Sarah Stephen
Mohammad Sagar, 29, and Muhammad Faisal, 26, are Iraqis who have been granted refugee status but remain stranded on Nauru after arriving there four-and-a-half years ago. The Australian government won't take them after ASIO deemed them a security threat.
The refugees have not been told the basis of ASIO's finding and there is no provision for an appeal. No third country has been persuaded to take them either.
Faisal calls his life a living hell. He suffers from high anxiety and poor vision, takes medication three times a day and, recently tried to take his life. "Sometimes I feel that we are a piece of rubbish that everyone is trying to get rid of", Sagar told the Melbourne Age on January 26.
This will soon be the fate of any asylum seeker who tries to reach Australian shores, if legislation proposed by PM John Howard is passed when parliament resumes sitting on May 9.
Pacific solution mark II, announced by Howard on April 13, is an extension of the 2001 "Pacific solution". It will require all asylum seekers without documents, whether they reach the mainland or not, to be sent to one of three immigration detention centres for processing — Nauru, Christmas Island or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
At present, most islands to the north of Australia are not part of the migration zone. The proposed new legislation will exclude the whole of Australia from the migration zone.
The Refugee Council of Australia said on April 18 that any asylum seekers transferred to Nauru "will be denied assistance to apply for asylum and will simply be assessed by Australian officials whose decisions will not be subject to independent scrutiny". It added that if they are found to be refugees, "Australia will accept no obligation to do other than see whether another country will take them. They will be left in limbo indefinitely."
The policy regression was triggered by the arrival in January of 43 West Papuan asylum seekers, their successful bid for refugee status and the resulting diplomatic stand-off with Indonesia. If passed, the new law will make it difficult, if not impossible, for West Papuans who reach Australia to receive the same treatment.
To become a refugee, a person has to flee the country in which they are being persecuted. They usually flee to a neighbouring country. In a violation of the 1951 refugee convention, to which Australia is a signatory, Canberra wants to close off this option.
According to Father David Holdcroft, Australian director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, Australia's relations with Indonesia and its international treaty obligations are two separate issues. Australia has obligations under the United Nations convention "that cannot be unilaterally derogated in the name of 'national interest' or political pragmatism".
The Australian navy will be instructed to intercept West Papuans who arrive in Australian territorial waters and transfer them to Nauru. Alternatively, it will be instructed to assist Indonesian forces to turn them back.
Echoes from past
At the height of its anti-refugee campaign in 2001, the Howard government tried to justify its rejection of "boat people" on the grounds that they did not come directly from their country of persecution, but from a third country. Many travelled from Iraq or Afghanistan via neighbouring countries and Indonesia before reaching Australia. Under the proposed legislation, once processed offshore, if future arrivals are assessed as genuine refugees, the government will try to relocate them to a third country.
In the April 17 Sydney Morning Herald, Father Frank Brennan described the new policy as "people trafficking". "If those found to be refugees are to be resettled in third countries (other than Australia to which they fled directly), our government would need to offer financial incentives to poorer countries to receive them. This is people trafficking. Why else would other countries receive a handful of refugees who have directly fled to Australia seeking asylum?"
Brennan argued that Australia has moral and legal responsibilities towards fleeing West Papuans. "Under the Refugee Convention, we could not send the Papuans back to Indonesia. No other country would have a higher duty than Australia to receive that person for resettlement, given that he or she fled directly to our shores."
The wrongful imprisonment of Cornelia Rau and the deportation of Vivian Solon sent shockwaves through the community and that, along with mounting pressure from the refugee-rights movement and a backbench revolt, forced the government to make some policy changes — most notably allowing all children out of detention.
The government's so-called softer line never extended to its "Pacific solution". A series of reviews into the detention system started, but there was never an investigation into the treatment, processing and suffering of the more than 1800 refugees who had been processed on Nauru and Manus Island since 2001.
Under the Pacific solution mark II, children on Nauru will be locked up at night. Spending years trapped on a 21-square-kilometre island is imprisonment of a special kind. It will cause untold mental damage to those forced to endure it.
The immigration department describes the detention centre on Nauru as "a contingency against future unauthorised boat arrivals" — one that costs $1 million a month to maintain. Work on Christmas Island's $210 million, 800-bed detention centre is well underway.
However a West Australian interview with Nauru's president cast doubt over Howard's Pacific solution mark II. "Nauru's president declared that his country would not take Australia's unwanted refugees", the paper reported on April 22, adding that "neither New Zealand, Papua New Guinea nor Fiji is likely to agree to accept refugees found to be genuine after they are processed in Australian-run offshore detention centres".
West Papuan asylum seekers
It's a contradiction for the Australian government to grant asylum to a group of West Papuan refugees — recognition that they were fleeing persecution — and then, a fortnight later, propose a law that will make it impossible for other West Papuan refugees to find sanctuary in Australia.
Labor's immigration spokesperson, Tony Burke, argued on April 16, "Our immigration policy is not being run by Canberra. It's being run by Jakarta." But, as Australia's bipartisan policy on East Timor showed, Australia's relations with Indonesia have long been guided by economic concerns — securing privileged access to the large Indonesian market and, to this end, maintaining political "stability" — rather than human rights concerns.
Australia is not at the beck and call of Indonesia: it is unmistakeably the dominant partner, both politically and economically. The Indonesian president's outrage at Australia's decision to offer asylum to West Papuans is as much designed for domestic consumption as it is leverage to stop Australia from doing the same again.
The Pacific solution mark II is not just an attempt to mollify the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono government. The Howard government is using Jakarta's complaints to strengthen its already existing policy to detain refugees in camps outside Australia.
The Howard government is firmly opposed to the break-up of the Indonesian state — a policy shared by the Labor opposition. Australian governments, Labor and Coalition, have colluded with successive Indonesian regimes, from Suharto to Yudhoyono, to help retain a brutal hold over East Timor, Aceh and West Papua.
So why did Canberra grant asylum to the West Papuans? Their arrival took the Australian government by surprise and the calculation seems to have been that not to grant these refugees asylum would have generated significant negative repercussions domestically. Among Australians there is widespread sympathy for the plight of refugees. The April 22 West Australian said the latest Westpoll found that 83% of respondents believed Australia should accept West Papuan refugees and an April 19 Newspoll revealed that 76.7% of Australians believe that West Papua should have the right to self-determination or independence.
From Green Left Weekly, April 26, 2006.
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