BY LISA LINES
ADELAIDE — Abbas is one of the many hundreds of refugees who fled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and made their way to Australia. He is one of the few lucky enough to have had his application for a temporary protection visa accepted. Now able to tell his story, he wants Australians to know what it's like to be detained at Woomera.
Abbas was held in detention for eight months. Conditions in the centre, he said, are appalling. The food is awful. Refugees are pushed constantly from one compound to another and the majority of people hear no news of their visa application for at least a year.
Asylum seekers that have been waiting more than three years for their applications to be processed are detained separately. Asylum seekers under 21 who are without their parents are also detained separately, isolated from extended family and friends.
Abbas told Green Left Weekly about the complicated process of applying for a visa. This, he said, is the issue at the heart of the frequent protests inside the Woomera detention centre.
Refugees are presented with piles of paperwork, all in English. This poses huge problems for the majority of asylum seekers with little command of English; some are illiterate in their own languages. Abbas also revealed that most asylum seekers at Woomera never see the interpreter they are guaranteed to have by law.
Abbas' first application was rejected because his English was not good enough. The immigration officials said his claims were "inconsistent". Abbas' lawyer said it was "not his job to file a second claim". He even refused to post the submission that Abbas had compiled himself for the Refugee Review Tribunal. This second submission was eventually successful.
Abbas is now determined to join the refugee rights movement and to campaign against the injustices he has witnessed.
Abbas recalled the detention centre visit last September by busloads of refugee supporters from Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, calling for all detention centres to be closed and the refugees freed and insisted that this type of solidarity action was of immense importance.
Abbas described how hopeful the refugees became, after seeing for the first time that there were Australians who supported their struggle: "Your protests gave us hope".
From Green Left Weekly, January 30, 2002.
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