BY KATE STOCKDALE
DARWIN — Local community organisations, politicians and activists — meeting regularly as the Refugee Action Network (RAN) — are campaigning to allow all 1800 East Timorese asylum seekers to stay in Australia.
A public forum is being organised for March 23 to demonstrate the level of support for the Timorese, some of whom have been resident in Australia for many years. Most of the asylum seekers arrived after the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre in Dili and have rebuilt their lives while waiting for their applications to stay to be processed.
In a February 13 interview on ABC radio, federal minister for immigration Philip Ruddock speculated that 150 East Timorese asylum seekers will be allowed to remain in Australia. Despite this, all applicants will be forced to go through the trauma and expense of having their claims rejected by the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) and then lodging an appeal with the minister.
Lawyers representing NT asylum seekers at the RRT have said they don't expect any of the cases to succeed, but it is necessary to go through the process so that people can ask for special consideration from Ruddock.
So far, five applications have been rejected; two (an elderly couple) have received notice from the immigration department that financial assistance under the Asylum Seekers Assistance Scheme will be cut off. This casts doubt on whether the asylum seekers can survive financially while further appeals are considered.
On February 27, Labor's two federal NT MPs, Warren Snowdon and Senator Trish Crossin, stated that "to cut off financial and medical support is the beginning of a potential humanitarian crisis in the community".
"It is difficult to find anyone in Darwin who would argue that anything less than the creation of a special class of visa for this group of East Timorese is absolutely necessary", RAN's Anja Behlmer said. "What is difficult to understand is why has the federal government waited until now to process their claims, after people have made new lives and have have an important part of our community".
To get involved in the campaign to defend the East Timorese asylum seekers, phone RAN on (08) 8981 4714.
From Green Left Weekly, March 5, 2003.
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