Sarah Stephen
In June 2002, the Australian immigration department claimed to have proof that Afghan refugee Ali Bakhtiyari was actually a plumber from Pakistan called Ashgar Ali.
In December 2002, Ali's temporary visa was cancelled and he was re-detained. That same month, Afghan refugee Mohib Sarwari's temporary visa was also cancelled on the accusation that he was Ali's brother, a Pakistani by the name of Ghazanfar Ali.
Sarwari had been living quietly with his family in Launceston, Tasmania, and had never met Ali. The accusation fell apart when refugee lawyer Marion Le went to Afghanistan to find the Sarwaris' village and returned with proof that they were Hazaras and had lived there until they fled to Australia.
Despite this revelation and the doubts it raises about the accusations against Sarwari's alleged "brother", Ali remains in Baxter immigration detention centre to this day.
In 2002, the Coalition government responded to growing public disquiet at the treatment of asylum seekers by launching a systematic campaign to attack the credibility of Afghan refugees seeking asylum in Australia, claiming they were Pakistanis posing as Afghans. Newspaper headlines immediately promoted this unsubstantiated slander. The July 22 Sydney Morning Herald's front page story was headlined "Fake Afghans caught in migration net".
In an interview on the ABC's Insiders program on August 25, 2002, then-immigration minister Philip Ruddock claimed that some 700 people "claiming to be" Afghans were being investigated by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA).
The Bakhtiyari family developed a high media profile at a time when the refugee issue was centre-stage in Australian politics. Ali's wife Roqia and their five children were in Woomera detention centre with Roqia's brother Mazher Ali. In January 2002, during a hunger strike in Woomera, Mahzer threw himself onto the razor wire surrounding the camp to call attention to the family's plight. He nearly sliced his jugular and required 100 stitches.
In June 2002, Alamdar and Montazar Bakhtiyari, then aged 14 and 12, escaped from detention and were on the run for three weeks. Amid international media attention, they took refuge in the British consulate in Melbourne, unsuccessfully sought asylum in Britain and were eventually returned to Woomera.
The following day, Ruddock announced that DIMIA had informed Ali in April that it intended to cancel his visa due to its claim that he was really Pakistani plumber Ashgar Ali. Making such an announcement the very day after images of tearful children in detention were beamed across the world appears to have been an attempt to undercut any developing sympathy for the Bakhtiyari family. The document DIMIA cited as proof of Ali's identity was a 1975 Pakistani application for registration with a photo attached, obtained in August 2002 by John Caspersson, a DIMIA compliance officer in Islamabad.
Supporters working on Ali's case have identified three versions of the same document, all with a slightly different photo, despite assurances that the original document was photographed only once. One photo has flash spots in the eyes; another photo is attached at a different angle on the page to the others.
An appeal under section 417 of the Migration Act was submitted to immigration minister Amanda Vanstone in June this year, calling on her to exercise her ministerial discretion to reinstate Ali's visa. It was accompanied by an affidavit signed by Hassan Ghulam, president of the Hazara Ethnic Society in Australia, who was asked to examine the Pakistani identity document to determine its authenticity. In a detailed description of all its inconsistencies and omissions, Ghulam said that "an authenticity test of the original document did not take place" and that many parts of the document had not been translated.
In Ghulam's opinion, "the document is false, and a lot has been fiddled with. It is not reliable and does not belong to Mr Bakhtiyari as a genuine document for proof of his identity." However, there has been no response to the appeal.
A number of other Afghan refugees whose visas were cancelled on grounds of identity fraud had them reinstated, on the ground that the Pakistani documents used to allege identity fraud either appeared to have been tampered with or could not be authenticated.
In one Refugee Review Tribunal appeal on April 15, 2003, RRT member Kim Rosser noted that the grounds for cancelling the applicant's TPV included an anonymous letter and a photo of a Pakistani National Identity Card. Rosser was unable to conclude that the photo on the NIC was of the applicant, given that it was taken up to 20 years ago and the person in the photograph did not appear to be so many years younger than the applicant.
According to Rosser's findings, the photograph was "much clearer and brighter than the rest of the document" and contained other anomalies. "I consider it possible that the photograph is a recent addition to the document and is not the photograph that was originally on the document." The refugee's visa was reinstated.
EK is another Afghan refugee whose visa was cancelled on grounds of identity fraud, after DIMIA decided that he resembled the passport photograph of a man called Muhammad Anwar. The Pakistani passport was among documents seized by Indonesian police when they intercepted asylum seekers in November 2000.
DIMIA claims that it subsequently obtained from Pakistani authorities Anwar's application for a Pakistani NIC, lodged in 1978. At the time, Anwar was 22, which would make him 49 years old today. EK is only 30 years old!
EK has been detained in the Baxter immigration detention centre since August, and has a RRT hearing in mid-December to appeal his visa cancellation.
While the government tried to create the impression that there was widespread fraud among Pakistani migrants posing as Afghan refugees, the number of visas eventually cancelled was very small. On February 17, immigration minister Amanda Vanstone confirmed in parliament that a total of 27, or a tiny 0.8% of all Afghan TPV-holders, had their visas cancelled on the grounds of identity fraud. Who knows how many of these refugees were victims of fraudulent documents that did not belong to them.
Even a suspicion that documents may have been forged to strip some Afghans of their visas should have thrown every allegation of identity fraud into question, but it did not. There have been no exposes in the press, no Senate inquiries and no police investigations.
DIMIA's case against Ali wasn't limited to the Pakistani documents. The department also worked hand in hand with a number of journalists to sow further doubt about Ali's identity. Some went to Pakistan to find "evidence" and others went to Afghanistan.
In a July 28, 2002, article in Sydney's Sun Herald titled "He's from Pakistan and he used to repair our pipes", Matthew Behns alleged that Ali was really Ashgar Ali, a pipe fitter from Pakistan. He claimed he was educated, four years older and that he had a different family. The story carried a picture of a plumbing shop purportedly in Quetta with a picture of Ali above it taken in Sydney. This was interpreted by many as Ali in front of his alleged shop.
Writing in the August 2, 2002, Sydney Morning Herald, two weeks after the Bakhtiyari boys' attempt to claim British asylum, Alan Ramsey claimed "evidence builds that Ali is not who he says he is". Some details in the article were only available from the Bakhtiyaris' DIMIA files, indicating collaboration between Ramsey and DIMIA.
Ramsey quoted extensively from DIMIA's initial decision to grant Ali a visa on August 3, 2000. According to Ramsey, DIMIA thought he could be "Ali Bakhtiyari, Haja Ali Aghisar or Ashgar Ali Bakhtiyari, a Pakistani plumber and gas fitter who reportedly owned shops in Kuwait and a gas company and/or a plumbing business in Quetta, Pakistan". DIMIA couldn't even decide who it thought Ali was.
On July 26, 2002, the Australian carried a map showing the location of Ali's village in the centre of Afghanistan's Oruzgan province. The Australian's Alastair McLeod went to Afghanistan to verify Ali's story. On August 14 he described how nobody recognised Ali's photo when it was shown around in the village. It is quite likely that McLeod was in the wrong area. According to the map accompanying his article, McLeod was in the north-eastern corner of Oruzgan and he refers to the village being high in the mountains. However, Ali says his village is in a valley.
The Age's Russell Skelton also made a trip to Afghanistan that year, but it appears from his map in the August 23 Age that he also went to the wrong part of Oruzgan province. Skelton also claimed to have showed Ali's photo to villagers, who said they didn't know him.
According to Dr William Maley, who has appeared as an expert witness in a number of other cases of identity fraud involving Afghan refugees, there are many reasons why villagers' claims not to know a person should be considered unreliable. In particular, when strangers or government officials enter a village, the locals often say they don't know the person in question in order to protect him or her, due to justified suspicion of the intention of those asking the questions.
Despite the contradictions, factual inaccuracies and serious lack of evidence to support the journalists' claims, they assisted the government in sowing serious doubt in the minds of even the most sympathetic.
Following Mahzer Ali's forcible deportation from Australia in July 2003, he obtained documents proving that Roqia Bakhtiyari was from a village in the Jaghoori district of Ghazni and that all her children were born in Afghanistan. Her identity was confirmed by the residents and the statement signed by the district governor.
DIMIA has told Roqia that it now accepts that she is Afghan — or at least is no longer certain that she is Pakistani. DIMIA offered to grant permanent visas to her and her children if she agreed to divorce her husband. Roqia and her children are currently living in home detention in Adelaide.
Skelton visited Baxter in July 2003 and met the Bakhtiyari family for the first time. Roqia, Alamdar and Montazar have all recounted to friends how Skelton offered to change his story about them.
In the last week of November, Ali came under pressure to sign documents agreeing to his removal from Australia. He has few avenues left to appeal the cancellation of his visa.
[For a detailed account of the Bakhtiyaris' experience, visit http://www.carad-wa.org/library/latimes.htm.]
From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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