Sarah Stephen
The October 14 announcement that 25 of the 27 asylum seekers remaining on Nauru would be brought to Australia has been widely welcomed. However, the Howard government has made clear it is not ending the "Pacific solution", simply suspending its use of the camp.
The decision followed a September visit to Nauru by former immigration minister John Hodges and mental health experts Paris Aristotle and Ida Kaplan, who said that the precarious mental health of many of the detainees required urgent attention. Some of the men were being constantly monitored because of the risk of suicide or self-harm.
The 27 asylum seekers on Nauru — 15 from Iraq, eight from Afghanistan, two from Bangladesh, one from Iran and one from Pakistan — were set to enter their fifth year in the island prison. Eight Afghans and five Iraqis have been recognised as refugees. Another 12 will be brought to Australia on transitory visas, and probably placed in detention while their cases are processed.
Two Iraqi asylum seekers who received "adverse security assessments" will remain on Nauru. Muhammad Faisal, 25, and Mohammed Sagar, 29, had reportedly made some "anti-Western" and "anti-Australian" comments during an interview with ASIO officers. Refugee advocate Marian Le told the October 15 Brisbane Courier-Mail that the pair were "very angry young men", understandable after four years of hell.
System intact
Just as families and many long-term detainees have been removed from the detention camps in Australia without dismantling mandatory detention, the Nauru camp is being emptied without any change to the arrangements that allowed the detention of more than 120 asylum seekers on Nauru over the past four years. The Howard government has negotiated with Nauru and PNG for the camps on Nauru and Manus Island to remain in operation, and has indicated that it will "re-activate" the two camps if people smuggling resumes.
PM Howard has hailed the use of offshore detention as an "outstanding success" despite the fact that hundreds of people have been permanently damaged by the experience.
Howard claims that his government's policies have stopped the flow of asylum seeker boats. But this is not entirely true. First, the numbers of Iraqis and Afghans seeking asylum began to decline worldwide, not just in Australia, at the end of 2001. Secondly, many asylum seekers paid money to people smugglers without knowing where they were being taken. There are many stories of people arriving by boat, being intercepted and detained, and asking someone in the detention centre, "Which country am I in?". How can someone in these circumstances be deterred by harsh policies they know nothing about?
The event that almost immediately stemmed the flow of asylum seeker boats to Australia was the sinking of SIEV X on October 19, 2001. Three-hundred-and-fifty-three asylum seekers drowned. This human tragedy became rapidly known across the globe; this was the fate of asylum seekers who risked the journey to Australia and many others, understandably, decided that it was not a risk worth taking.
Moral responsibility
The Australian government has a moral obligation to compensate former detainees for the immeasurable suffering it has inflicted upon them. It has gone well beyond whether or not individuals are assessed as fitting the refugee "definition" as the Australian government interprets it.
David Corlett makes a compelling argument in his book Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers. "Once a person has been so damaged, the question of persecution ceases to be the central issue. The question becomes one of moral responsibility." He is referring to the Australian government's responsibility for those it has already forced to return.
"If people are so damaged by their experiences in Australia, then regardless of their risk of suffering persecution or other dangers — risks that may be increased because of their ill-health — Australia has obligations to them ... Australia should now actively seek these people out and if possible make amends for the damage it has done. This might come in the form of financial compensation or in providing the opportunity to resettle in Australia."
Applying this logic to the former detainees from Nauru, now in Australia, they would have their temporary visas immediately converted to permanent protection, and compensation for damage to their mental health.
For those who have left Nauru behind them and begun new lives in Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere, their daily struggle continues.
Comparing those who went to Australia to those who went to NZ, Nauru researcher and advocate Susan Metcalfe told Green Left Weekly, "In some ways it has been harder for the people in NZ because they were not able to come to be with the people in Australia who had supported them for so long. Many have been very lonely and found it difficult. But it does get easier as they start the process of bringing their families to be with them, and they don't have the added stress of still living in uncertainty."
Many of those who have come to Australia from Nauru have either been issued with a three-year temporary humanitarian visas (subclass 447), or a five-year temporary humanitarian visa (subclass 451). Those on the 447 THV visa are barred from having access to a permanent protection visa, unless the minister personally intervenes to grant them one. There are women and children who have had the ban on a permanent visa overturned because they have a family member — the father and husband — on a temporary visa in Australia. Those on a 451 THV are eligible to apply for permanent protection once their visa expires.
Elaine Smith of Rural Australians for Refugees, who has campaigned for many years to close the Nauru camp, says there is "great pain and difficulties behind some of the successes".
She told GLW, "The [refugees] will continue to need our support for friendship, jobs, housing, driving licences, cars. So besides the good wishes, they need practical help with day-to-day living. Some have a very basic existence, going to work and coming home, with little idea of how to become part of the community, how to solve their problems like getting a permanent visa, getting their family [to Australia], finding friends. For some, this is much harder than time in detention."
Smith stays in touch with a number of refugees who came to Australia from Nauru. "Every person is damaged", she said.
The stories Smith recounts of two young Afghan men give a sense of just how bad that damage is.
Smith asked one refugee if he was now able to sleep. He told her: "Yes, now I am sleeping like a six-month-old baby which always wake up at night all the time. But it is okay, some time when I get so tired, I cannot wake up but if I wake up I just drink water and I will go to bed because I have to be up again by 6am."
"This man is working two low-paid jobs, and is isolated from all friends", Elaine told GLW. "He has half an hour to get from one job to another, then struggles home to a one-room flat. He cannot locate his wife and children. He is depressed and exhausted. He wonders how he can ever turn his life around. He always tries to sound positive but his heart is broken."
Smith recounted another story about an Afghan man who told her his family was in Iran. "His wife escaped [to Iran] after he left, with a babe in arms and a toddler. The child was almost dead when she got there. She is a traditional Afghan woman, illiterate and used to staying behind closed doors. She has now been deported from Iran for the second time, and the baby is dead. Her husband has been in detention for three years and is now on a TPV. His is on an offshore TPV so he is barred from applying for a permanent visa. He can only apply for another TPV if [returning] to Afghanistan remains unsafe. He can never rescue his young wife and remaining child."
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.