Afghan refugee pleads: Don't send us back!
NOORIA WAZIFADOST is a 16-year-old Afghan refugee now living in Sydney. She arrived in Darwin with her family in 2000, and spent 40 days in the Curtin detention centre before being released on temporary protection visas. The following is an abridged version of her address to the June 23 World Refugee Week rally in Sydney.
All the people who manage to escape persecution and war in Afghanistan pay a very big price. They risk their lives to get out, and they then have to survive in a totally different society, with a different language, different culture, separated from family and friends.
The refugees who fled war and persecution in Afghanistan arrived in Australia with hopes for a life of peace, freedom and dignity. But they were not given any of the rights that refugees arriving in other countries receive under international law.
Even though there is no doubt that they meet the criteria for refugee status, they were locked in detention centres, treated like criminals for no reason. They are punished for having no choice except to flee from a desperate situation.
The detention centres are really “punishment centres”. They should be closed down.
Those of us who were lucky enough to be released from detention found that we still do not receive our right to freedom and security. We are given only temporary protection visas, which put our lives in limbo for even longer. These visas extend our suffering. It is very hard to settle into the community properly and make a new life for ourselves and our families when we know we could be deported at any time.
We all know that the Australian government is trying to force Afghan asylum seekers to return to Afghanistan because they say the war is over and it is safe. This is indecent and inhuman. There are still many reasons why people who are forced to go back to Afghanistan will face a life-threatening situation.
Among the millions of refugees from Afghanistan, the majority who have come to Australia in the last few years are from the Hazara ethnic group. Hazaras have been persecuted for centuries in Afghanistan — religiously, politically, ethnically. They have faced many massacres by the officials and warlords. And the same people who were responsible for the massacres in the final years of Taliban rule now share power in the current government.
The presence of the international peacekeeping force has not brought peace to Afghanistan — there is still war in the north and east of the country.
And there is starvation and disease. It is getting worse each day as the almost non-existent accommodation, health care, food and other facilities in Afghanistan get overloaded by more and more people returning. Even the UN is saying that no more Afghan refugees should be returned because of the crisis there.
Afghans in the detention centres in Australia, and in Nauru and PNG, must not be forced to return to such inhuman conditions. For a peace-loving and dignified Afghan, the Australian government's offer of bribes to sacrifice ourselves by returning to Afghanistan is an insult.
The current destruction and war in Afghanistan not only makes it impossible for the refugees to return there, it endangers the lives of the millions of people already living there — and this will create more refugees. The militant groups and leaders who were responsible for the destruction in the past want to keep their power and they will continue inflaming the political, ethnic and religious differences in Afghanistan to keep all the nationalists and fundamentalists fighting each other so they can rule over a divided people.
To force us to return to such a situation, and to refuse to acknowledge that no person should have to live in the conditions that still exist in Afghanistan, is cruel and unjust. I urge you all to continue your campaign to change Australian government policy on asylum seekers, and to help stop the government from deporting us back to death and destruction.
The protests and hunger strikes by asylum seekers inside the detention centres, and the increasing criticisms of the Australian government made by ordinary Australian people, the United Nations and other countries about how asylum seekers are treated by this government are justified. And they must become louder.
I, as an Afghan asylum seeker, ask all the organisations working for human rights in Australia and around the world, and all people who care about humanity, to increase the pressure on the Australian government to end mandatory detention, to stop the deportations and to replace temporary protection visas with citizenship rights and allow us to create a peaceful, secure life. That is not too much to ask — it is something that all human beings have a right to.
On behalf of all refugees and asylum seekers inside and outside the detention centres, I thank you for your support.<|>
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 3, 2002.
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