BY LUKE SMITH
ADELAIDE — Around 100 people gathered at the Queens Theatre on November 17 for a refugees' rights forum. The event, part of the Feast Festival 2002, focused on the plight of refugees fleeing persecution because of their sexuality.
The first speaker, Malaysian refugee Madi Nor, spoke about his experiences in Australia, and his incredible battle for freedom. He had come to Australia and first applied for refugee status in 1998, on the grounds that in his own country his sexuality was against the Sharia law. Homosexuality carries a 21-year prison sentence. His first application for refugee status was denied, and after unsuccessfully appealing, he was sent back to an uncertain future in Malaysia.
After spending five months hiding from the authorities he was lucky enough to come back to Australia under a sponsorship scheme, and after two years, was finally given citizenship.
The following speaker Shane Burgess, an indigenous community worker, talked about how Aboriginal people sympathised with the struggles by refugees. He noted the lack of political and media attention given to the views of traditional owners.
Following on was Clare Byrt, a lawyer with experience on the Refugee Review Tribunal and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Hong Kong. She described how stringent the process of qualifying as a refugee had become in the past two decades, and how appealing simple flaws in the judicial process had become almost impossible.
Another lawyer, Gaybrielle Cotton, who had spent eight months working with detained refugees in Woomera, talked about the need for refugees to prove continual persecution. She spoke of a detainee, Parvin Omar, who fled Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Omar had been allowed an education, and had become an illegal teacher running an illegal "secret school". When the Taliban found out, she was given 100 lashes in a public market, and then lived with the fear that she would receive an amputation penalty, or death.
After successfully fleeing Afghanistan, she arrived in Australia and was immediately detained awaiting deportation. According to Cotton, "the people who whipped her have more of a chance of being accepted as a refugee. After all, members of the Taliban now face 'continual' persecution."
From Green Left Weekly, November 27, 2002.
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