Sarah Stephen
Sharif, a Bedoon (stateless person) from Kuwait, spent three years in detention in Australia and had his asylum claim rejected. The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) argued that he could live safely in Syria. On the basis of that advice he agreed to be deported to Damascus, no longer able to stand the conditions of detention.
Sharif did not see the visa that had been arranged for him until 15 minutes before the departure of his flight, and was shocked to find that it was only valid for a few months. He presented his travel document and US$200 to Syrian border guards, as instructed by Australian officials.
Realising that he would very soon be an unlawful non-citizen in Syria, Sharif lived underground for three years. He rented a small flat, paying double rent to the landlord. He also paid the neighbours to not report him to the police. He ventured out only in the evenings to go to the local mosque.
In 2004, Sharif applied for asylum in another First World country. While waiting for an outcome, he was arrested, jailed and tortured. When alerted, that country's embassy sent an official to the jail who negotiated his release. Within a week, he was resettled in that country and reunited with his family.
This is one of many accounts documented in Deported to Danger, a report by Sydney's Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education. It is the result of a two-year project spanning 11 countries and involving interviews with 50 asylum seekers who had been deported from Australia. Material gathered from 10 deportees was withheld due to safety concerns, and of the remaining 40, Sharif was one of only five who had found safety.
The centre's director, Phil Glendenning, told the September 29 Sydney Morning Herald that the report was put together "because of the call the Human Rights Commission made under Chris Sidoti, in a Senate inquiry in 2000, that we can never know if we are correctly identifying refugees unless we know what happens to those who get rejected — if they're safe or not safe".
The report states: "This investigation is concerned with the growing volume of claims which speak of people spending fear-filled lives in hiding or, even worse, disappearance, imprisonment, torture or death after being deported from Australia."
A number of Sri Lankans were interviewed, including P8 [the interviewees are referred to by codes throughout the report], who had been assured by DIMIA that everything for his return to Sri Lanka would be arranged and that there would be no problems. "So therefore I decided to go", P8 told the researchers. "At the Colombo airport, the DIMIA guard handed over my passport to officials and left. The Sri Lankan intelligence officer asked me what happened to the two missing pages. I explained that Australian immigration officials knew about this and that he should talk to that official."
P8 was imprisoned in Negombo because of the missing pages. "After 14 days I went to court. I arranged a lawyer at 50,000 slr (US$500). I was handcuffed at court. I was told to do another 14 days. This was repeated for three months. After three months and five days, I was released."
Another Sri Lankan, P10, explained how an Australian immigration official handed him over to airport security upon arrival in Sri Lanka, where he was questioned by Sri Lankan immigration authorities. "Why did you go? For what reason? ... I was handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) ... I was presented to Negombo court by CID in the presence of my lawyer. I was charged with suspicion of being a terrorist. A fax had been sent from Australian immigration saying I had links with a terrorist group. The judge said the CID had 14 days to bring evidence to prove the charges. I was sent to jail. After 14 days I went to court and was found not guilty and was released. I was very fearful and uncertain [whether] because of my ethnicity I would be harassed further."
P13 was also charged with suspicion of being a terrorist and eventually released. He spoke to researchers about the taunts of Australasian Correctional Management guards while in detention in Australia. "X [an ACM officer] used to say to me that 'when you go back to Colombo I will make sure that you are regarded as a terrorist and that will put you in trouble'. And she did that. She faxed information (they told my lawyer) about me to the Criminal Investigation Department".
P6 suffered from a lack of papers: "I was not safe because DIMIA had lost my documents including my ID card. The loss of my ID card caused me deep psychological fear ... I could not prove who I was ... DIMIA wrote to me after I was deported and apologised for misplacing my ID card. Without it I was a non-entity in Sri Lanka. I could not open a bank account ... I could not proceed with normal activities — work especially ... I had to stay in my room for nearly two months."
Information provided by a number of interviewees indicated that immigration department staff and their contractors may be involved in practices used by people smugglers, including the use of false passports and the payment of bribes. Six people interviewed separately in Syria told the same story and gave names of officials who had encouraged them to buy passports from people smugglers.
Responding to the report on September 28, DIMIA labelled these allegations "ridiculous". Denying that it supplied money to bribe officials, DIMIA said that people were only given a modest allowance to cover incidental expenses such as meals.
Chemical injection was another theme of the report. At least five rejected asylum seekers claimed they had witnessed injections or been threatened with injection. DIMIA has also denied this allegation. But it is not the first time that evidence of the use of chemical injection to sedate asylum seekers has come to light.
Deported to Danger was presented to the executive committee of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva on October 4 with an appeal to find a safe place for those people whose lives were in extreme danger.
From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
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