Sarah Stephen
RA, an Algerian asylum seeker, fled to Australia in 2001 in fear of his life. He had no documentation to prove his claim for asylum, and the Refugee Review Tribunal rejected his initial appeal.
By November last year, after three years in detention, RA finally obtained an official document from Algeria, signed by the head of the police force at Tizi Ouzou. It confirmed that an armed terrorist group was threatening to kill RA because of his political activities.
RA is a Berber, a minority group denied language rights in Algeria and subject to persecution. His lawyers were preparing an appeal to the immigration minister to have RA's case reheard, and the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) was aware of the letter's existence.
Despite this, at 4am on March 11, without the required 48 hours' notice, RA was taken from Baxter detention centre and flown, via South Africa, to Algiers. His lawyer was not informed of his removal.
According to Greens refugee spokesperson Pamela Curr, as of March 16, RA was being held in immigration detention at the Algiers airport. The Algerian government was refusing to take him "because his documents are irregular and he has no passport", Curr told Green Left Weekly.
"Once again we see DIMIA put a man's life at risk by deporting him without any guarantees of safety or even guarantees of being able to land a person in his home country", said Curr.
"Algeria is a country of grave concern because of the widespread use of torture and disappearance. There are elections in April and already there is unrest and violence throughout the country with street protests and occupation of public buildings. More than 1 million people have fled to border areas [and are] living in shanty towns to escape the violence."
Twenty-nine-year-old Eidreiss al Salih arrived in Australia in 2000 to seek asylum. He was born in Kuwait to Sudanese immigrant parents, but Kuwait refused to accept his family as citizens. He spent three years in detention before the Australian government tried unsuccessfully to deport him to Sudan on December 13.
Although he was born in Kuwait, Salih considered himself Sudanese because his mother and father were from Sudan. DIMIA made no attempt to independently verify his nationality before they tried to deport him to Sudan, issuing him with a document stating his nationality as Sudanese.
Australian officials claimed that the Sudanese embassy in Tanzania was waiting for Salih. However, his DIMIA-issued identity papers were rejected by embassy officials on December 14.
P&I, a South African security firm contracted by DIMIA to "accompany" deportees, falsely informed Tanzanian officials that Salih was deported from Australia for committing a criminal act. As a result, he was transferred from immigration detention at the Dar es Salaam airport to a police station cell, according to a lawyer who was present, where he was kept for a further five days.
He was then transferred back to South Africa, where he spent six nights at Johannesburg airport, in a room with no windows or bed, and denied visitors. He was flown back to Perth on December 24.
Legal proceedings were lodged on January 5 in the Federal Court in Adelaide, demanding Salih's release from detention, based on a landmark decision by the Federal Court in 2003. Known as the Al Masri decision, this found that the government could not detain asylum seekers indefinitely while they awaited deportation.
Salih is currently in Baxter awaiting a decision. Lawyers believe there is a good chance he'll be released.
Refugee advocates have accused DIMIA of involvement in people smuggling and issuing false documents. The two most recent instances of deportation indicate that these accusations are not at all far-fetched.
An interim report by the Edmund Rice Centre, released in October 2003, revealed some of the lengths DIMIA is prepared to go to in deporting people from Australia. Titled No Liability — Tragic Results from Australia's Deportations, the report is based on interviews with 20 asylum seekers who were returned to the high-risk countries they fled from, and has drawn on accounts of a further eight deported asylum seekers.
Of the 10 recorded interviews with Australian deportees in Syria, six said that they were encouraged to get false passports. Some declined to do this.
Late 2000, an Iraqi deportee, P5, was arrested in Abu Dhabi, on the deportation journey to Syria. He was travelling on a false passport, obtained, he alleged, on Australasian Correctional Management advice. His passport was recognised as a forgery and in custody he was made to strip naked and was interrogated.
After being told he would be sent to the Iraqi embassy in Abu Dhabi, P5 threatened to jump out of a window, stating that as a member of an anti-Saddam group he would be hung if he returned to Iraq. He was then deported to Australia.
Three months later, the Australian authorities repeated the deportation, on the same forged passport and again via Abu Dhabi, where he was held on the plane during transit. The researchers have the passport with the double set of stamps as evidence of this.
In August 2002, after nearly three years of detention, the Australian authorities sent C6 to Kenya. C6 is an 18-year-old Hutu, orphaned during the conflict in Kenya eight years earlier. He was escorted under guard to Johannesburg and on to a Kenya Airlines plane to Nairobi. He had emergency travel documents from the Australian authorities but these were taken from him at the airport in Nairobi, an action witnessed by the lawyer who came to meet him. Once again C6 became stateless and without documents with the predictable consequence of further imprisonment.
Deportees also report being given money to secure acceptance by immigration officers in different countries on the journey. Specific amounts were allocated to be placed inside travel documents and handed to immigration officials upon arrival.
From Green Left Weekly, March 24, 2004.
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