BY SARAH STEPHEN
According to refugee supporters who are in regular contact with asylum seekers in the Baxter detention centre, on August 22 there were a number of suicide attempts following news that more than a dozen Iranian asylum seekers faced deportation over the August 23-24 weekend.
One Iranian man attempted to overdose on tablets, and another tried to hang himself.
The mass deportation was delayed by at least two weeks when the Federal Court issued injunctions on August 22. Immigration minister Philip Ruddock is now obliged to give asylum seekers 48 hours' notice before deporting them.
The group threatened with deportation includes Mohamad Ebrahim Sammaki, the father of two children living with a guardian in Bali after their mother was killed in last October's terrorist bombing.
Below is the text of a letter signed by all 95 Iranians in the Baxter detention centre on August 22:
"Dear prime minister and all Australian people: This letter is from all us poor Iranians here at Baxter, which is our prison. I have told this letter to my friend on the telephone because now we have no time. It is Friday night and we are all very frightened because they tell us that tomorrow we will be deported by force to our country.
"So tonight we cannot sleep. We pray that something will save us and we try to help each other. We are real human beings and fathers and sons and husbands. We did not leave our country and our family for getting rich or big adventure. We must leave because our government is a dictatorship that tortures and kills its own people like it was in Iraq and we see on television how they open the graves of the poor tortured people. All the governments and the United Nations know that the Iranian government has no respect for human rights.
"We ask for help from the government in Australia. We ask that you see that we cannot go back to Iran because we are too afraid of the torture and prison we will have to go to. Many of us have already lost family or have brothers and fathers in prison in Iran. Because we have not always explained our situation in the best way for DIMIA [Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs] officers to understand, they say that we have failed and are not real refugees and the court cannot help us.
"In our country, we tried to have democracy and freedom but we have been put in prison for it. Then we came here because Australia is a democratic country, but they put us in prison too. How can we show you that we are not bad people?
"Sometimes, some of us have been too stressed and sometimes we broke something in detention. We are sorry for that. We are not violent people; only sometimes we cannot endure this prison hell here any more.
"Now nobody is coming to Australia any more and your government has fulfilled its wish. But we have suffered for almost three years for this policy and we have suffered enough. If it would be possible for us to go home, we would have gone a long time ago, even before your government offered us money to go away. But we cannot. If you will not let us stay here, please send us to some other country. A poor country or any country. We will go anywhere but we cannot go back to Iran.
"We need your help in this terrible situation. Please help us and stop this deportation of us. We beg you from our heart."
From Green Left Weekly, August 27, 2003.
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