BY BRADLEY SIMS
ALBANY, WA — A soccer team will be dismantled, teachers feel their work is futile, workers will lose work-mates, landlords will lose tenants, friends will lose friends, businesses will lose customers and a local abattoir will lose good workers. This quiet sea-side town is having its heart ripped out.
After nearly four years living, working and socialising within the Albany community, around 60 Afghans on temporary protection visas have begun receiving letters rejecting their applications for permanent residence and giving them 28 days to return to Afghanistan if they decide not to appeal this decision.
Welcome to immigration minister Philip Ruddock's disastrous immigration policy.
"Read Write Now" is a WA adult literacy program run by volunteers who, in Albany, have been conducting weekly English classes with 40 Afghan refugees. The teachers who volunteer their time come from a wide range of backgrounds. There's the wife of the local church minister, a stone mason, the wife of the local member of parliament, a tiler, an elderly man whose opportunity to teach has acquainted him with a young Afghan who he loves like his own son.
English tutor David Sims told ABC news on August 28, "I'm no different than anybody else, until something touches you personally, you don't realise how much it hurts and this touched me and a lot of people in Albany and it's hurting heaps."
On August 26, a group of concerned citizens and Read Write Now tutors met to decide what they should do to help the Afghan refugees in their community. They are perplexed as to why the refugees are being returned. They feel their work has been futile and are desperate to help their students. No-one had been expecting 28 days' notice to leave after they had been here nearly four years.
At the meeting, residents decided to set up an action network, Action For Albany Afghan Refugees (AFAAR), and a community group, Albany Community For Afghan Refugees (ACFAR) to start a campaign to let the refugees stay permanently.
Already, a petition stall on August 30 received a very positive response. More than 70 signatures were gathered and hundreds of leaflets handed out. A public meeting is planned for the end of September on the Albany campus of the University of WA. The Albany Advertiser and the Albany Weekender have both carried front-page stories on the issue.
You would think it's obvious to anyone that after four years Afghans would become regular members of the community. Their deep social and economic links here are clear to everyone in a town where everyone knows everyone else. For some reason, however, this is not clear to Ruddock and the Coalition government.
Impacting on the community
Local businesses will be affected: car-yards with finance arrangements with an Afghan, real-estate agents with broken leases and 28 days to find a new tenant, the local supermarket, the clothing store, the sports store, the telephone company, the internet provider, the electrical goods retailer and the list goes on.
One of the affected men has become quite the entrepreneur in WA, opening a clothing shop in Kalgoorlie and Perth. He employs Australians, who will lose jobs if their boss is deported.
Employers will be affected. At the top of the list is Fletcher Abattoir, always short of workers until the Afghans came to town — it's true they do the work that no-one else would do. Fletchers employs 50 Afghans, and has become a major supplier of halal meat in Australia. Last year, the abattoir won an award for productivity.
Fletcher International WA assistant general manager Greg Cross told the August 30 West Australian that he was frustrated at the prospect of losing 50 skilled and punctual abattoir workers who had contributed to the local economy for three years. His company will help the men lodge appeals. In addition, fruit-growers will be affected. The abattoir closes down for six weeks twice a year, during which time many Afghans pick strawberries and grapes.
Most importantly, the community will be affected. Social damage is something that is often given the least political weight, but is galvanising the most action. This is what people care about in a small town — the people they have come to know and love.
Social damage
The Afghans, being Shia Muslims, aren't into smoking, drinking or drugs. Their spare time is spent doing what many of us have forgotten — enjoying the outdoor life, dancing and playing a lot of sport. They play football, volleyball and soccer, and have developed strong bonds with team-mates. In a town where there are a lot of soccer players, this is keenly felt. The Afghans are outstanding players, they won the trophy last year, their team is the best and the non-Afghans in the team are devastated. One young man has made a flier headed "Save our soccer team", because most of his team now faces deportation.
Perhaps the government didn't count on Afghan refugees being the highly sociable people they are. Last year, they invited the local government and businesses, teachers and friends to a halal feast just to thank the local community for having them. They are profoundly hospitable — few people who know them haven't been invited to their houses for dinner.
In a quiet town like Albany there's little entrenched racism, there haven't been a lot of cultural challenges for the predominantly middle-class, Anglo-Saxon population. The opportunity of meeting someone as exotic as an Afghan has been lapped up by the local community.
Many locals have been fascinated by their culture and horrified by their stories of years under the Taliban. The Afghans don't mind discussing what they've been through. The truth is, many Albany residents know far more about whether or not the Afghans are genuine refugees than some bureaucrat from the immigration department. Albany has said they are, and Albany wants them to stay.
Persecution at home
But what about the damage to the Afghans? Most of the Afghans in Albany are Hazaras, perhaps the most persecuted minority group in Afghanistan who for centuries have been subject to gross human rights violations. They have every reason to fear returning to Afghanistan.
One of the refugees in Albany told us that former members of the Taliban have been visiting his family in Kabul, demanding to know where he is. His brother has been missing for four years, and his father is already dead. One young man is so terrified of returning that he has stated he will kill himself rather than return. It would not be the first time that someone on a temporary protection visa has attempted suicide.
Another refugee recounted how his mother made him "swear by the milk that she fed him as a baby to never return". These people have lost brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, daughters and sons. Many have said they will go anywhere else in the world — a poor country, back to Indonesia, anywhere but Afghanistan.
It is bitter hypocrisy that, at the same time as many Afghan refugees in Australia on temporary visas are being told that they are no longer considered refugees, the government transferred 16 Afghans from Nauru to Brisbane on September 2. All but one were issued with five-year temporary protection visas. One man was given a three-year visa because he was picked up outside Australia's migration zone.
Afghan refugees should never have been given temporary protection visas in the first place. The problem for the government with releasing refugees into the community is reflected in the Albany community — through living alongside them, people now know they are human beings just like us, and they are prepared to do whatever it takes to win them the right to stay.
To contact AFAAR, phone (08) 9841 8823, email <sunnyside@westnet.com.au> or write to PO Box 1477, Albany WA 6330. To contact ACFAR, email Dot Butler <dorbut@omninet.net.au>.
From Green Left Weekly, September 10, 2003.
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