BY SARAH STEPHEN
Hundreds of detained asylum seekers from Afghanistan have been denied protection visas, despite recommendations from immigration department officers that they be granted.
A spokesperson for immigration minister Philip Ruddock told the March 13 Sydney Morning Herald that as part of a "quality assurance system, all decisions on Afghan asylum seekers were now being run through a management unit in Canberra to assess the rapidly changing situation in Afghanistan".
The SMH spoke to an unnamed immigration officer who alleged that the department changed the files of 160 Afghan asylum seekers in December, "removing a finding that they had met the key criterion for a visa — a well-grounded fear of persecution". Those who don't volunteer to go back to Afghanistan face indefinite detention.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has recommended that, given the extremely difficult conditions inside Afghanistan, there be no forced repatriation of refugees.
Medicins Sans Frontieres issued a media statement with the Refugee Council of Australia on March 13 in which the organisations called on the federal government to "show compassion towards the long-suffering Afghan people by guaranteeing their right to protection".
The statement continued: "We believe it is dangerous and simplistic to imply that Afghanistan is now safe ... in many circumstances, conditions are in fact worsening rather than improving since the fall of the Taliban.
"The war is not over; fighting between rival warlords threatens to descend into a civil war; unexploded weapons still contaminate large parts of the country; 50% of Afghanistan is inaccessible to aid organisations; the drought is entering its fourth year and the food crisis has reached alarming proportions.
"The [UN] refugee convention clearly states that protection of refugees must continue unless the conditions in the refugees' home country have substantially changed."
From Green Left Weekly, March 20, 2002.
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