Ian Rintoul
"Two boys betrayed", the October 7 Australian editorial proclaimed, referring to Alamdar and Montazar Bakhtiyari, the two eldest sons of Australia's most high-profile asylum seeker family. The Australian editorial was railing against refugee-rights activists and lawyers, not the Australian government.
The Australian has been an active player in the Bakhtiyari case — the editorial was just the latest phase of its long-term campaign to discredit the family, and its supporters.
The Bakhtiyari family was back in the news for two reasons. First, new information revealed that the Afghan government now accepts that Mrs Bakhtiyari and her six children are indeed Afghan, and that this information was about to handed be to the Australian government at the time of their deportation last year.
Secondly, in an interview with the ABC's Lateline on October 5, the boys very publicly apologised to the Australian government and distanced themselves from refugee lawyers and advocates in Australia. An Australian article on October 6 was headlined "Bakhtiyari boys sorry for the lies", and although it later emerged that the boys had never said they lied to the Australian government (the ABC had mis-transcribed "lawyers" for "lies"), that didn't stop the paper from continuing its pursuit of the family.
The interview sparked an avalanche of hysterical responses by shock jocks and media apologists for mandatory detention, including the Australian, anxious to denounce the Bahktiyaris and the refugee movement. The editorial also tries to drive a wedge between those who just visit detainees and those such as Refugee Action Coalition/Collective members that have supposedly "manipulated" the issue and blames the Howard government.
Much of the corporate media comment focused on when the two boys, having escaped from Woomera detention centre in July 2002, created a blaze of publicity when they emerged from hiding a few days later to apply for asylum at the British embassy in Melbourne.
Some see the incident as the final straw that pushed the government into a corner and sealed the Bakhtiyaris' fate. (David Corlett, for example, in his otherwise useful book Following Them Home about the fate of deported asylum seekers, details the government's vindictive pursuit of the family but then tries to distinguish between "people of goodwill" supporting the Bakhtiyaris, and others such as the Refugee Action Collective, "an activist organisation linked to the ideological left".)
Corlett sets out the ways in which the family's case challenged the legal basis of the government's refugee policy, but seems to conclude that activists, including lawyers, were somehow to blame for their eventual deportation.
Fate sealed
The Howard government had decided on the fate of the Bakhtiyaris long before the boys' escape from Woomera or the episode at the British embassy. Two years before, then immigration minister Philip Ruddock's duplicity meant that Mrs Bakhtiyari and the children were denied refugee status when they first arrived in Australia.
Roqia Bakhtiyari arrived in Australia in 2001 with her (at the time) five children. Her husband, Ali, had arrived in 1999, and had been recognised as an Afghan refugee and granted a temporary protection visa (TPV).
Under existing determination procedures, had the government revealed that Ali had a TPV, Roqia and the family would have also been granted refugee status. But the government did not reveal this to the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT), even though Roqia named her husband in her initial interview. The government knew that Ali was in Australia but never let on. (A subsequent court case found that although the government did have this information, it was not required by law to reveal the information to the RRT.)
In an interview at the time, Ruddock defended his action with characteristic chilling bureaucratic indifference: "You don't get a family reunion outcome if you come without authority."
But the government's duplicity was splashed across the front pages and featured on every TV news when Roqia's brother, Mahzar, threw himself onto razor wire at Woomera on Australia Day 2002. According to Corlett, the Bakhtiyari family began "to symbolise for the outside world both the destructive effects of detention on children and the cruelty of a system that denies families the right to be re-united".
From this point on, the Bakhtiyaris were a thorn in the government's side. (Mahzar had also played an important role as a leader inside Woomera, and was the first of the family to be punished — forcibly deported in 2003.)
To resolve the government's dilemma, Ali's TPV was cancelled because, on the basis of dubious, unsigned, undated documents, he was deemed to be Pakistani. This revealed much about political interference in the determination process.
The government believed that if it could discredit the Bakhtiyaris, it would strike a blow at the refugee movement. Corlett quotes Ruddock after the barrage of media articles fuelled by leaked immigration files saying: "They started this back in Easter ... This has been a persistent campaign. I wouldn't be talking about his case but for the fact that they sought to use the media to put pressure on me to give outcomes to which they were not entitled."
But there are two facts the government and its media mouthpieces can't avoid. First, had the government revealed that Ali was a refugee living in the Australian community, Roqia and the children would have also been granted refugee status when they first arrived; and secondly, Roqia was denied refugee status on the grounds of being Pakistani — although there is now considerable evidence to show that she is in fact Afghan.
The Bakhtiyaris are not "failed asylum seekers", but a family failed by the Australian government.
Confessions?
The media has revelled in the "confession" by Alamdar and Montazar that their family lied to the Australian government.
That turned out not to be true. Nonetheless, in the interview, the boys did apologise to the government for "all the advocates and all the lawyers who were forcing us to fight against the government".
However, the boys' comments need to be seen in perspective. They have been put in an impossible situation. The family and supporters have struggled to understand why the government decided to make an example of the Bakhtiyari family. The system looks like a lottery, where cases are decided by the whim of immigration officers. How do you explain that some people from the same town and who travel on the same boat can be found to be refugees while others are left in detention for years?
Even before the Bakhtiyari family was deported, some supporters had been advising them that their best chance of gaining refugee status was to throw themselves on the mercy of the government, to present themselves as "model" asylum seekers, and avoid the media and refugee activists.
This view may appear to have some substance, particularly as many long-term detainees are now gaining visas. From thousands of kilometres away, it could seem that it was the many court cases that prevented them from also gaining favourable treatment. But the appeal for mercy is badly misplaced. Before they were deported, the government would not consider allowing the boys to finish their schooling in South Australia, and this is despite a number of prominent people making representations on their behalf.
The family confronted many government-created legal hurdles, and found many creative ways to get around the bloody-mindedness. In many ways, Canberra's decision to finally release children from detention is a result of the legal precedents set by the Bakhtiyari family.
While the British embassy incident was not responsible for the government refusing the Bakhtiyari family refugee status, it did nonetheless embarrass the Australian government further by highlighting inconsistencies in its refugee policy.
This remains a controversial incident. The corporate media has attempted to attribute responsibility for the boys' escape to the Refugee Action Collective, even though no-one from the group was involved. The escape was a happenstance resulting from an impromptu gesture of solidarity from someone not associated with the campaign.
Nor was the move to hand the Bakhtiyari boys over to the British embassy discussed among activist groups. The World Today on July 19, 2002, reported that Brigidine Nuns accompanied the boys to the British embassy. Some supporters placed too much trust in "legal advice", believing that the British embassy would create a massive political rift with Canberra and grant asylum.
There were elaborate arrangements to co-ordinate legal moves in London with the boys' appearance at the embassy in Melbourne. In the end, this meant, the boys were delivered back into detention.
Deportation
The Bakhtiyaris were deported on December 30, 2004, just two months after the Howard government was returned to office.
It was a vindictive move by a government out to settle scores with a family that had exposed the hypocrisy and the brutality of its refugee policy.
Nothing in the boys' Lateline interview contradicts the essential claims of the Bakhtiyaris. The immigration department already knew that the family, like many other Hazara Afghan families fleeing persecution, had lived in Pakistan.
The real test of any policy is the difficult cases. The more evidence accumulated, the more reason to believe that the refugee determination process failed the Bakhtiyari family as it has failed others who were deported, remain in limbo with less than permanent protection, or remain stranded on Nauru and Lombok.
Two boys were politically victimised by the Howard government in cahoots with the corporate media. The government lied about the "children overboard" tragedy, just as it lied about the Bakhtiyaris.
Tragically, the refugee movement was not able to prevent their wrongful deportation. We owe much to the Bakhtiyari family; through their suffering we learned a lot about the inadequacies of the refugee determination process, and a lot about the lengths to which an immoral government is prepared to go to vilify and punish refugees.
The Bakhtiyaris' story deserves telling. Above all, it reveals the cruelty and arbitrariness of the determination process and the underlying horrors of the mandatory
detention system.
[Ian Rintoul is a spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney.]
From Green Left Weekly, November 2, 2005.
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