BY MAREE KENNY
"We get this guy out of bed early in the morning...he clings on to the bedstead. My job is to unwind his fingers. Struggling, Shouting. He won't go."
These words, spoken by an officer employed at Sydney's Villawood detention centre during 1999, are part of a report produced by the Coalition for the Protection of Asylum Seekers Facing Deportation (COPAS). The officer is describing the forcible deportation of "Anthony", an Algerian asylum seeker.
"First time I'd seen chemical restraint used", said the officer. "They must have broken about three needles on him." Anthony was taken to the Melbourne airport. Once on the plane, he was handcuffed to the seat. He pulled the seat out of the floor.
"That was it", says the officer. "We got him off the plane and took him back. Next week we did it again. This time he went quietly."
Asylum seekers coming to Australia undergo a refugee determination process that can take anywhere from a few weeks to a decade. Those who fail to be granted refugee status are usually deported. If they don't leave willingly, they are forced to go.
Within the next year, almost 3000 people who came to Australia seeking protection may be sent home. The largest groups of asylum seekers currently threatened by deportation are those from Iran, Afghanistan and East Timor. Iraqi and Afghan refugees living on three-year temporary protection visas are also in danger if their visas aren't renewed.
As a signatory to both the UN refugee convention and the UN convention against torture, one of Australia's fundamental obligations is to avoid sending asylum seekers back to persecution in the country they fled.
In late March, the immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, told the Melbourne Sunday Age, "If we came to the view that somebody might be going back to be tortured or executed, or something of that nature, we wouldn't send them back."
He also said that, although there are claims that some deportees have been returned to persecution, "there's been no evidence produced that this has happened."
Many refugee advocacy groups disagree. They say this government is quick to send asylum seekers back to countries charred by war, or ruled by violent regimes, but slow to acknowledge evidence of persecution put before it.
"Many people wouldn't get to the stage of facing deportation if we had a good determination process", says Frances Milne, a member of COPAS. Milne is critical of the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT), in which a single member is charged with making life or death decisions.
During 2002, Milne made regular trips to the Villawood detention centre to visit Ahad Bilal, a teenage asylum seeker from Pakistan. Bilal and his family had been members of a Pakistan anti-narcotics movement, and he fled his homeland after receiving threats from a drug-smuggling group.
Bilal appeared before the RRT in April, 2002, and told his story. The RRT concluded that, "he has tried to concoct a case motivated by misguided opportunism. He is not a reliable witness." In other words, Bilal wasn't a refugee — he was a liar.
On June 1, 2002, he agreed to be deported to Pakistan rather than face the prospect of a life in detention in Australia.
Within two months, the 18-year-old was dead. Some men had come to his house in Pakistan, tied him to a chair, injected him with drugs and forced him to take poison. Bilal's aunt confirmed his death to friends in Australia.
In March, Milne went to see Ruddock. With her, she took the stories of Anthony, Ahad Bilal and eight other asylum seekers who had either been abused during the deportation process, or returned home to imprisonment or death.
"Ruddock said the Australian embassy in Pakistan had a report, which said Ahad died of heart failure", said Milne. "I said that was nonsense, and told him one of COPAC's members had visited Bilal's aunt and received detailed confirmation of his murder."
Dave Corlett is currently investigating practices of deportation as part of a La Trobe University research project. He is critical of the government's reluctance to monitor returned asylum seekers, but admits that there are logistical problems. "There are issues around people's safety in their home country. If they're in a precarious situation, we don't want to draw more attention to them by knocking on their door."
It seems that passionate lobbying will mean that one large group of asylum seekers will not be deported — the East Timorese.
A June 13 parliamentary announcement indicates that many of the 1500 East Timorese asylum seekers in Australia will be given permanent protection visas. However, Ruddock has stated he will not offer the East Timorese a group humanitarian visa, in case others, such as the Afghans, start lobbying for a similar deal.
The immigration department is convinced that most of the Afghans and Iraqis are no longer refugees because of regime change in their homelands. It is trying to persuade them to return home voluntarily.
Since 1999, almost 8000 Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers have been granted refugee status in Australia. However, under the Coalition's temporary protection policy, these refugees were only offered three-year visas. Many of these visas expire this year, and, most likely, will not be renewed.
For some, living in limbo is unbearable. In February, Afghan refugee Habibullah Wahedy committed suicide after being notified that his temporary refugee status was going to be reassessed.
In an attempt to convince Afghans to leave, the immigration department has produced a four-page "country information report" stating that Afghanistan has a secure and stable system of governance.
Dr William Maley, Australian academic, and author of The Afghanistan War, has written a report on the four-page document. He concludes by saying, "this document should be regarded not simply as misleading, but as highly irresponsible."
Even the United Nations has expressed concern at this government's willingness to return people to unstable, impoverished and lawless countries.
But shouldn't they be sent home if they're not real refugees anymore? Dave Corlett isn't so sure. "I'm not convinced that this issue hinges solely on what the situation is like in a person's home country", he says. "In many cases mandatory detention has had an impact on long term mental health and people's ability to cope once they arrive home."
He is worried that mentally ill people are being dumped back into countries with poor or non-existent health systems and with no family support.
Amnesty International is concerned for one Iranian family profoundly affected by depression who it fears will face "serious human rights abuses" if forcibly deported to Iran.
"Cameron", a teacher in Iran, fled to Australia with his wife and two children after being interrogated for expressing anti-regime opinions. His wife is now in a psychiatric hospital in Adelaide, and Cameron and his two young daughters are severely depressed.
In March, Australia and Iran signed a secret deal, enabling the Australian government to forcibly deport more than 200 failed Iranian asylum seekers, including Cameron and his family. On a June 9 ABC radio program, Ruddock was asked if this deal included assurances from the Iranian government that asylum seekers wouldn't face persecution in Iran. He responded by saying he found the idea of asking for assurance "offensive".
The head of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Justice Louis Joinet, told the same program: "There are no guarantees as to what will happen when they [the detainees] are returned."
Iranian asylum seekers were given the option to leave Australia voluntarily, with $10,000 per family in their pockets, but only eight have accepted the offer. "They will carry me back dead", said one asylum seeker in the Baxter detention centre. "We did not come here for money."
They are now waiting for the forced deportations to begin. I ask if they have ever seen one. "No. We do not see", said the detainee. "The person they want to deport, he is called to the office, maybe to see a nurse, or to get a phone call. But it is a trick, and they are grabbed and put in solitary until deportation."
It is difficult to know what then happens. The immigration department claims that it rarely uses physical force or sedation to remove someone from Australia. In 2000, it told a Senate enquiry that although 1700 people had been deported from Australia during 1998-99, only 12 needed physical or chemical restraint.
"That is bullshit", says Stephen Khan, a Kashmiri asylum seeker who has been detained for almost five years. "I saw 12 people from Somalia being forced to leave, using handcuffs, in 1999. That is just one group, from one detention centre."
In May 2002, an Iranian asylum seeker who had jumped ship in Australia was forcibly returned from the detention centre to the ship. Khan noticed that a broken window and asked a guard what had happened.
"He told me the Iranian man had put his head through the window attempting to stop the deportation", Khan explained. Afer his return to Iran, the man disappeared and is rumoured to be dead.
Milne mentions that physical force was used on a Chinese asylum seeker forcibly deported earlier this year. The woman cut her wrists during the first deportation attempt. A week later she was taken to the airport by five guards and successfully deported — with her wrists bound.
Milne argues that chemical sedation isn't just unpleasant and distressing, but dangerous. "[Deportees] can be landed back into a dangerous country half-conscious. If they're taken into an interview at an airport they can't think straight to defend themselves."
Margaret Piper, CEO of the Refugee Council of Australia, pointed out that many asylum seekers have skills that would be useful to other countries, however, "Australia's capacity to negotiate arrangements with other countries has been diminished by the Tampa and pacific solution. Our reputation isn't good. They don't want to play with us."
The thousands of asylum seekers and refugees threatened with deportation know that they have precious little time left to play games with Australian authorities. These people took a gamble in coming to Australia to seek protection. It seems they have lost.
[Names have been changed to protect asylum seekers. Emma Corcoran is a member of Rural Australians for Refugees. For more information or to get invoved in opposing deportations, visit .]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, June 18, 2003.
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