Sarah Stephen
Amnesty International released a highly critical report on June 30 titled "Australia: The impact of indefinite detention — the case to change Australia's mandatory detention regime". The report explores the appalling human cost of Australia's detention policy, illustrating this with the case of Peter Qasim, Australia's longest-serving detainee.
A rejected 31-year-old Kashmiri asylum-seeker, Qasim was put into detention in September 1998. He was finally moved to Adelaide's Glenside Psychiatric Hospital on June 17, almost a month after Adelaide psychiatrist Dr Jon Jureidini assessed him as profoundly depressed and directed that he be sent to hospital to prevent him harming himself.
After being in detention for almost five years, in August 2003 Qasim agreed to be returned to Indian-occupied Kashmir. He applied to the Indian High Commission for a passport, but his application was rejected, leaving him officially stateless. It has therefore not been possible for him to be deported to India and, to date, no other country has been willing to accept him.
As Qasim became a high-profile symbol of the cruellest element of the mandatory detention policy — indefinite detention — the federal government tried to destroy his credibility.
Immigration minister Amanda Vanstone began to publicly attack Qasim in September 2004, arguing that he had not cooperated with the immigration department, which maintains it has strong evidence casting doubt on his identity.
A decision by the High Court in August 2004 confirmed that it is lawful for the Australian government to detain stateless people indefinitely, potentially for the rest of their lives. Qasim's only chance of release was through the personal intervention of Vanstone.
He should have been offered an apology and a permanent protection visa. Instead, on June 20 Vanstone offered Qasim one of her new "removal pending bridging visas" (RPBVs).
Vanstone announced the creation of this new temporary visa in March, to allow some long-term detainees to be released into the general community prior to their deportation from Australia.
The RPBV was to only apply to those asylum seekers who could not be deported from Australia in the foreseeable future, who had no current proceedings before a court or tribunal, and who had "not attempted to obstruct efforts to arrange and effect their removal from Australia". Not surprisingly, only 17 of the 100 or so asylum seekers detained for more than three years were "invited" by Vanstone to apply for the visa.
It was a woefully inadequate sop to the dissenters on the government backbench, but it did little to quell the growing disquiet with the whole mandatory detention regime. The RPBV was widely criticised because of its limited application and the requirement that failed asylum seekers would have to agree in writing to drop all rights to future legal challenges.
A further 50 asylum seekers — mostly Iranians and Sri Lankans — were invited to apply for an RPBV on June 16, when Vanstone announced a relaxation of visa conditions. Qasim was one of those 50. He accepted the offer and there were hopes he would be released immediately, but two weeks later he was still depressed and heavily medicated in Glenside psychiatric hospital.
Qasim's lawyer, Alexis Goodstone, told the July 1 Melbourne Age that the immigration department had informed her that Qasim's visa approval would be delayed while ASIO issued a security clearance — seven years after he was detained in an immigration prison!
Goodstone said it was unclear whether ASIO was checking to see if Qasim had committed offences while in detention or whether it was also trying to check his background overseas.
Refugee-rights advocates are still struggling to understand in what way the RPBV conditions have been relaxed. A small change is the removal of the requirement that people sign an undertaking to cooperate with their "removal" from Australia if and when it is possible. But there's a sting in the tail: "If people do not cooperate with removal once removal is possible, their visa is subject to cancellation", the immigration department fact-sheet states.
It also remains unclear whether asylum seekers who accept an RPBV sign away their right to apply for another visa in the future.
Commenting on the revised visa, Ian Rintoul from the NSW Refugee Action Coalition said on June 21: "Even for those who are stateless and face no foreseeable prospect of being removed from Australia, there is no future in this visa no travel or family re-union, no study — just more years of insecurity, more years in limbo.
"For others, including some Afghans and Iranians, this visa may be little more than a deportation agreement. It is valid only until the minister deems it practicable to remove them from Australia.
"Refugee advocates have put forward many suggestions such as a complementary protection visa that would give the government the flexibility is says it wants and the asylum seekers the protection they need, but the government is not interested in real, workable solutions. It is more concerned to find a political fix to the crisis that has engulfed the immigration department, than substantial policy change."
From Green Left Weekly, July 6, 2005.
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