spokesperson for the Christmas Island Workers Union, Kaye Bernard, told ABC’s 7.30 on August 15 that staff at the detention centre could not cope with the situation either.

“The workers have seen people banging their heads on the dirt … in complete frustration at finding themselves subject to the Malaysia deal,” she said.

Bernard said in other parts of the compound: “People bury themselves up to the neck in the middle of the compounds as an act of desperation … There’s one man who’s dug himself a six foot deep grave in B2 compound and he's been sleeping in there day and night on a regular basis.”

Self-harm and unrest has grown in the detention centre for most of this year. More cases of mental breakdown, depression and anxiety have been documented, despite restrictions on the media and the reluctance of detention centre workers to speak out.

ABC’s Lateline recently found evidence that “up to 12 incidents of self-harm or attempted suicide” take place every day in Australian detention centres.

At Villawood detention centre in Sydney, a Tamil man who had been in detention for more then two years tried to commit suicide by drinking cleaning fluids and cutting his wrists on August 15, the Refugee Action Collective (RAC) said.

RAC said the man was a recognised refugee, but ASIO had decided he was a security risk, so he was to be held indefinitely along with at least 12 others in Villawood.

Every other detention centre in Australia — particularly the Northern Immigration Detention Centre in Darwin, Curtin detention centre in north Western Australia, the Inverbrackie detention centre in South Australia and the Scherger detention centre in far-north Queensland — have had cases of Serco staff abusing refugees and denying medical and physical care.

The newest detention centre at Pontville, north of Hobart, will be close to several firing ranges, the Australian said on August 25. Refugees from war-torn Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka will be able to hear gunshots from within the compound.

Refugee Council of Australia chief executive Paul Power told the Australian the set up was “troubling … given the history and experiences of people fleeing conflict and persecution”.
“We’re talking about people whose lives were in constant danger, and about people still dealing with the grief of having immediate family members killed,” he said.

The Centre for Policy Development released a report on August 22 that called for mandatory detention to be phased out and Australia’s refugee intake to be significantly increased.

The report found “Australia’s refugee and asylum policies … are inhumane, ineffective and expensive”.

It has been backed by at least 30 high profile Australians, the Age said on August 22.

The centre said the report’s release “on the 10th anniversary of the Tampa, [showed] Australia’s asylum and refugee policies are still sadly characterised by human tragedy, political opportunism, policy failure and great cost.”

Christmas Island asylum-seekers face high-profile removal

The removal of the first group, which is en route to Christmas Island, could take several weeks as final preparations are made in Malaysia to receive them.
The Immigration Department is hoping to use the first transfer as a major deterrent to other asylum-seekers from attempting the voyage to Australia.

"We will be documenting this so pictures get out far and wide," spokesman Sandi Logan said.
The latest boat, carrying 54 mainly male Afghan, Iraqi and Iranian refugees and two crew, was intercepted by the Navy yesterday north-west of Scott Reef.

It will take several days to for the boat to reach Christmas Island, where the asylum-seekers will face medical and identity checks before being removed.

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Australian authorities are close to signing sign a lease on hostel-style accommodation for the refugees in Kuala Lumpur, to be staffed by the International Organisation for Migration.

The IOM said it would soon be ready to provide medical screening and welfare services for the new arrivals.

"We are deadline driven," spokesman Christopher Lom said today.

It's understood the first transfer may be done over several flights to minimise the risk of problems.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said AFP officers would be aboard to ensure the transfer went smoothly.

"It means taking appropriate steps to get people to board the plane and disembark the plane at the other end," she said.

Counsellors would also be on hand to talk asylum-seekers into obeying instructions alongside security and police, Ms Gillard said.

Malaysia will accept up to 800 asylum-seekers arriving by boat in return for Australia taking 4000 processed refugees over four years.

Mr Logan said immigration authorities were already promoting the asylum swap deal to refugee communities in Australia.

"We are putting a concerted effort into face-to-face meetings with key representatives of the targeted diaspora communities in Australia whose relatives and friends could well be considering using a people smuggler," he said.

Hope springs from inside the wire

THE High Court will today formally consider the Gillard government's plan to send asylum-seekers to Malaysia. At the same time, many of the poor and the desperate across Asia have already considered the plan.   

And many, it seems, have dismissed it. Since Australia signed the deal with Malaysia on July 25, five boats have arrived in Australian waters, carrying at least 338 asylum-seekers.

Under the scheme, which has already seen one Labor MP sidestepping party loyalty to express her concerns, Australia will resettle 4000 recognised refugees from Malaysia over four years, and in return send 800 arrivals back to Malaysia. If news spreads that an expensive and dangerous sea voyage will end not in Australia but in the crowded refugee ghettos of Malaysia, the Australian government believes potential asylum-seekers will think twice about setting sail.

And should the Malaysia plan come to grief, there is now a back-up: Papua New Guinea has agreed that a detention centre on Manus Island, closed for seven years, can be reopened.

But this plan, too, has been questioned. Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young yesterday called for an investigation to determine who would be sent to Manus Island, how much it would cost, and whether children would be detained in the centre.

"Last time Manus was open, under John Howard, for one month the bill for one lone person was $216,000," she told the ABC. "I don't think the minister can give the answers: [the government] is struggling to give the answers on Malaysia."

Labor MP Anna Burke has also gone on the record to criticise the Manus Island plan. And lining up with Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and prominent human rights advocates such as Frank Brennan, Burke says she fears the Malaysia deal abrogates Australia's international responsibilities to asylum-seekers.

"I am concerned that we can't really guarantee the safety of the 800 people," Burke says. "That is my personal concern and I have expressed that in caucus."

Even so, if the asylum-seekers case in the High Court fails, it's likely the government will break records to get the first group on a plane bound for Malaysia. There are plans to film their departure and arrival and post the footage on the internet in the hope it will deter anyone considering getting on a boat destined for Australia.

Certainly, Afghans living in Kuala Lumpur have kept a close eye on the unfolding saga of the Australia-Malaysia refugee swap agreement.

Most know friends, relatives and compatriots who have attempted the journey to Australia in search of a better life, and they are aware the Australian government is trying hard to come up with a game-changer.

"They are actually well informed about it," says Afghan Zabiullah Ahmadi, who lives in Kuala Lumpur. "It's newspapers; it's the people around who watch what's going on. It's such a small community that word can spread very quickly."

Tahera Ahmadi and her husband Ali Haidari don't want to risk their lives, or the life of their two-year-old daughter, Angela, on a rickety boat, but they desperately want to live in Australia.

From the Hazara ethnic minority, they have lived in Kuala Lumpur for nearly four years, waiting for the magic letter inviting them to become Australians.

"Actually, I think Australia likes Hazara people," says Ahmadi in the small flat she shares with eight members of her extended family, all recognised by the UNHCR as bona fide refugees.

"We have heard they give rights to Hazara people; they understand our problems. In Afghanistan, we don't have any rights. If a person doesn't have rights, this person is like a servant. I'm sure if I get to Australia I will have a nice future."

According to Abdul Ghani bin Abdul Rahman, a leader in the Rohingya community in Malaysia, asylum-seekers have paid as much as 10,000 Malaysian ringgit (about $3200) per person for passage to Australia, a stake that has frequently entailed selling everything and borrowing from friends and family.

And this is relatively inexpensive compared with fares cited elsewhere. From Burma, the Muslim Rohingya minority is considered among the worst-treated in the world, denied citizenship by their own country.

Abdul Ghani says some people-smuggler agents in Malaysia are working with Indonesian agents, preying on the desperate.

"Many lives are lost at sea. I think this [the Australia-Malaysia scheme] is a good policy," Ghani says. "In 2006 a friend of mine passed away because he went to Christmas Island. There are empty promises by the agents; unscrupulous agents. Many times I beg Rohingya not to do this."

For asylum-seekers, risk, hardship and expense are the prices to be paid for a new life. A survey of Hazara men conducted in four Afghan provinces late last year showed a degree of ignorance about Australian policy.

Commissioned by Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, the Afghanistan Counter People Smuggling Scoping Study found that in all provinces, the Hazara were aware of the various risks associated with using people smugglers to travel to Australia, but "only a few Hazara realise that migrants also face a risk of repatriation and detention by the Australian authorities".

Some of the Hazara quoted in the survey had no access to the internet, some had no electricity in their homes, and many relied mostly on news from friends and family, although the BBC, Voice of America and certain Afghan broadcasters were also trusted sources of information.

Many, living all their lives in landlocked Afghanistan, feared drowning on the way to Australia, or otherwise dying, or being imprisoned, or losing their language or culture, or being humiliated. One interview subject voiced his fears of a sea journey to Australia.
"Some people call it the dolphin's way because many people are eaten by these dolphins in the sea."

The survey found "information on the dangers of illegal immigration is primarily spread by word of mouth", with news coming from returning migrants, victims of people-smuggling fraud, friends and relatives in Australia and repatriated Afghans.
Regardless of the risks of the voyage, exodus beckons. There is little to keep potential asylum-seekers in Afghanistan, with economic stagnation, a critical shortage of government services and frequent discrimination pushing the Hazara people to look for a way out.

Many asylum-seekers in Malaysia took note of the announcement of the Australia-Malaysia plan in early May, but then, as the weeks passed, doubts began to surface regarding the final shape of the agreement. Hundreds of asylum-seekers in Asia apparently believed the failure to come up with a concrete plan presented a window of opportunity, and they arrived in Australian waters by the boatload.

Then, in late July, the plan was finalised, and officially signed. And still the boats kept coming -- five since the deal was signed, carrying nearly half the number of asylum-seekers Malaysia has agreed to take.

Many have been unaccompanied minors and, although Immigration Minister Chris Bowen declares there will be no blanket exemptions for unaccompanied under-18s, it's unlikely Australia will risk international opprobrium by sending these more vulnerable people to an uncertain future in Malaysia.

Many critics of the plan note that Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, that in general, refugees and asylum-seekers are not permitted to work in Malaysia, nor to send their children to government schools, they are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, and at the extreme, brutally caned.

The Australia-Malaysia plan has specific provisos to permit the 800 transferred to Malaysia to work, and to ensure they will not be caned.

But still the critics are not convinced. The opposition has slammed both the Malaysia deal and the recent PNG agreement, noting the dearth of detail.

Hanson-Young says the government should go back to the drawing board. "This is a mess. I don't think the government is winning any favours from anyone on this, and the solutions put forth by the opposition aren't cutting through either."

And she is particularly concerned about the children involved. "Why are we treating children like pawns in this awful human chess game?"

So far this year, 37 boats have arrived in Australian waters, carrying 2186 asylum-seekers. Afghans, like last year, loomed large: discounting the most recent boat, the totals comprise 892 Iranians, 604 Afghans, 129 Iraqis, as well as "other". It's not a huge number of people, in the global scheme of things, when millions of displaced Afghans languish in Iran and Pakistan, but asylum-seekers punch well above their weight in the Australian political arena.

Despite the clamour, numbers of arrivals have actually fallen this year, perhaps because of the mooted Malaysia plan.

Last year 134 boats arrived in Australian waters, carrying 6535 asylum-seekers, more than three times this year's total so far. But over the past few years there has been a steady increase.

Bowen has pinned his hopes on the swap plan, which he insists will "break" the people-smugglers' business model and prevent asylum-seekers risking their lives on often unseaworthy boats.

The Christmas Island boat tragedy last year has failed to dissuade asylum-seekers, although it seems they know that drowning is one of the risks.

When, or perhaps if, the first asylum-seekers eventually get to Malaysia, they will be taken to Port Dickson, on the coast south of Kuala Lumpur, where two basic hotels have been leased and renovated to provide temporary housing. It is expected they will remain in this accommodation for a short period, perhaps 45 days, before they are sent out into the community to lead their own lives.

Afghan advocate Zabiullah Ahmadi says the plan will create a two-tier system, with some asylum-seekers in Malaysia holding what he calls a "golden card" giving them some security.

But, he says, there is remarkably little envy from the refugees who have been living in Malaysia for so long. "At some point they are happy," he says.

Australians don't fully understand what is being done in their name

A Federal Court judge ruled that the government was obliged to bring the asylum seekers ashore and assess their claims for asylum. That decision was handed down at 2.15pm, Melbourne time, on September 11, 2001: a date which significantly altered the political calculus.

A week later, the full Federal Court reversed that decision.

The people rescued by Tampa were taken to Nauru. By early 2002, Australia was forcing Afghans to return to Afghanistan, saying the Taliban were defeated and Afghanistan was safe for Hazaras. On August 26, 2002, the Tampa refugees were preparing to commemorate the first anniversary of their rescue. One of them, 20 year-old Mohammad Sarwar, awoke that morning, cried out and fell back dead. His friends told me that he died of a broken heart: he had just been refused protection. Australia continued to force Afghans held on Nauru to return to Afghanistan.

The Tampa episode was the start of Australia's conspicuously harsh approach to boat people. The idea was to "send a message", and the message was: we do not want you asking for our help.

It is a melancholy fact that John Howard's government made political capital by its treatment of boat people. The 2001 election turned on the issue. But it depended on misinformation and dishonesty.

Ten years on, we are behaving just as badly as we did at the time of Tampa. Instead of hijacking people at sea and sending them to Nauru, we plan to divert them to Malaysia. Labor doesn't care that Malaysia has not signed the Refugees' Convention. It doesn't care that Malaysia has a bad track record with human rights generally and asylum seekers in particular. Although Malaysia has agreed not to mistreat the people we plan to send there, that agreement is incapable of being supervised or enforced.

A fall-back plan is to send them to Manus Island: a malaria-ridden, northern outpost of Papua New Guinea.

To understand what has happened since the time of Tampa, we need to start with a few simple facts. Boat people are not "illegal" in any sense. There are no queues in the places they flee from. They come in very small numbers. Asylum seekers who come by plane outnumber boat arrivals about three to one. Asylum seekers who arrive by boat are, historically, very likely to be assessed as genuine refugees; those who come by plane are, historically, unlikely to be assessed as genuine refugees.

However, asylum seekers who come by boat are held in detention, whereas those who come by plane are not: we treat most harshly those who are most likely to be traumatised already and most likely to be lawfully entitled to our protection.

Why do we do this? What is it about our national character that explains such cruel, illogical behaviour? Simple: the politicians do it for political gain, and most Australians do not fully understand what is being done in their name. When Tampa sailed into Australian domestic politics a decade ago, the coalition was deeply worried about the drift of hard-right, anti-immigration voters to One Nation.

Jackie Kelly confronted Howard with exactly this concern as he was entering the Parliament to deliver a speech about dealing with the Tampa. He waved his speech at her and said, in effect: "This will fix it."

Tampa was all about politics; it had nothing to do with "protecting" our borders, which are, in any event, virtually watertight.

Since Tampa, Australia's treatment of boat people has been all about politics. The net result has been to tarnish Australia's reputation as a nation that once valued and respected human rights.The big question is: is this really what Australia is about?

Like Malcolm Fraser wrote, I believe most Australians are better than this. We are badly served by major political parties willing to play politics with defenceless, terrified people. Let Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard tell us plainly: do they honestly think their treatment of boat people reflects Australia's national character?

I have spent the decade since Tampa wondering about these things. I cling to the belief that if most Australians knew the truth of what is being done in their name, they would be shocked.

I believe most Australians do not support the idea of locking up innocent people for years, or mistreating them just because they tried to save their lives and the lives of their families.

I know that most Australians, if they visited a detention centre, would be appalled to see the misery that we are inflicting on ordinary people who want nothing more than the chance to live safe from the fear of persecution.

I believe that, placed in the same circumstances, most Australians would do exactly what boat people do: run for your life, do whatever you can to get to safety, whatever the risk.

All these things I believe about this country and its people. Am I wrong?