Sarah Stephen
The refugee-rights movement has won some significant victories in recent months. There's no way that the federal government would have acceded to the release of families from detention, for example, unless it was seriously concerned about the depth of public opposition to the imprisonment of children and their parents — public opinion that caused a number of Coalition backbenchers to take a stand.
There are now many indications that the refugee-rights movement's influence on broader opinion is very powerful, and that the government has been forced to take notice:
* The remaining 43 children and their families were released from detention on July 29 and are now living in "community detention". While they don't have certainty about their status, they do receive financial support and don't have to suffer the indignity of being monitored by guards 24 hours a day.
* The refugee detention centre on Christmas Island is now empty — all remaining Vietnamese asylum seekers were given temporary protection visas (TPVs) and released on July 29.
* After six years and 10 months, and as a result of a growing campaign for his release, on July 17 Peter Qasim was finally given a visa, albeit a "return-pending" visa. He still faces the prospect of living in permanent limbo in Australia, or returning to Kashmir if and when the Indian government acknowledges that he is an Indian citizen.
* By August 16, 70 of the 150 asylum seekers who had been in detention for more than two years were released on return-pending visas or into community detention.
These developments are important victories for all those opposed to the imprisonment of asylum seekers. But they remain superficial, designed first and foremost to convince the increasing majority of Australians horrified by the human suffering behind the razor wire that the situation is improving, without fundamentally reforming the government's brutal policies.
The announcement on August 6 that the razor wire will be removed from Villawood detention centre was the ultimate in window dressing. Immigration minister Amanda Vanstone explained that it was aimed at "providing a more hospitable environment for people located in such facilities, as well as their visitors". We can be pretty sure, however, that she was thinking only of the visitors. (The razor wire will be donated to the Smorgon Steel Great Scrap Round-Up, which is raising money for bushfire brigades — a nice touch!)
Vanstone claimed that the removal of the razor wire "demonstrates that the Australian government is listening and responding appropriately with action in line with, and beyond, the recommendations of the Palmer report". A similar gesture is being considered for the other metropolitan detention centres — Melbourne's Maribyrnong detention centre and the one at Perth airport. But there has been no mention of removing the 9000-volt electric fence around the Baxter centre.
The government has been forced to remove the worst symptoms of mandatory detention, those that cause it greatest embarrassment. It won't budge on the fundamentals, however, not without a deeper political crisis created by an upsurge in the refugee-rights movement.
There are many issues, including:
* Many asylum seekers remain in detention, some for extremely long periods of time. Six people in Villawood have been imprisoned there for more than five years. Thirty-two people remain imprisoned on Nauru.
* Vivian Solon remains stranded in the Philippines waiting for the Howard government to agree to adequate care arrangements upon her return. Cornelia Rau remains uncompensated.
While the suffering of asylum seekers in detention has reduced, for those living in the community it has increased:
* More than 8000 asylum seekers living in the community on "E"-type bridging visas survive from one meal to the next. They are not allowed to work, and cannot access Medicare or income support, so are entirely dependent on charity.
* Many thousands remain on temporary visas, enduring long waits for a decision about whether they'll be given a permanent visa.
* And now dozens of asylum seekers are living with the chilling uncertainty that accompanies a return pending visa. They were released from detention on the condition that they agreed to be returned to the country they fled from as soon as it becomes possible.
In an August 18 opinion piece, Project SafeCom's Jack Smit noted that refugee welfare services are finding "that the number of clients on their listings who are in a deep state of shock and who show severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder has increased considerably. Several cases of refugees who have ignored or refused to connect to refugee support centres are surfacing; this while their lifestyle shows all the signs of an inability to settle."
Despite some razor wire coming down, the policy of mandatory detention remains firmly in place. In fact, it's being strengthened with a $336 million, 800-bed detention centre on Christmas Island due for completion in 2006.
Since the last refugee left Papua New Guinea's Manus Island more than a year ago, the Howard government has spent $1.8 million on keeping the empty centre open, and is now negotiating to keep it open until at least 2007.
As well, the government is reportedly planning to build a "contingency" detention facility on the Cocos Islands, at the present quarantine site.
With the release of the last family from Nauru on June 27, the 32 asylum seekers who remain there, enduring their fourth year in detention, have become even more invisible. They include 11 Afghans, 16 Iraqis, two Iranians, two Bangladeshis and one Pakistani. The government is paying $1 million per person per year to keep that detention centre operating.
Why such an enormous outlay for all these unused or little-used detention centres? Mandatory detention is fundamental to the government's policy framework, and Howard doesn't want the small concessions his government made in June to be construed as a back-down. But that's only part of the story.
The government knows, although it is not saying as much, that there will be more boatloads of asylum seekers coming to Australia. It is clear that the government plans to incarcerate the next wave of refugees in offshore detention centres, where they will have no access to (the limited) Australian legal protections and be much easier to force back to the countries they fled from.
To make absolutely sure that the next influx of asylum seekers cannot make it into Australian territory, on July 21 the government passed regulations excising 4000 islands around northern Australia from the migration zone. They include the tourist destinations of Dunk and Magnetic Islands, off the Queensland coast. The previous Senate had blocked these regulations several times.
There's no reason to think that asylum seekers hoping to find sanctuary in Australia today wouldn't be (mis)treated in the same way as the 11,000 who arrived between July 1999 and December 2001. Mandatory detention is still firmly in place. The courts still have no jurisdiction over whether or not it is justified to detain someone for the entire duration of their asylum claim. Children will not be imprisoned for longer than 30 days, but adults without children will languish in detention for two years before the Ombudsman assesses their case. Many asylum seekers are mentally broken in that time.
The refugee-rights movement's campaign to end mandatory detention remains as necessary as ever.
From Green Left Weekly, August 24, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.