buddies

Freedom Bid

Sunshine Coast teenager Meg Foley is leading a letter writing campaign to free the longest serving detainee in Western Australia’s Port Hedland immigration detention centre.
Ms Foley, 18, a student at Australian Catholic University and a Maroochydore parishioner, is rallying support for Abdul, a 24 year-old Afghan asylum seeker who has been in detention for five years.
She said the Federal Court in Melbourne heard Abdul’s case for asylum via video link in January but there was still no result.
“We’ve been told it could take up to a year,” Ms Foley said.
Ms Foley and her family have been writing to Abdul for three years and she regularly speaks with him by phone.
“He’s become part of our family,” she said.
Abdul fled for his life from Afghanistan after his father was killed by a Taliban warlord. He arrived in Australia in March 1999 and has been held at the Port Hedland detention centre ever since without being charged with an offence.
Ms Foley spent three months in Port Hedland during the Christmas holidays and visited the young men and families, including children, in detention.
She stayed with Mercy Sister Mary Keeley, a retired teacher who works tirelessly with the detainees, visiting them and teaching English in the centre almost every day.
Ms Foley said she and her family believed Abdul’s case was one that should be dealt with quickly.
She is urging people to write to Immigration Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone, in support of Abdul’s appeal.
She said there had been a “huge” response to the campaign.
“We’ve had 300 letters signed already,” Ms Foley said. “When you ask someone to sign a letter and they read it and hear the story, few people say ‘No’.”
To join in writing letters to Senator Vanstone on behalf of Abdul, phone Meg Foley on (07)5452 5885 or write to 11a Curlew Lane, Buderim, Qld 4556.
For a sample letter of support, send an email to foley_jf@yahoo.com.au
-Catholic Leader, April 11, 2004

Meg Foley is helping to raise awareness of the plight of refugees in detention in Australia.
The Year 12 student from Siena College on the Sunshine Coast decided she wasn’t going to stand idly by and watch “our government’s great lack of humanity in their handling of asylum seekers”.

Last Sunday, a group 40 refugees and their carers travelled to the Sunshine Coast from Brisbane for a picnic fun day.
” We wanted to give the carers a break and the picnic is going to be the first of many,” said Meg.

Two teams from the Tiger XI boys’ soccer club travelled to the coast on June 8 to play against a mixed boys and girls team from Siena College. Their manager and English teacher Camilla Cowley accompanied them.
” It was the first time many of our team had met refugees,” said Meg.In the afternoon, a group of Siena students and their parents took the boys down to the beach.

Meg and her dad, John, are members of a refugee support group in Buderim called “Buddies”. The group has been growing steadily since its inception in February, with 30-40 people attending meetings.
” At our meetings, the first hour is a learning circle,” said Meg. “Someone researches a topic and presents it to the group and that’s how we learn more about important issues affecting refugees.
” The next hour we talk about our ideas and what action we can take on specific issues.”
For some time, Meg has been writing to a detainee in the Port Hedland detention centre. Abdul, an Afghani refugee, has been in detention in Australia for three years.

Meg is also hoping to set up a refugee support group at Siena College.
” We’ll mostly be writing letters to politicians and detainees,” she said. ” No one is asking the questions. If they started asking questions, then the Government and the media would have to provide the answers.”

Meg is also looking to set up a small parish group at Stella Maris, Maroochydore.
” It’s another group that will tell their friends and parents and that’s more people we can expose,” said Meg.

Catholic Leader June 23, 2002