buddies

The two remaining on Nauru

‘Living hell’ built for two

By Michael Gordon
March 11, 2006
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/living-hell-built-for-two/2006/03/10/1141701695874.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

MUHAMMAD Faisal calls his life a living hell. He suffers from high anxiety and poor vision, takes medication three times a day, and recently, in an act of desperation, tried to take his life.
Faisal, 26, is one of the last two asylum seekers left on Nauru under the Howard Government’s Pacific Solution. The other, Mohammad Sagar, 29, became concerned last month when he knocked on Faisal’s door and there was no reply.
He called the security people and a nurse at the camp and, when they opened the door, he saw Faisal, semi-conscious, bleeding from cuts to his chest, arms and stomach. Faisal was taken to the clinic that once served several hundred mainly Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers on the tiny, impoverished island.

He later said he had been “pushed to the edge” by the isolation and uncertainty of his situation and a sense of desperation.

“In Nauru life is black,” he told the The Age this week. “I feel I am in hell. When I came to Nauru I was 21. My age now is 26. Everything is negative.”

Now, almost 4½ years after being sent to Nauru, two of the world’s loneliest asylum seekers are now preparing for a new existence outside the camp.

While the camp will be maintained, at a cost to Australian taxpayers of $1 million a month, those employed by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) who have been responsible for the welfare of the two men, including a psychiatrist, are pulling out.

In the coming weeks, the two Iraqis will have to adapt to new “independent living” arrangements where they will have their own accommodation, complete with a television, DVD player, telephone and internet access.

There will also be an allowance to buy their own food and a pushbike, complete with helmet and padlock, for each to travel around the once phosphate-rich but now near-bankrupt 21-square-kilometre island, where power failures and water shortages are daily occurrences.

The shift is portrayed by the Immigration Department as an opportunity for the men to make their own choices. The men see it differently. “I feel that this step means that they want to keep me on Nauru forever,” Faisal wrote in a recent letter to Neill Wright, the regional representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Both men have been found to be refugees, with genuine fears of persecution if they returned to Iraq, but both were deemed to be a security threat to Australia after extensive interviews with ASIO last year.

The finding has left the two men, and parties such as the UNHCR who are trying to find another country willing to resettle them, in an invidious, almost impossible position. They have not been told the basis of the finding and there is no provision for an appeal or a review by an independent authority.
Not knowing the allegation against them is a constant worry. As Faisal puts it: “I am not doing anything wrong to other countries, or in my own country, or on Nauru. Why am I rejected? I am not dangerous to anyone.”

When The Age became the first media organisation to be given unfettered access to the camp almost 12 months ago, both complained about the way the ASIO interviews had been conducted.

Back then, Sagar said he was struggling to cope with the anxiety. “I’m living in limbo. To think there is a possibility, even 1 per cent, to get a rejection, makes me feel very, very bad.”

Both said then that they had been accused of being uncooperative in the interviews, but emphatically denied this. It was not until many months later that they were told of the ruling, around the same time that the other 25 asylum seekers still on Nauru were given visas to come to Australia.

Susan Metcalfe, a researcher who has visited the men twice on Nauru and has provided support to many of those who have since left the island to begin new lives in Australia, was distressed, but not surprised, that Faisal had resorted to self-harm.

Only days before the episode, she had written to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone voicing her concern about his mental condition.

“I am deeply concerned that he will not cope when the psychiatrist leaves this weekend,” she told The Age yesterday. “The departure of the last Arabic-speaking staff member in January had a very negative impact on Faisal and contributed to his distress.”

Ms Metcalfe also shares the men’s concern that the new arrangements are a first step towards the Australian Government washing its hands of any responsibility for them, despite the commitment when Nauru agreed to set up the camps that “no persons will be left behind on Nauru”. She finds the adverse security assessment hard to understand. “Both men are very human and not at all threatening. I don’t believe that anyone has ever had a problem with them and I know that their friends in Australia find the ongoing situation incredibly distressing,” she said.

“It is an absurd situation and a complete waste of all our time, energy and money. I doubt that Muhammad Faisal could have coherently answered questions in his ASIO interviews without psychological assistance, so I do have concerns about the basis for the decisions.

“I know that the lack of explanation for the decisions causes ongoing despair for both men. They can’t even defend themselves because they don’t know what they are being accused of.”
Migration agent Marion Le, who met both men on Nauru, finds their situation “incomprehensible”, suggesting there may have been a different outcome if the men had advocates present during their ASIO interviews.

Another who is surprised is Maarten Dormaar, a psychiatrist, who worked for the IOM at the camp until 2003. He says Sagar worked as a voluntary interpreter when required and performed the job well. “He was very respectful and unbiased as far as I could guess from the way the patients behaved during the interviews ,” he said in an email to Ms Metcalfe.

Sagar has several concerns about the new arrangements, which were set out in a document prepared by the Immigration Department and presented to the two men. They include questions of health care, transport and security.

On transport, for instance, the document notes the IOM’s commitment to provide “safe and dignified” transport for camp residents, with as little public exposure as possible. Under the new arrangements, this obligation would be met by the provision of pushbikes and helmets “for their exclusive use”.

“I don’t think it’s a very wise idea, giving us bikes,” Sagar told The Age. “Faisal is extremely short-sighted and taking medication three times a day. I don’t think he would be able at all to ride a bike.”

But their greater fear is that they have been forgotten. “We are afraid of that one day we would find ourselves abandoned on this tiny island and have to beg for the food,” Sagar said in a letter to Mr Wright.

While Sagar has improved his English and computer skills on the island, Faisal is struggling. He says he thinks constantly of the friends who have left Nauru and is distressed that the department will no longer provide an interpreter.

In his letter to the UNHCR, Faisal said he was dying a slow death. “The only solution to my problem is that I get a country to live (like) a human being without being humiliated. My wish is to feel, even for once, that I’m alive.”

Right To Work Campaign - Did you know?

There are approximately 8000 asylum seekers living lawfully in the community on bridging visas. This group have on the whole never been in detention but
arrived in Australia on a valid visa and then lodged a protection visa application. The East Timorese are an example of this group.

Some are entitled to work and Medicare (if they lodge within 45 days and have not appealed beyond the Refugee Review Tribunal). Some receive a federally funded Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme payment through the Red Cross (if they have not had a first decision within 6 months and have not been rejected by the Refugee Review Tribunal), however this help is very small and has criteria which exclude a number of people.

However many have no right to work, Medicare or any welfare payment. This includes ALL asylum seekers awaiting a humanitarian decision from the Immigration Minister and ALL asylum seekers released from detention on a Bridging Visa E, including those released for psychological or medical grounds.

Some asylum seekers have relatives or friends to support them, but a significant number have no support at all. They cannot access any government funded welfare agency, such as Centrelink, or a Migrant Resource Centre. They rely on the good will of churches and the community for their housing, food and medical costs.

Homelessness, health, nutrition, isolation and depresssion are all major concerns for asylum seekers in the community.

(We acknowledge the Hotham Centre’s Asylum Seeker Project for the above information).

We are asking all Buddies to write to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs , their local member and Queensland senators asking that in the current review of the regulations regarding Bridging Visas that these heartless regulations be changed so that work rights and Medicare Cards are available for all asylum seekers.

Sample letters are attached to this email. If you do not wish to, or cannot open the attached files please contact us, and we will email them to you in the body of an email. Addresses for senators and MP’s can be found on the parliamentary web page, or in your local phone book.

Getting the word out

As Australians, we have confidence in the traditional decency and generosity of our people. We feel that the majority of Australians would disagree with the current policies if they understood the impact of them. One of our goals is to share information on the topic of refugee applicants in Australia to allow people to come to an informed opinion.

To this end, we have mounted a powerful, touching, travelling exhibition of these detainee letters, which attracts much interest wherever we display it.

We’ve developed a school presentation to take to schools/organizations/etc. It utilizes several of our well-informed people who stimulate questions and discuss concerns regarding the refugee situation.

We’ve made the school presentations available as a kit which anyone is welcome to use. The kit contains an Introductory Letter, Talk Format, Definition of a Refugee, The Refugee Story (using the imagination), and a Teachers Worksheet.

Recommended Reading

In an attempt to show to the public the human face of asylum seekers arriving in our country, Alwyn Evans has written a novel, Walk in My Shoes, based on true stories from and about refugees, published by Penguin Books. As a tribute to the refugees, and those who work with them, particularly Dr Judyth Watson, co-founder of CARAD (Coalition Assisting Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Detainees), who contributed so much to Alwyn’s research, she is donating half of all royalties to CARAD. We urge you to read this book yourselves, as well as giving it to those you know have little understanding of the human rights issues involved. Walk in My Shoes, by Alwyn Evans, published by Penguin, rrp $18.95, is available from all bookshops - and if it’s not in stock ask for it to be ordered immediately!

Following them Home: the fate of the returned asylum seekers by David Corlett

For a very good book to read:
Following them Home: the fate of the returned asylum seekers by David Corlett [ISBN 0 97507 6965] rrp $24.95 published by Black Inc, Melbourne 03 9654 2000 website: www.blackincbooks.com

Architects leave a legacy, whether in stone or in policy. The architects of Australia’s recent policy governing asylum seekers – Prime Minister Howard, Attorney-General Ruddock and Immigration Minister Vanstone – have ensured their legacy is and will continue to be the broken lives of asylum seekers who were sent back.

This book grew out of an article the author and academic Robert Manne wrote when Corlett was preparing his doctoral thesis. In the absence of any serious attempt by the media to find out what happened to unsuccessful asylum seekers, Corlett travelled to Pakistan, Iran, South East Asia to interview many frightened people, deeply scarred by their razor-wire detention in Australia and traumatised by the fear in which they continue to live either in their home country or in the limbo of temporary residence in another country.

Corlett’s research and the terrible accounts told by rejected asylum seekers reveal Australian deals between governments; cash inducements laced with threats; travel arrangements designed to skirt other countries’ laws; no concern or compassion for tearing families apart; use of a private company to remove “difficult cases”; even occasionally benign corruption to give asylum seekers a chance to find a more sympathetic regime than Australia’s; but more often the debasing corruption of pretending that asylum seekers were “voluntarily” returning home when threatened with indefinite detention.

These official tactics are worse than those of the people smugglers who at least offer a forlorn hope of haven. The returnees, some who were not strictly refugees and others who have been accepted elsewhere as refugees, will never forget the cruelty of Australia. David Corlett has done us all a service in showing that we are responsible for the shattered lives returnees continue to live.

Reviewed by Ian Mathews
(editor)