[Mowlana Vector]

Doublespeak
By: Julian Burnside

Refugee advocate, Julian Burnside, takes aim at weasel words and dangerous "doublespeak".

Outside the realm of high art, language is intended to convey meaning. Ideally, it should do so accurately. Some writers and speakers betray this ideal, and use language as a sham to mask an intellectual void; or worse, as a stalking horse for quite different ideas they dare not acknowledge.

The world is awash with examples of the first sort – empty rhetoric dressed up in false finery, or vacuous new-Age gush, or the yawning post-modern fashion of abstraction piled on abstraction – all devoid of real content. These are the empty calories, the fast food of modern discourse. They are the staple of cheap magazines, talk-back radio and bad art criticism.

More interesting is the second sort: speech which serves to disguise the thing being discussed. Depending on circumstances, it may be called tact, or diplomacy or doublespeak or lying. The proper description depends on the speaker’s purpose.

Tact sets out to avoid giving offence. It suppresses or disguises an unhappy truth to spare the feelings of another. It is falsehood in the service of kindness; a down-payment on future favour. When tact is lifted from the personal to the national scale, it is called diplomacy.

Euphemism does not directly suppress the truth, but disguises it by substituting gentle words for harsher ones. Its intention is benign, if somewhat fey. Its excesses of delicacy inspired Dr Bowdler to strip Shakespeare of any questionable content, removing, as he said, its ‘blemishes’. Euphemism is especially needed where body parts and body functions are the subject: a cheap frock for recognised facts.

Tact is kind; diplomacy is useful; euphemism is harmless and sometimes entertaining. By contrast, doublespeak is dishonest and dangerous.

In his closing address at Nuremberg, US prosecutor Robert Jackson said:

"Nor is the lie direct the only means of falsehood. [the Defendants] all speak with a Nazi double talk with which to deceive the unwary. In the Nazi dictionary of sardonic euphemisms "final solution" of the Jewish problem was a phrase which meant extermination; "special treatment" of prisoners of war meant killing; "protective custody" meant concentration camp; "duty labor" meant slave labor; and an order to "take a firm attitude" or "take positive measures" meant to act with unrestrained savagery."

When Soviet tanks invaded Prague in 1968, the manoeuvre was described as “fraternal internationalist assistance to the Czechoslovak people”.

The war in Vietnam produced such doublespeak expressions as:

Collateral damage meaning killing innocent civilians

Energetic disassembly meaning nuclear explosion

Incontinent ordnance meaning bombs which hit schools and hospitals by mistake

Active defence meaning invasion.

Doublespeak uses language to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into comfortable minds. The Nazi regime were masters at it. Many governments today are enthusiastic imitators.

The victims of incontinent ordnance, or active defence, or fraternal internationalist assistance often flee for safety. A small number of them arrive in Australia asking for help. They commit no offence under Australian or international law by arriving here without an invitation, in order to seek protection. Nonetheless the Australian Government refers to them as “illegals”. This is done for a purpose: these people are immediately locked up without trial. No doubt it seems less offensive to lock up “illegals” than to lock up innocent, traumatised human beings.

They are also disparaged as "queue jumpers": a neat device which falsely suggests two things. First that there is a queue, and second that it is in some way appropriate to stand in line when your life is at risk.

When the “illegals/queue jumpers” arrive, they are "detained" This means that they are locked up without trial, for an indefinite time - typically months or years.

If necessary, they can be detained for the rest of their lives.

Baxter detention centre is surrounded by a 9000 volt electric fence. But in the doublespeak of the Department of Immigration, this is an “energised courtesy fence”.

Solitary confinement, which is regularly used, is called ‘separation detention’ or ‘the management unit’.

If detainees are driven to the desperate extreme of suicide or self-harm, this is disparaged as “inappropriate behaviour” designed to “manipulate the Government”. By that doublespeak, the victim becomes the offender.

In 1946, George Orwell wrote Politics and Language, in which he exposed the deceits and devices of doublespeak. He might have thought that it would lose its power once its workings were revealed. But he would be disappointed. Language is as powerful now as in 1933: it can hide shocking truth, it can deceive a nation.

If we value the truth, we need to watch our language.

Source
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ALSO SEE
True Lies, Double Speak and John Howard

[inward]

Religion factored in to refugee policy: PM


The Government's immigration policy contains no Christianity-specific clauses but must take religious conversions into account, Prime Minister John Howard says.

The cases of 30 of Australia's longest-serving immigration detainees are under review, some of them because they have converted to another religion, including Christianity, since arriving in the country.

Mr Howard says the Government's policy is always under review, although there will be no major changes.

He says that while the policy is not biased in favour of Christians, concerns about religious persecution are taken into account.

"We're not in the business of saying 'well we're going to give a special preference'," Mr Howard said.

"We are nonetheless concerned when people can demonstrate that by dint of having embraced a particular belief they may suffer persecution if they go back to a particular country - that's always been there."

"The idea that we've introduced something that is peculiar only to people that convert to Christianity, that's not correct," Mr Howard added.

More conversions

But Labor's Laurie Ferguson is sceptical.

"To basically have a situation here now where a great possibility is given to those people who convert, I think we're going to find a few more conversions quiet frankly," Mr Ferguson said.

The chairman of the Family First Party, Peter Harris, has also questioned the review of immigration detainees who have converted to Christianity.

Mr Harris is concerned some detainees may convert just so they can stay in Australia.

"Let's not underestimate persecution that occurs in different countries but I think that if the Government makes decisions on the basis of religion as opposed to having a process of compassion and expediency, there are some real dangers in causing people to go down that pathway," he said.

source:abcnews

This post has been edited by inward: 21 March 2005 - 02:24 PM

[idriys]

inward, on Mar 21 2005, 02:22 PM, said:

Religion factored in to refugee policy: PM
The Government's immigration policy contains no Christianity-specific clauses but must take religious conversions into account, Prime Minister John Howard says.

The cases of 30 of Australia's longest-serving immigration detainees are under review, some of them because they have converted to another religion, including Christianity, since arriving in the country.

Mr Howard says the Government's policy is always under review, although there will be no major changes.

He says that while the policy is not biased in favour of Christians, concerns about religious persecution are taken into account.

"We're not in the business of saying 'well we're going to give a special preference'," Mr Howard said.

"We are nonetheless concerned when people can demonstrate that by dint of having embraced a particular belief they may suffer persecution if they go back to a particular country - that's always been there."

"The idea that we've introduced something that is peculiar only to people that convert to Christianity, that's not correct," Mr Howard added.

More conversions

But Labor's Laurie Ferguson is sceptical.

"To basically have a situation here now where a great possibility is given to those people who convert, I think we're going to find a few more conversions quiet frankly," Mr Ferguson said.

The chairman of the Family First Party, Peter Harris, has also questioned the review of immigration detainees who have converted to Christianity.

Mr Harris is concerned some detainees may convert just so they can stay in Australia.

"Let's not underestimate persecution that occurs in different countries but I think that if the Government makes decisions on the basis of religion as opposed to having a process of compassion and expediency, there are some real dangers in causing people to go down that pathway," he said.

source:abcnews

I reckon them to be opportunists and, therefore, the very essence of the type of person who should be refused entry. Question: As apparent kafirs, is one supposed to go and kill them while they are here, in Australia, or should one leave them to their fate, when they arrive at that time and place which awauts us all?

[Mowlana Vector]

Immigration Detention Centres Inhumane: APS


(image courtesy of Bill Leak, The Australian)

IMMIGRATION detention centres are inhumane and create mental illness that leaves detainees unfit for normal life, the Australian Psychological Society (APS) said today.

APS president Dr Amanda Gordon told a public forum in Sydney the detention centres create an "enormous mental illness burden" on society, because the detainees are left unable to cope with a return to normal life.

"There is good clear physiological evidence that keeping people in detention ... is punishing in that it causes mental illness," Dr Gordon told the forum, titled Human Rights and Mental Health in Australia.

"Detention is inhumane because it keeps people away from other people but it also actually creates mental illness."

Her comments follow the detention of Cornelia Rau, a 39-year-old permanent Australian resident from Sydney, who was wrongly held at the Baxter detention centre for several months.

The former Qantas flight attendant, who was listed as missing in August last year, has been diagnosed as suffering a severe psychiatric disorder. She was released from Baxter in February and taken to an Adelaide psychiatric hospital.

The APS has previously urged the federal government to broaden the scope of its inquiry into Ms Rau's detention to include a review of the management of emotional and behavioural disturbance in immigration detention.

NSW opposition mental health spokeswoman Gladys Berejiklian told the forum NSW had one of the worst records on mental health in Australia.

Ms Berejiklian said she had been "floored" by the extent of mental health problems in the state after being appointed to the role six weeks ago.

"The magnitude of the problem is huge," she said.

"Whereas the national picture is quite appalling, NSW is the worst of all the mainland states in relation to providing these hospitals for psychiatric patients."

Ms Berejiklian said 14.1 beds were allocated for mental health patients per 1,000 people, some of the worst data in Australia.

Many community-based mental health clinics also were being closed down, forcing patients to go to nearby hospitals for treatment, she said.

"It's about the worst thing you can do ... mentally ill people associate hospitals with the worst episodes of their illness," she said.

She said the NSW government did not have a dedicated mental health minister, with those issues included in the portfolio of Health Minister Morris Iemma.

Ms Berejiklian said as long as mental health was included in the NSW government's health portfolio, it would remain a third or fourth priority.

AAP

Weblink
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SEE ALSO
Australian Psychological Society

Detainees Who Find Christ May Be Allowed To Stay

[Mowlana Vector]

Human Cargo
Reviewer: James Bradley

Human cargo: a journey among refugees
By Caroline Moorehead
Chatto & Windus, $44.95

I recently found myself in a conversation about several of the writers who have spent time or are still held in Australia's immigration detention centres. While attempting to explain the inconsistencies and capriciousness of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs' procedures, I mentioned in passing that one of them had come via Indonesia. "Of course he could have stayed there," said my friend, himself the child of Jewish refugees resettled in the late 1940s. "Coming here was a choice."

In the last decade, and particularly since the events leading up to the 2001 election, opinions such as these have become commonplace in Australia, reiterated so often as to become absolutions of a kind, allowing the speaker to dissociate themselves from the broader question of our treatment of asylum-seekers.

His words came back to me while reading Human Cargo, Caroline Moorehead's remarkable account of her three years among the world's refugees, a book that does much to make real the plight of those made homeless by war, persecution and economic need, and almost as much to problematise the apparently simple distinction on which it rests, that of the "good" refugee - those with a valid claim of persecution - and the "bad" refugee (or "economic migrant") who are not fleeing persecution but merely seeking a better life.

Given the bitterness of our domestic debate on the issue, Moorehead's book can sometimes seem curiously dispassionate, and yet the voices of her subjects - Liberian teenagers trapped in Cairo, Africans in the UK, Ivorians in Guinea, Afghani returnees and many others - say more than she or any commentator ever could. One by one, sometimes together but usually alone, they relate stories that challenge the reader to revise their easy notions of what it might mean to be displaced, of its causes and its costs.

Set against the stories she finds, the easy distinctions in which the political debate in Australia and other developed countries trade become less and less persuasive, a horribly stunted and almost criminally inadequate framework that seems to operate in a vacuum of its own making.

Nonetheless, many of the stories Moorehead finds are inspiring. Time and again, the people she speaks to exhibit a determination to keep living, to learn, to succeed - which is humbling to hear. And yet simultaneously, the human cost of their displacement begins to take shape, the way it fractures time and self, leaving the displaced caught somewhere in between a past they cannot escape and a future that seems unable to begin.

Trapped thus, it is also possible to glimpse how easy it is for this determination to give way, to be betrayed by the reality of their plight. Some grow embittered, some return, only to be killed or disappear, others fall victim to accident or violence in the places to which they have fled while waiting for their chance to begin again, some choose to take their own lives or go mad.

While Human Cargo is not so much a polemic as a testament, an act of bearing witness, it is also inescapably a plea for a more humane response to the plight of refugees worldwide. At the beginning of 2004, 17 million people were assessed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as being "of concern". Of these, perhaps 9.7 million were refugees, just under a million were asylum-seekers, close to 4.5 million were internally displaced and more than a million were stateless. Almost half were children, with 5 per cent of them unaccompanied by adults. Of these 17 million, 55,000 were resettled in 2003, mostly in the US, Australia and Canada.

A problem on such a scale, with its attendant human and economic costs, should demand concerted action, particularly by those nations that are most able to bear the cost. And yet most of the world's refugees end up in those countries least able to afford them, while governments in developed countries such as Australia and many European nations have cynically promoted climates of fear and hostility towards the displaced for political gain.

Refugee matters worldwide, have, as one UNHCR official Moorehead interviews says, become "profoundly dysfunctional . . . large sums are spent keeping small numbers of refugees out, and small sums on protecting large numbers of refugees in distant camps".

But as my friend's remark so clearly demonstrates, the problem is a deeper one, one of comprehension, made possible by a very particular failure of the moral imagination. And while Moorehead does not pretend there are easy answers to the problem, this immensely moving and frequently upsetting book does demand of her readers that they look again, and listen.

James Bradley is editor of Sydney PEN Centre's Quarterly magazine. His third novel, The Resurrectionist, will be published by Picador next year.

Source
==============================================

[Mowlana Vector]

The Five Star Asylum journo(known to his mates as Pembo), is now the newly appointed Editor of NSW's highest circulating (tabloid) newspaper
===================================

Be Bash, Be Bold, and Make It Sell
By: Samantha Maiden
The Australian, The Media Section (7 April 2005)



David Penberthy knows how to shock, outrage and be controversial. He did it when he discovered an old photo of Alexander Downer in a fishnet stocking and leopard-print high heel. The now Minister for Foreign Affairs had agreed to pose as part of a harmless publicity stunt - but Penberthy decided it needed wider circulation, and Downer's foot has been a constant joy for cartoonists ever since.

He did it again when he examined detention centres under the heading "Five-Star Asylum", and when he covered a federal election by travelling in a hotted-up old Holden to meet voters. His weekly columns are often contentious but rarely boring.

Now he is being asked to bring those talents to News Limited's most important tabloid, Sydney's The Daily Telegraph, as editor.

News Limited (which also publishes The Australian) has indicated that by plucking the 35-year-old journalist from the editorial floor and skipping the usual run as a deputy editor somewhere out of town, it is looking for someone who is going to cause a stir - and by so doing possibly arrest a declining circulation.

Many of his former colleagues believe News is looking for a return to the good old days when, under Col Allan, The Telegraph regularly upset vast tracts of the Sydney establishment and commanded attention by being bold and brash.

A law school drop-out with a taste for meat, beer and cigarettes, News Limited's youngest editor began his career as a cadet journalist for Adelaide's The Advertiser in 1992.

After he signed off his last column on Friday with a love letter to blokey tears, Penberthy's appointment was announced to colleagues in the afternoon and on Sunday he stepped straight into the job of editing NSW's biggest-selling newspaper. He says it was only on Thursday that he "got the call and went upstairs. The great thing about News Limited is you don't have long-winded meetings about things.

"Someone compared [the job] to drinking water out of a firehose," he says. "It's not until you start doing a job like this that you suddenly realise why you could never find your editor. It's those other demands that when you're a reporter you don't think as much about - production, marketing, circulation."

For some, Penberthy's age and Adelaide past provide cause for reservations about his elevation, but he laughs at The Weekend Australian's decision to lead his appointment announcement with: "A 35-year-old journalist from Adelaide was yesterday appointed editor of Sydney's largest-selling newspaper."

"I thought the intro should have read: 'Incredibly important newspaper to be edited by idiot savant from Snowtown' - that seemed to be the flavour," he says.

"The thing that reassures me, if I start to get the staggers, is I can look across the room at people who know exactly what they are doing and why they are doing it."

Penberthy says he's been lucky to work with some of the best editors in the country - his first boss in Adelaide was Peter Blunden, now editing Australia's biggest selling daily, The Herald Sun, and while an Advertiser correspondent in Canberra, he was handpicked by former Daily Telegraph editor Steve Howard to become NSW state political reporter in 1999.

It was in Adelaide that Penberthy first spied the famous photograph of the Foreign Minister in fishnet tights; Downer had agreed to pose for a match-the-legs competition in The Advertiser.

Blunden recalls first meeting Penberthy when the latter arrived to interview him in 1990 for On Dit, the student newspaper he was editing at Adelaide University.

Blunden rates this early journalistic foray poorly. "Average; I give it about a four out of 10. If you put the slightest 'um' into a sentence, he used it -- and I thought that was a bit cheeky," he says. "After the interview, I said, 'Turn the tape recorder off.' I said, 'What are you studying?' I recall him saying law. As a typical newspaper person, I said: 'Just what we need, another lawyer.' I asked him if he'd thought about journalism and he said he hadn't given it much thought. He'd been a bit cheeky at the student newspaper, but I thought we could knock those edges off."

In a cadet interview some months later, Penberthy surprised Blunden and chief-of-staff Kym Tilbrook, who had resolved to give him a hard time about why he wanted to work at the paper, given the student newspaper's passion for bashing The Advertiser, when Penberthy responded: "Because I know I've got to write for my market."

It was at Adelaide University - where Penberthy's brief flirtation with Trotskyites culminated in a university protest during which he admits shouting: "Tax the rich, not the poor" next to the charcuterie counter in the David Jones Food Hall - that he first fell foul of political correctness.

A mock recruitment ad for the Young Liberals that Penberthy prepared as a political satire for the university's Orientation Week Guide featured an image of an Aboriginal elder and the headline: "This man wants your land - only the Young Liberals will keep him in the park where he belongs." He was promptly ordered to appear before the Equal Opportunity Commission.

The furore made the newspapers, with Penberthy later admitting: "It wasn't funny, and it showed how a bunch of white smart-arses who didn't know any Aborigines would have no idea what would offend them, a point made embarrassingly clear when they came to our office and politely complained."

The affair was echoed a decade or so later, when his "Five-star asylum" front page, claiming asylum-seekers had access to "DVDs, pay-TV, yoga classes, flower arranging and driver education", sparked anger and riots inside detention centres.

David Marr, who tackled Penberthy about the piece on the ABC's Media Watch, says it particularly concerned him that someone who was "a good journalist, not a flake" would write such a piece.

"He reported there was a swimming pool at Villawood [a Sydney detention centre] when there was no swimming pool at Villawood, there was a plastic sheet you can stand on and get hosed down," he says. "But I'm told ... that as a result of his embarrassment he has become a regular visitor to Villawood and has taken an interest in the issue, and I think it's wonderful for the community that someone like that is the editor of The Daily Telegraph."

While Penberthy doesn't advertise his Villawood visits, Marr is correct. Challenged to visit the detention centre by refugee advocate Ngareta Rossell, he has since lined up to visit detainees more than 30 times, forging a friendship with an Iranian refugee.

Rossell says: "I rang him up and said, 'Look, I visit Villawood and why don't you come with me.' He paused for a minute and he said OK. I picked him up outside News Limited [headquarters] and I took him out there and I introduced him to a couple of detainees and he got along very well. I really admired him because he came out and said it, that he had written the "five-star" piece, and then he wrote some pieces saying that refugees were people too."

His former boss, mentor and ally Campbell Reid, who is moving on to be general manager at News Limited's Queensland Newspapers, believes Penberthy's key ability is to "bring serious issues alive in a really accessible way. He has an ability to bring an issue alive in a way that makes readers say, 'That's dead right, that's exactly what I think.'

"He had this idea that he'd go and buy this wild old car to cover the federal election, and if it broke down all the better - he could engage with people about how to fix it. He proposed the idea thinking I would say no and, of course, I said yes, but not expecting he would buy the most ridiculous car in Australia - a turbo-charged Holden."

Penberthy recalls Reid telling him on his appointment as opinion editor that he didn't want to look at the pages at 9pm at night and think, "Bloody hell, I better get the defibrillators on it."

News Limited's editorial business development manager Steve Howard, a former editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Advertiser, says Penberthy is now facing his toughest test. "It's the greatest challenge in Australian newspaper journalism," he says. "The battle between the Telegraph and the SMH is legendary."

News chief executive John Hartigan says the circulation challenge facing all newspapers demands "relevance".

"I think that [Penberthy] has all the attributes that make a great editor: he's intensely curious, he has a healthy scepticism, he's got moral courage and a passion for the truth," he says. "People are tired of some of the hypocrisy and the political correctness gone mad, and they want some straight talking commonsense."

Penberthy has a big job ahead of him. Arresting The Daily Telegraph's falling circulation is one reason News management decided an editorial change was needed. Weekday circulation in the 12 months to December last year, according to the last audit, stood at 390,410. In December 2000 it was 412,190. For Saturdays the figures are 339,469 in 2000 and 337,263 now.

Penberthy describes the newspaper's recent anti-bullying campaign as a good example of its "commitment to what motivates the minds of mainstream Australians".

However, his attitude hasn't always pleased everyone, including NSW Premier Bob Carr, whom he once labelled a philosopher king determined to enter "self-imposed intellectual exile".

"I came across David one frosty morning on the back steps of Parliament House mid-winter 2001," Carr recalls. "It was the day after he'd written a particularly caustic piece on my leadership style. As I recall David was eating a cream bun and smoking a cigarette - he called it 'breakfast'.

"I gave him a sharp critique of the piece - juvenile, lazy, undergraduate, gratuitously insulting. Quick as a tabloid editor he asked me if I thought there were any bad bits in it."

Penberthy, long regarded as a good bloke, now faces the task putting his own editorial stamp on The Daily Telegraph. "Obviously it's about breaking news, it's about exclusives, the best pictures, it's about making people laugh, but it's also about knowing why you put a story in the paper," he says. "The bottom line is you've got to sell more papers. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about."
==========================================

ALSO SEE
Quest For Readers Takes Editors Down Different Paths

5 Star Beat Up

Detention: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Making Connections: Reporting Refugee Policy

Survey of Media Coverage of Refugee and Asylum Issues

Enfant Telegraph: David Penberthy In Conversation

[Mowlana Vector]

Refugee Journalism Student Honoured

[Mowlana Vector]

Academics Take on Immigration Detention Investigation


( File photo, ABC Online)

Academics are beginning their own inquiry into immigration detention in Australia by taking evidence in Port Augusta, in South Australia, at the end of the month.

The Australian Council of Heads of Social Work Schools says the move has arisen from community frustration with the Federal Government's handling of the Cornelia Rau affair.

Linda Briskman from the School of Science and Planning at Melbourne's RMIT University says they will take evidence from anyone who has had involvement with detainees in the Baxter detention centre.


(image courtesy of projectsafe.com)

"We're expecting that in that location it will be mainly visitors to detention. People who live in Port Augusta, Port Pirie, Whyalla and surrounds," she said.

"We'll be giving the results to the Government and also making them available widely. Our report will be on the public record."

Ms Briskman says the gathering of their evidence will be broad-based.

"I think the comparison is the Stolen Generation inquiry into Indigenous children who were removed from their families," she said.

"There'll be a lot of oral testimony, confidential oral testimony and research-based evidence that people will be able to refer to for a long time."

SOURCE
==========================================

FURTHER READING
UN Urged To Investigate Nauru Detainees

ALSO SEE

Councillors Emerge From Baxter Dazed, Inspired

Fatima Erfani: Why Did She Die?


Anna's Story


The Cage House: Australia Welcomes Shayan Saeed Badraie

Letters To Ali

[Mowlana Vector]

Spell Me Freedom



A remarkable movie debut by media students and refugees from Perth

From a collaboration between media students and refugees comes a sharply crafted short story of life in Australia's detention camps and its darkest side: lip stitching, drinking shampoo, the desperation of life inside and the dilemma of an escape, followed by the inevitable post-traumatic flashbacks.

More Details Here ...

[Mowlana Vector]

'This Is Not Detention, This Is Hell'


"When I'm doing positive things, it brings peace to my heart" ...
Ali Mullaie, a Nauru detainee, keeps busy teaching computing skills at
Nauru college. (Photo: Mike Gordon)

Michael Gordon met the last 54 asylum seekers held in Nauru and found despair, depression and a sense of injustice. He also found the triumph of the human spirit.

It's mid-morning on Tuesday and the tiny, near-bankrupt island of Nauru is, predictably enough, sweltering and enduring a power failure. In the Nauru College computer room, the heat and humidity are more oppressive than out in the open air, but the students are so engrossed they ignore the bell that signals playtime.

Their attention is fixed on Ali Mullaie and his battery-powered laptop computer as he gently explains the basics of desktop publishing. It is almost 10 minutes before he realises the time and calls the lesson to a halt.

For three years, 22-year-old Mullaie has contributed his time and energy to Nauru's cash-strapped education system, receiving no pay in return. What is more remarkable is that, just four years ago, Mullaie could barely speak English and could not use a computer.

Refugees who have since settled in Australia and New Zealand credit him with equipping them for the transition; Australians who began sending letters of support to those on Nauru call him an inspiration; and kids across the island, with affection, just call him Ali.

Mullaie is one of the last 54 asylum seekers who remain stranded on Nauru under the Government's "Pacific solution" to the problem of unwanted boat arrivals (a problem that has disappeared since 2001), their pleas for refugee status either rejected or, in the case of two Iraqis, pending.

While many appear psychologically spent and exist on a diet of sleeping tablets and other medication, Mullaie is one of several who attempt to keep bad thoughts at bay by staying busy. "When I'm doing positive things, good things, it brings peace to my heart," he says.

This week, Mullaie and the others on Nauru were finally able to plead their case directly to the outside world after Nauru's Minister for Internal Affairs, David Adeang, allowed the Herald unfettered access to the asylum seeker camp and its population of broken souls.

It had been a long time coming. Under the former Nauru government, led by Rene Harris, requests for visas by journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates were consistently rejected.

Adeang relaxed the camp rules in March, allowing the asylum seekers freedom to leave the camp without escorts in daylight hours.

Arriving at the State House camp, I am met by the officer-in-charge, Shamel Mahmoodi, of the International Organisation for Migration. He is a handsome Afghani man with an engaging smile. The conditions are harsh, but it seems clear that the organisation does its best to minimise the hardships of those in its care.

This much is suggested by the camp's terminology. It is an "offshore processing centre", not a jail; the residents are "migrants", not illegals; the security people are for the "safety" of the migrants and the "security" of the assets.

There are 150 staff (including 89 locals) at this centre and the Topside Camp, which is ready for use in the unlikely event another flotilla of boats should appear on the horizon. "Migrants" have access to 24-hour medical services and receive a $50 phone card every two months, a clothing allowance and other essentials.

The impression is that it is not the camp regime that is repressive, but the combination of the harsh environment, the remoteness, the loneliness and the indefinite nature of the detention.

For those who will ultimately succeed in their claims - and migration agent Marion Le has no doubt that mistakes have been made and the majority who remain deserve protection - there is also the conviction that they have been wronged. The sense of injustice eats away at the soul.

As Hassan Ali, 22, puts it: "We heard that there this one country, Australia, who is accepting people who are refugees, so we decided to go Australia and after very dangerous and very difficult and long journey we reached Australia and now we trapped in Nauru ... It is very hard for us."

I meet Mullaie that afternoon. It is school holidays, but he is waiting outside Nauru College in the hope the principal might drop by. He wants to make sure the school's computers will be ready when the new term starts.

He tells me the main threads of his story: how he was forced to flee his home in the Afghan district of Jaghoori in 2001, leaving behind his parents and six younger siblings. There was no time to take family pictures or for proper goodbyes, and he now struggles to visualise his siblings.

He also speaks of the pain of being repeatedly rejected, and bidding farewell to friends whose applications for refugee status have been accepted. "For 24 hours, or two days, or three days [after the others left], my heart has been burning, feeling it's the end of my life," he says. "But, unfortunately, it is not one time, two times, three times. Many times it has happened, especially the last time."

The last time was the hardest because Mullaie was convinced he would be accepted. So, too, it seems, was just about everybody else inside the camp. It was May 15 last year when 44 Afghans received their decisions. Forty were accepted and Mullaie was one of four rejected. "I really could feel like all my body been numb," he recalls. One of the staff sensed his distress and offered to help him leave the area. "I said: 'No, I can walk.' But I tried to walk and it was very hard."

Mahmoodi, also an Afghan refugee, was told the decision by radio and came immediately to offer support, counselling Mullaie: "It's not the end of the world. You're still young, with your whole future ahead of you. Maybe this is God's will."

Mullaie asked to be taken to the internet cafe and conveyed the news to Le, the migration agent who had visited the camp weeks earlier to help asylum seekers prepare their applications. "You may recognise me," the email began. "I told you my story why I am not being able to return back to my country. You hugged me and cried with me when you heard my story. It is with regret to inform you that today ... I received a negative decision."

Indeed, Mullaie made quite an impression on Le during her stay. He was the one always helping others and offering to make her tea when he was not teaching. "I remember the night before I was leaving, saying to him: 'Ali, does anyone look after you? You're running around looking after everyone. Can I do anything for you?"' she says. "And he said: 'Can you just put your arms around me like a mum?' So I gave him a hug and he absolutely disintegrated. For half an hour he just cried. Then he told me how hard it was to hold himself together every day when he doesn't know where his parents are and how he worried about a missing brother."

Word of his rejection soon reached Nauru College, where some Afghan children had told the teachers they had been accepted and Mullaie had not. Elvira Benjamin was among the teachers who tried to console Mullaie. "It's probably not your time, but Nauru College needs you," she told him. "Your time will come."

I meet Mullaie again, when I spend a day at the State House camp, talking to those who wished to see me. He introduces me to the other asylum seekers, makes cups of tea and acts as interpreter for some young Afghan men.

The theme running through all the conversations is the same: these people are running on empty, their reserves of hope, resilience and drive long gone. But there are also the specific problems, such as being the only teenage girl in the camp and, under Afghan culture, having to be escorted everywhere by your family. That is the lot of 14-year-old Ilham Rehmati. Or being the only Afghan girl in a primary class of Nauruans, having seen all your friends depart for Australia or New Zealand.

When the interviews are over, I go to Mullaie's small room, made even cosier because he has inherited a desk, bookshelf and other objects from those who have won freedom. He would still like to go to Australia. "I'd like to say thank you face-to-face to the people who are helping us, to show them that the person writing to you is not different [to the real person]."

Unlike many, perhaps most of the residents, he chooses not to take sleeping tablets. When he cannot sleep, he writes poems in Dari and then translates them into English. After his rejection, he wrote:

I shouted and no one heard my cries,

The universe laughs at my cries,

This load has broken my backs,

Every joint in the body is cracking.

In his darker moments, Mullaie fears he has been penalised for trying to improve himself in his years on Nauru. In one email to Le, he noted how an interviewing officer looked surprised at his neat handwriting and appearance (he went to the interview in his school uniform). "In Afghanistan I did not have the opportunity to educate myself because of bad circumstances, so when I came to Nauru Camp, I got the opportunity," he wrote.

Certificates in his room confirm he has completed courses in electronics and teaching. Letters from Nauru College testify to his "kind assistance", his expertise as a computer teacher and his willingess to "offer his services for the benefit of the children". Nauru College's principal, Floria Detabene, says: "We don't have any [asylum seeker] students any more. But he wanted to stay and help our students any way he could. We don't treat him as a refugee any more. We treat him as a local."

She says Mullaie used to show his sadness. "He used to become very pale and we'd know he'd been stressing out and psychologically feeling down, but as the years go by, I think because we made him feel at home, he started improving."

But there are also times when Mullaie locks himself in his room and cries. It is only on my last day on Nauru, after I have watched him in the classroom during the power failure, that he confides he, too, is close to breaking point and wonders out loud how much longer he can go on.


(courtesy of AGE online)

Ali Jan Jafari

Ali Mullaie translates for Qurban Ali Changizi, 25, who insists he has been wrongly deemed to be from Pakistan. "The Afghan embassy can prove he is from Afghanistan. All of his family is there: father, mother, sisters, brothers," says Mullaie.

"He left Afghanistan because his life [was] endangered. He needs help. He is young and he is tired of waiting here. It is too long in this detention centre. How is it that thousands of refugees from Afghanistan are living in Australia, and 29 people from Afghanistan are left here and rejected. It's not fair."

Muhammad Faisal

Muhammad Faisal, 25, is one of two Iraqis who are still waiting for decisions on their claims for refugee status. He has a problem with his eyes that makes it hard to read or watch TV, a problem he believes could be treated in Australia.

"I am enduring all this just to get freedom and be treated as a human being. If I didn't have a problem I would go back [to Iraq] and would not endure this terrible situation here. I don't want human rights to be given to me. I want animal rights."

Qurban Ali Changizi

Mullaie translates also for Ali Jan Jafari: "I was 21, but now I'm 24." Adds Mullaie: "He wants to tell the people of Australia that day by day he is losing his mind." Jafari's parents are dead and his only brother also left Afghanistan, but he has no idea where he is. "He has psychological problem and taking tablets and it is not helping him." Recently Jafari stepped in front of a car during day leave from the camp but was pulled clear by one of his friends. "His mind is not working," says Mullaie.

Ali Hussaini and family

When Ali Hussaini was interviewed about his claim for refugee status, he chose to speak in English, believing this would help convince the case officer he had not been wasting the years he had been detained on Nauru with his wife and two children.

The decision backfired. Hussaini says he was told he spoke like an Australian and must be from Pakistan. "I learnt my English here, working in the kitchen," he says. "I always asked the [Australian] cooks: 'How you say this? What is this?"'

Hussaini says he was also tutored by his friend Zakil Hussain Jaffari, whose claim for asylum was accepted by New Zealand last year. He says several refugees now in Australia and New Zealand could verify his status as an Afghan.

His daughter, Zahra, was three when they arrived at the camp. Now she is nearly seven and she also speaks English like an Australian. "She is also Pakistani?" he asks.

Hussaini and his wife, Batool, try to keep busy with embroidery, but he says their children are desperately lonely. Zahra says her friends in the camp have gone to Australia or New Zealand. "And I want to go with them."

Abuozar Al-Salem

Abuozar al-Salem was 19 when he attempted to come to Australia after fleeing Iraq. He is now 23. His brother, Fares, is an Australian citizen who lives with his wife and four children in country Victoria. Fares, who fled Iraq after the first Gulf War, offered to take responsibility for his younger brother but the request was denied.

Abuozar says he was not believed during his first interview when he said he had a brother in Australia and does not know why his second application was rejected.

He thanks those Australians who have written to him expressing their support, but says: "This is not detention. This is hell." The asylum seekers are now free to leave the camp during the day, but he adds: "This is not freedom. This is half-freedom.'

Source
=====================================

RELATED READING
Nauru Child Detainees Running on Empty

Drowning In Propaganda

[Mowlana Vector]

76 Refused From Tampa Now Kiwis


Bartool Basiri and sister Masoom.
(Photo: John Selkirk)

Seventy-six of the Tampa refugees refused entry to Australia became New Zealand citizens yesterday, with Prime Minister Helen Clark attending a ceremony in Auckland to congratulate the "new Kiwis".

The group included the so-called Tampa boys, 37 teenagers and young men who fled Taliban-ruled Afghanistan on their own and were cared for in NZ. They have been joined by 207 family members.

NZ accepted 150 of the 433 asylum seekers rescued from a sinking Indonesian fishing boat off Christmas Island in August 2001 by the Norwegian ship Tampa and refused entry by Australia.

Of the Australian Government, Mehdi Mohammadi, 21, said: "I don't mind, that's their policy. But I'm so happy to be a New Zealand citizen."

Azizullah Mussa, now a top student at Selwyn College in Auckland, described Ms Clark as a "respected and beloved friend".

"We arrived at Mangere (Auckland's refugee centre) and it was a good place," he said. People took care of us, accepted us and supported us. A number of people came into our lives that showed great humility."

Ms Clark said: "Something that began as a tragedy has ended up with us accepting many new Kiwis that are going to contribute all their talents and their energy and their culture and their ideas to our country."

Dominion Post, AAP

Weblink
====================================

BACKGROUND INFO
What Is MV Tampa?


(courtesy of Nicholson cartoons)

Tampa's Asylum-Seekers: Australia Must Fulfil Its International Obligations

[Mowlana Vector]

A Further 15 Quiet Departures At Baxter

The Immigration Department has quietly released more detainees, with 15 people set free from the Baxter detention centre at Port Augusta in the past week. Some of them had been held for up to five years.

Members of the group were invited to reapply for refugee status and received three-year temporary protection visas from the Department of Immigration on the basis of their conversion to Christianity or because of new information about the countries they had left.

The refugees had all been denied visas in the past and most had appealed to the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Federal Court. They included five Iranian Christians, who the Federal Government now accepts would face death if forcibly returned to Iran, and refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Refugee advocates said 10 detainees were released on Tuesday and another five on Thursday, with possibly more to be let out next week. The group did not include Australia's longest-serving detainee, Peter Qasim.

A pastoral care worker from Port Augusta said the releases followed a breakthrough last year when 86 Afghans had their claims reviewed because of new information about their country. Some of those who were rejected in that review were among those released this week, she said.

Mira Wroblewski, spokeswoman for Rural Australians for Refugees, said "people are being slowly released under the radar, without (the Government) really admitting that they are softening their policy in any way".

An Immigration Department spokesman said yesterday that 10 detainees were released this week. "In these cases, the minister decided to allow new visa applications to be lodged because of significant changes," he said.

About 120 long-term asylum-seekers remain in Baxter.

Source
=================================

[Mowlana Vector]

Accept Nauru Detainees As Migrants: UN

The Federal Government will be asked this week to find a humanitarian solution for 54 asylum seekers who are still in offshore detention on Nauru.

The request will come from Neill Wright, the regional representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, who visited the island last week and found the detainees to be in a desperate state.

"They are isolated. They are very desperate. They don't know what will happen in their future and it is probably the uncertainty, more than anything else, that is damaging for their mental health," Mr Wright said.

Five Afghan children and two Iraqi women were of particular concern to him.

"This is not a place to bring up your children and it is no a place where you can plan for any future."

He suggested the asylum seekers, whose claims for refugee status have been rejected, be accepted as migrants by Australia or other countries, with the numbers having no impact on refugee quotas.

The 54 are the last of more than 1200 asylum seekers who have been through Nauru since 2001, with more than 700 being resettled and more than 470 voluntarily returned to their country of origin.

Mr Wright said the 54 who were left were "between a rock and a hard place".

Source
===============================================================

RELATED STORY
Nobel Laureate Calls For Charity

[Mowlana Vector]

I Don’t know Why U Think That Is Funny: Vanstone



... Alvarez to Australia: 'To err is human'

Our Cruelty to Detainees Must Stop

Scared of Deportation? Tatts Are Just the Ticket

[Mowlana Vector]

Department's Culture of Fear



Something is very wrong inside the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs.

Doctors, lawyers and social workers have been saying it for years, with the occasional Coalition backbencher agreeing, and in parliament this week, Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone at last said it too.

In the wake of two scandals involving the mistreatment of a pair of Australian women at the hands of DIMIA, Vanstone admitted to a culture of defensiveness in her department.

The problem, essentially a refusal to admit when it is wrong, was manifest in those sections that dealt with mandatory detention, and needed to be fixed, Vanstone said.

"It is quite clear that that culture - generically, talking about those particular divisions that deal with [mandatory detention] - needs attention," Vanstone said in answer to a Senate question from Labor's Robert Ray.

A closed-door investigation under way by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer is looking into the apparent mistakes by the department in the cases of Cornelia Rau and Vivian Young.

John Howard has said it appeared Young was treated "unfairly".

Most glaringly, Young's wrongful deportation to the Philippines in 2001 was realised by a department officer in 2003 but nothing was done to find her. The Palmer inquiry's job is to decide how and why this could happen, Howard and Vanstone said.

Inquirer has spoken to a former senior immigration officer whose experiences at the department offer a few clues. The former officer in the onshore protection group resigned in mid-2001 - about the time Young was deported. "There was a culture of fear there," says former officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"[Senior management] said things like, 'There will be no mistakes ... if you or your staff make a mistake, I'll come down very heavily on you, and if not me, then someone up the chain in Canberra,"' the former officer says. "And I had considered there to be political interference [to speed] the protection visa process, from Canberra and from the minister's office."

The minister in 2001 was Philip Ruddock, but the departmental heads remained in place during the transition to Vanstone in 2003.

When Rau was wrongfully detained last year, the systems were practically unchanged.

In the Rau and Young cases, immigration officers failed to discover the identity of both women, with the result that two Australians were imprisoned as illegal immigrants.

Advocacy group A Just Australia points out that questions of identity are at the heart of the department's role in determining if asylum-seekers are entitled to protection.

"If Immigration could not tell that these women were Australian, how can they tell if someone is a Pakistani or an Afghan?" asks the group's Kate Gauthier.

The Palmer inquiry is also probing the failure of immigration authorities to detect mental illness in Rau, who has been interned at a South Australian psychiatric institution since her release from Baxter. Young, too, has a record of mental illness. The plight of the two women indicates severe deficiencies in the department's overall attitude to mental health issues, a panel of some of the nation's leading mental health experts said this week.

"It is unlikely that mental health carers and clinicians could find a more difficult environment in which to work than a DIMIA detention centre," they said.

Source
====================================

[Mowlana Vector]

Overseas-Born Australians Urged to Carry Citizenship Proof


(courtesy of Ron Tandberg, The AGE, 18 May 2005)

The lawyer for a Chinese-born Australian man held at Sydney's Villawood detention centre for three days in 2002 has warned overseas-born Australians to carry proof of citizenship at all times.

A man identified only as 'Howard' was detained with his three-year-old Australian-born son despite telling immigration officials he had an Australian passport.

Howard's lawyer, Nick McNally, says his client showed officials his Medicare card, driver's licence and employment papers, and told them he had an Australian passport.

He says the case makes an alarming point.

"If you're not obviously not someone from overseas you need to carry conclusive proof of your citizenship status at all times," he said.

The Immigration Department says it is unable to comment because the case is before the New South Wales Supreme Court.

Mr McNally says the officials did not check Howard's history and only released him after lawyers took his passport to the Immigration Department.

"Prior to our lawyer travelling out there, we had faxed certified copies of those documents and that still wasn't enough," he said.

He is now suing the Federal Government for unlawful detention.

Howard was a student in Australia in 1989 at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

He became an Australian citizen in 1997.

Five years after Howard became an Australian citizen, he was detained along with his girlfriend and their son.

His girlfriend had overstayed her visa.

Source
=====================

[Mowlana Vector]

Alvarez Case Raises Dark Questions

Foreign-looking Australian citizens have good reason to be concerned, writes Indira Naidoo*.

There's been a chill in the air lately - and it's not been caused by the delayed arrival of Sydney's winter. The unfolding Vivian Alvarez case has left many immigrants, like me, feeling decidedly unsettled about the country we've called home for most of our lives.

The scandal of Alvarez's illegal deportation to the Philippines four years ago raises the unpleasant Orwellian question: "Are some Australians more equal than others?"

While the facts of this appalling human rights violation are still to be fully investigated, what are the thousands of Australians like me to think, who walk around everyday with a genetically enhanced Bondi tan?

What would happen to me, for instance, if I was involved in an accident and became disoriented? Until the Alvarez case I naively assumed that I would be taken to hospital and my family contacted immediately.

Now there are other ominous possibilities to consider. I may wake up in a mental institution, a detention centre or, as Alvarez found herself, in another country.

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, says what happened to Alvarez was purely "a mistake". Perhaps. But it's a "mistake" I could easily have been the victim of given the right set of racial assumptions, incompetencies and bureaucratic bungling.

Should "foreign-looking" Australians, as some multicultural support groups are recommending, now carry our passports with us just in case our citizenry is called into question and we end up deported to an alien country?

Is our passport going to become a sort of "pass card" that allows us passage to shop, to go to work and to school without fear of imprisonment or deportation? A similar system existed in apartheid South Africa for generations. Every citizen carried a pass card with them at all times. It controlled all their activities based solely on their race.

If you were of African or Indian heritage there were suburbs you could not live in, schools you could not go to, beaches you could not swim in, park benches you could not sit on, people from other races you could not marry. Your race determined your every thought - your every action.

It was one of the many racist policies that forced my parents to eventually flee their home in South Africa in the late 1960s and build a new future for our family in Australia.

Our Prime Minister, John Howard, vehemently denies the Alvarez incident has any racist overtones. His denial is reassuring. But given that an inquiry is yet to expose the motives behind Alvarez's deportation, it is a denial Howard cannot yet make convincingly.

Coupled with the racist climate that forged Australia's modern immigration system in the 1940s and '50s, and the continual international denouncements of Australia's treatment of asylum seekers in recent times, it isn't unreasonable to wonder whether what happened in the Alvarez case was much more than a "mistake".

There is a deep irony to Alvarez's harrowing tale of trauma, cruelty and betrayal.

At the moment her ordeal is the centre of a media and political storm.

But as the story of her real-life eviction from Australia is eventually consigned to the inside pages, our collective attention will no doubt turn to the evictions that really matter - the ones on Channel 10's Big Brother.

*Indira Naidoo is a television broadcaster.

Source
===========================

RELATED READING


Quote

Arresting Job Opportunity in Captive Market

Looking for a new career working with people? Try Villawood or Baxter. If you want a salary of more than $100,000 and a company car, there's not much time left to submit an application. Today is the deadline for three jobs advertised by GSL, the company contracted by the Federal Government to run Australia's immigration detention centres. More ...

[Mowlana Vector]

Town Unites to Save Its Model Immigrants



When the Bruderhofs first came to Inverell the reception was mixed: the prospect of new people and new money impressed the town's hard heads but stoked dark mutterings of a strange religious sect.

Five years later, Inverell has galvanised behind this American Christian group's attempt to beat immigration restrictions that have strangled its expansion and will force 10 of its members out of the country by October.

Local federal and state MPs have stood in their respective parliaments to give them glowing character references. The local mayor has graced their table and calls them friends.

Even Inverell's Catholic parish priest is praying that Department of Immigration bureaucrats are "healed of their blindness".

The turnaround is as much a story about the fightback of inland NSW as one in which the Bruderhofs have overcome prejudices to forge a sense of place in the Australian bush. And it has raised questions about a one-size-fits-all immigration policy.

"There is still a problem in the minds of the bureaucrats that you can't open the floodgates," says the independent federal MP Tony Windsor. "Where there is proof there is a good community such as the Bruderhofs, I say why not cut a hole in the fence once in a while."

In the McLean Memorial Retirement Village, Norma Cameron-James clasps tightly the hand of a Bruderhofs nurse, Christina O'Connell, and declares: "You know, I think you will be all right. I'm praying for you."

Norma is a Seventh Day Adventist and her husband, George James, is Catholic, but as beneficiaries of the Bruderhofs' nursing home visits neither will brook a bad word against them. "It stinks," says George. "We'll hide you under the bed," Norma chimes in, her fierce loyalty underlined by the nursing home's chief, Paul Cook, who wonders what his elderly residents would do without the Bruderhofs' weekly visits, concerts and carol singing. Three of the home's regular visitors have already returned to the United States and Gottlieb and Celia Fischli's time is fast running out.

"In a country area like ours, many of the elderly folk's relatives have gone away for work and the Bruderhofs fill a huge gap," says Mr Cook. "It's fear that we could lose their very valuable contribution … we would miss them like you wouldn't believe."

Eirene Rhodes, a Bruderhofs home school teacher, says she is constantly stopped in the street. "It's as if our struggles with immigration have been a rally card. In the States this wouldn't happen at all."

Of Protestant origins, the Bruderhofs' communal way of living and working, traditional gender roles and peasant dress invite comparison with religious groups like the Amish and Mennonites.

Slowly the Bruderhofs have worked their way into the soul of Inverell. They are involved with the local church choirs and agricultural society. Their signs welcome visitors to Inverell, Tingha, Tenterfield, Bingara, Maitland and Glenn Innes.

Angus Witherby, a private planning consultant, chaired an inquiry in 2001 into the land rezoning application allowing the 400-strong group to set up on the town's outskirts. It provoked 360 public submissions and oral testimonials lasting 60 days.

He has watched from afar as the Bruderhofs have converted even their most outspoken critics.

"Without the Bruderhofs' kids the two high schools would have amalgamated. The level of service provision in country towns is so delicately balanced if you lose population you lose services," Mr Witherby said. "These are gut survival issues for a town like Inverell. To have a community of 400 people come with industry and enterprise is what every country town longs for."

Harry Fay, whose grandfather founded Inverell's landmark mixed business, has fired off letters supporting their visa applications. "You can't rent or buy a house in Inverell, the local abattoir can't get enough people to work there and you can't get a builder for two years."

But it's not all rural pragmatism. The Bruderhofs' children set up a fruit and vegetable stall after the Boxing Day tsunami. They busked and baked biscuits and headlined the town hall benefit concert.

"The community really embraced them … we raised $30,000 which was an incredible amount for a town with a population of 10,000," says Liz Tickner, editor of The Inverell Times. "If there was a bit of nervousness when they arrived … they realise now they are not some mad religious sect, they are law-abiding religious people and a major part of the community."

Established in Germany in the 1930s, the Bruderhofs trace their Protestant origins to the Anabaptists of the 1500s who believed only adults who had confessed their faith should be baptised.

But Mr Witherby does not find their religious brand incompatible with bush Christianity. "[It's] very straight up and down, no flies on it, the fit is good because they don't proselytise."

And that, says Inverell's mayor, Barry Johnston, has been the secret of their integration. "People out here are relatively cautious about new people … they will stand back and have a look and see for themselves."

For the Bruderhofs the visa difficulties have proved an icebreaker. Brother Randy Gauger says it was as if Inverell - suffering drought and the challenges of population decline - could relate to their hardships.

There have been unsolicited emails and letters of support, including one from the Premier, Bob Carr. An early Australian Bruderhofs pioneer, Mark O'Connell, who has just received permanent residency, talks of a sense of belonging he felt at the funeral of an Inverell identity. "It wasn't what was said, it was what was felt," he said.

The Federal Government has not bent to calls for a relaxation of visa rules, but senior bureaucrats have guided the Bruderhofs through the maze of regulations.

Source
=====================================

[idriys]

I cannot but help wonder at this mish-mash of reaction to reality: if persons act in a manner which is detrimental to their well-being, why should we feel pity for them? True, the German woman & the Filipina were, both, mentally disturbed, and actively masqueraded as being other than Australian Citizens, so what is the big deal that they were treated for what they were trying to pass themselves off as. As for the other lot, they had ran out of visa, and were on the way out: except that an exception was asked for. looked into, and acted upon. Considering the large number of people driving cars and ignoring things like road rule 170, which truly is something to be worried about, I cannot, for the life of me, agree with all of this misdirected sympathy for people who need help, but not the kind that seems to be on offer. Yes, Virginia, there really are no refugees in Australian Detention Centres, and try not to confuse chalk with cheese, or you may try to use one for the other, with unfortunate results.

[Mowlana Vector]

Here we go again

Idriys, care for some (Howardite family-values) reading ... ===========================================

Children on Nauru Held Since 2001



A baby boy born in a Perth hospital on Monday takes the number of children in immigration detention to 68, a human rights groups said today.

Michael Andrew Tran was born after his parents, both Vietnamese asylum seekers, were transferred under guard from the Christmas Island detention centre for the event.

His father Minh Dat and mother Hoai Thu have been in detention on remote Christmas Island since July 2003.

Coordinator of the group Chilout: Children out of Detention, Alannah Sherry, said there are 62 children in mainland Australia centres and six on the Pacific island of Nauru.

"The longest children (have been) in detention are those six in Nauru who are Pacific Solution victims,'' she told ABC radio.

"They've been in for well over three and a half years now.

"Most of them are children of overstayers, that is, they have been picked up in the community and then been detained.''

Michael Tran was born the same day as three-year-old Naomi Long was released with her mother from Sydney's Villawood detention centre, where the child had spent her entire life.

Ms Sherry said most of the children had not been in detention for longer than a year but there were some, like Naomi Leong, who had been in detention since birth.

"On Nauru, there is a two-year-old there who's been there his whole life,'' she said.

"At the Port Augusta residential housing project, which is the detention centre for women and children - their husbands and dads are at Baxter - there is a three-year-old Chinese girl, baby Bonnie, who was in detention at Villawood with her mum (who's) been in detention her whole life.

"She turned three just last month.''

Former Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett has just returned from the immigration detention centre on Nauru, where he said he spoke to all detainees individually and as a group.

Senator Bartlett told ABC Radio there were six children aged two to 15 from two Afghani families in detention on Nauru.

"There's a seven (year-old girl) and an eight-year-old girl, an eight-year-old boy, a two-year-old boy that was born in detention there, and a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy," he said.

"(They are) all very isolated, just two young seven and eight-year-old girls with each other for company who have been in that environment for over three years.

"That's longer than even the young girl who's just been released from Villawood has experienced in detention."

Senator Bartlett said he was struck by the psychological trauma many of the people were experiencing, but particularly the terrible situation the children were in.

He urged the federal government not to make the same mistake as it had with Naomi Leong.

"Sort out the cases with these children and their families but let them free while you're doing so," he said.

"To just keep locking them up is ridiculous."

- AAP (Weblink)

RELATED: Libs Defy PM Over Detainees

Howard Explodes at MPs' Revolt
==============================================

Wrongful Detention: 200 Cases Go to Inquiry



Senator Vanstone's admission follows weeks of pressure over the wrongful detention of Ms Rau and the deportation to the Philippines of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez Solon.

Several Liberal backbenchers have mounted a rebellion against the Government's mandatory immigration detention policies, planning to introduce their own legislation to water down the laws.

But Senator Vanstone defended her department, saying it was often difficult to correctly identify someone suspected of having a mental illness.

She said she had made several changes in light of the cases and was considering bringing in experts to fix problems.

"I recognise that it may be appropriate to involve external expertise," she told a Senate estimates hearing.

Senator Vanstone said that, while 201 cases marked "released not unlawful", had been referred to former Australian Federal Police chief Mick Palmer for investigation, not every one would turn out to be a case of wrongful detention.

"Every single case will be looked at separately, every one of them, because the department is determined to recognise what problems it may have and to change," she said.

"And I am not going to ... engage in that work and then have further problems arise later. It must start with a clean slate.

"But even more importantly than that, if there are any cases in that number that have a problem, then [they] have to be dealt with as a right for the person involved.

"We've done the search, we've gone back as far as these records are held and we're referring just over 200 cases."

Senator Vanstone said she had asked her department to look at using biometrics to identify people, and had set up a special national identification unit in the Canberra head office to ensure complex cases were dealt with quickly and consistently.

The unit will help state and territory case officers check identities, while immigration detention review managers will be in place by the end of May in each state and territory where people are detained.

From May 28, a psychiatrist will visit Baxter detention centre every fortnight and, from next week, psychiatric nurses will be on call 24 hours a day.

The changes are not enough to placate moderate Liberal backbenchers, who want children and their parents released from immigration detention immediately, and all detainees released after a year.

Victorian MP Petro Georgiou has drawn up his own legislation. Up to four Government MPs are believed to support his move.

Prime Minister John Howard has ruled out a conscience vote on the issue, angering former Liberal candidate and human rights advocate Greg Barns, who was disendorsed for publicly opposing the Government's treatment of asylum seekers.

"Mr Howard allowed a conscience vote on right-to-die legislation, IVF and abortion - there is no difference between those matters of conscience and the rights of human beings in detention when they have committed no crime," Mr Barns said.

AAP (Weblink)

RELATED: Howard Stands By Vanstone, Detention Policy

Insane Not to Allow Baby Photo: Vanstone

Minister Vanstone Was Ranked the Least Trustworthy
===================================

Psychiatrist Fears For Detained Three-Year-Old



The pair had their first night of freedom after they were given a bridging visa and released from Villawood detention centre.

Ms Leong has been locked in immigration detention since 2001 when she was caught with an allegedly false passport when she was two months pregnant.

The Leongs' plight became public when psychiatrist Dr Michael Dudley revealed her three-year-old daughter Naomi - who has spent her entire life in detention - had been banging her head against a wall and was often mute and unresponsive.

The Malaysian high commission last week offered Ms Leong and her daughter citizenship, but Ms Leong rejected the offer, because being deported to Malaysia would mean she could never see her son Griffin, a child from an earlier marriage.

She has not seen the boy since her detention.

So desperate

Ms Leong, 31, became confused yesterday afternoon when presented with paperwork by officials at Villawood. She called her solicitor, who arrived about 4.30pm to discover that the forms allowed mother and child to leave detention for the first time since October 2001.

"The moment they told me I could go out today, I couldn't believe it," Ms Leong said last night.

"Naomi doesn't understand what is happening but I have just told her we are going to see a friend and she is excited. I cannot believe I can see my son very soon."

"I'm not sure. I'm not quite sure (what I'll do),'' Ms Leong told ABC radio.
"I don't know. Have a good sleep and then hopefully I can see my son very, very soon. . .

"I'm so desperate, so desperate. Almost four-and-a-half years I didn't see him now.

"I don't know how he looks like. I don't know how tall he is. I don't know absolutely nothing.

"I'm so happy now, so happy. I can't believe it. I'm out here (outside) detention. I'm outside.''

Mental deterioration

Dr Dudley, a senior lecturer in psychiatry at the University of NSW and a psychiatrist at the Sydney Children's Hospital, has campaigned for Naomi to grow and develop in a healthy environment.

He wrote to the immigration department in March urging it to allow Naomi time out of Villawood to interact with other children her own age.

He said when he first met Naomi she was a warm girl who was happy to play with her mother but her mental state had deteriorated dramatically.

Of the 62 children in detention in Australia, none have been held as long as Naomi.

Dr Dudley said Ms Leong was separated from her daughter for more than a week last year when she was sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility after taking part in a protest at Villawood.

Dr Dudley said the Department of Community Services took the baby and returned her a week later, grubby, bruised and highly distressed.

Live in fear

He said despite their release, the pair would continue to live in fear and insecurity.

"Both of them have been mentally unwell, and I think this (their release)will assist enormously, but they are going to need some really good follow-up,'' he told ABC radio today.

"They're still non citizens, so they can't get on with their lives and that is a major problem. . . so they continue to have high levels of insecurity and fear.''

It is believed the local Malaysian community is helping Ms Leong and her daughter with accommodation.

- with AAP (Weblink)

RELATED:
Leong Could Face Detention Again

Freedom Frightens Little Naomi
====================================

Detainees' Isolation Too Long: Rights Body



The Commonwealth breached an international covenant on human rights when it kept 26 Iranians and Iraqis in isolation at the Curtin detention centre, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found yesterday.

The detainees were kept in separate detention for up to eight months in 2000-01, well beyond the three to four weeks the commission found reasonable to process new arrivals at the centre and long enough to breach their right to human dignity.

It also found the detainees were effectively unable to communicate with their family and friends while in isolation.

The Department of Immigration's only means of communication for the detainees to let their families know they were alive was a standard form fax sent on their behalf.

The letter, translated into the detainee's native tongue, read: "This is to let you know that [I] have arrived safely in Australia and am being detained in Immigration Detention.

"I am currently unable to telephone or write a letter to you but as soon as I can I will be in touch. I am in good health and being looked after.

"Return faxes will not be accepted."

The commission noted many of the families of the detainees in Iran or Iraq would not have fax machines or fax numbers.

RELATED: High Cost of Detention Hits Home
=========================

FURTHER READING



Children In Australian Detention Centres

New Arrival Makes it 68 Children in Detention

Australia's Immigration Detention Camps Under Fire

A Last Resort?: The National Inquiry Into Children in Immigration Detention

Extension of the Palmer Inquiry

Government Found Guilty of Neglect at Baxter

We Treat Some Killers Better Than Asylum Seekers

'This Is Not Detention, This Is Hell'



Freed From a Life in Detention

Rau Seeks Compensation, But Detention Still A Mystery

When Immigration Gets It Really, Really Wrong

I Was Never Mentally Ill, Says Rau

Councillors Emerge From Baxter Dazed, Inspired

Academics Take on Immigration Detention Investigation

Woomera Detention Centre Doctor Speaks Out

Australia's Detention Camps

Refugee Australia National Directory: Australian Refugee Lobby, Support and Action Groups

[sodapop]

[Mowlana Vector]

... thanks God for the people of conscience and voices of dissent
=======================================

Detention Policy Fails the Test of Humanity
By: Judi Moylan*

Two women - Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez - have finally convinced a bitterly divided Australia that reform of the mandatory detention system is needed.

But can MPs elected by the Australian people to represent them help Australians reach consensus on the way forward? I believe we can. After years working within the Liberal Party for reform with minimal success, it's time to debate the issue.

The action plan presented to the Liberal Party by Petro Georgiou, member for Kooyong, is designed to do just that. It involves two bills.

The first is to ensure that children and their families are released while their applications are considered. Pending and unsuccessful asylum-seekers in detention for more than a year would be released until their status was determined by a judicial assessor. Refugees on temporary protection visas would get permanent residency, as would asylum-seekers who cannot be removed from Australia three years after the final determination of their applications for protection.

The second bill would reform the mandatory detention system to ensure that asylum-seekers are not kept in detention for more than 90 days without good cause. All cases would be assessed by a judge on an application by the Department of Immigration, which would have to prove that release would result in a threat to public safety or that the asylum-seeker was likely to abscond. This would ensure that the administration of the law was transparent, accountable and fair.

For the majority of Australians who support some form of mandatory detention as part of strong border control, reform of that system is imperative to prevent its destruction.

The founding father of the Liberal Party, Robert Menzies, led opposition to Labor's wartime refugee removal bill. In February 1949 he warned that refugee policy "must be applied by a sensible administration, neither rigid nor peremptory but wise, exercising judgment on individual cases, always remembering the basic principle but always understanding that harsh administration never yet improved any law but only impaired it, and that notoriously harsh administration raises up to any law hostilities that may some day destroy it".

Those of us who believe reform is necessary are not radicals. I think it is fair to say that we are Liberals in the Menzian tradition. Menzies displayed compassion and for the most part a strong desire to ensure that policy united rather than divided the Australian people: "As a party and as a country we have fought hard to preserve human life and human dignity, fighting two major wars to uphold these principles."

The Liberal Party has a strong commitment to allowing members to vote according to their conscience. Respect for the dictates of the Liberal politician's conscience is one of the great differences between Labor and Liberal parties. Protection of citizens' rights against abuse of state power and the use of political power to promote equality of opportunity for all are fundamental to liberalism.

Today we preside over a policy and an administration that has seen an incapacitated citizen deported, a mentally ill Australian incarcerated as an illegal for nearly a year, and the indefinite detention of men, women and children without any charges being laid against them.

Self-harm, suicide and mental health problems are well documented. The reports have highlighted the harm done to children. This is why what may once have been a policy debate now has an ethical dimension that should see the policy openly debated in the House of Representatives, with each MP voting on our plan or an amended version according to their consciences.

I have been proud to participate in parliamentary debates on matters that go to the heart of preserving human life and dignity. These debates were conducted in a mature manner with the parties allowing a conscience vote.

Responding to a recent proposal to bring on a private member's bill on abortion for debate, the Prime Minister said he would allow a debate in the people's house: "This is Australia. It's a democracy. And people can raise anything they like."

To me it seems no less important, for reasons of conscience, to engage in a debate on asylum-seeker policy, a policy that fails the foundation test of upholding human life and human dignity.

It is for this reason that we need to openly debate this issue within the party, the parliament and the community. There is a way forward that can maintain the integrity of the border protection policy, ensure a humane policy and bridge the divide this issue has created within our communities.

*Judi Moylan is the Liberal member for Pearce.

Source
=================================

Why We Need a New Policy on Refugees

It's time for compassion and accountability in handling asylum seekers, writes Petro Georgiou*.

For many years I have been concerned about difficulties experienced by some refugees and asylum seekers, which result from policies implemented at a time of widespread anxiety that we might be engulfed by a flood of bogus asylum seekers. That fear has not been realised. It's time to review the policy framework established under different circumstances and adopt a more compassionate, transparent and accountable approach while maintaining the integrity of our immigration and refugee system.

Unauthorised boat arrivals have all but ceased and the great majority of asylum seekers who came by boat were found to be genuine refugees. Regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq has seen the halt of major flows of people from two main source countries of unauthorised arrivals to Australia.

Within the region,the activities of people smugglers have been curtailed.

In recent years, the Government has acknowledged the need for flexibility in asylum and refugee policies. Nonetheless, while the perceived crisis has long since passed, asylum seekers continue to be detained for lengthy and even indefinite periods. They include women and children.

Asylum seekers continue to be detained for periods longer than prison sentences imposed on violent criminals, and may be detained indefinitely. More than 300 people have been in immigration detention for more than a year, and about 80 of them have been held for more than four years. Many of those who have been detained for such long periods have subsequently been found to be bona fide refugees.

There is no independent scrutiny of whether it is necessary to keep people detained for lengthy or indefinite periods to protect the community or to prevent them absconding.

The harmful effects of long-term detention on detainees' mental and physical health have been documented by health experts, and the Federal Court recently found that the Government failed in its duty of care to provide adequate services to psychiatrically ill long-term detainees at the Baxter detention centre.

People on temporary protection visas have been welcomed and integrated by Australian communities, and are making significant contributions. Many holders of temporary protection visas continue to live in anxiety and fear of being returned to places of great insecurity.

It is clear that additional measures are necessary to ensure that the system is compassionate, fair, accountable and subject to independent scrutiny. I am proposing two private member's bills to achieve these aims, while maintaining the integrity of Australia's immigration and refugee system.

The first bill contains compassionate measures to alleviate the plight of individuals who are suffering under the current system. The main elements are:

· Asylum seekers who have been detained for more than a year will be released until their status is resolved, unless a judge who has examined their case decides that they should continue to be detained because they are dangerous or are likely to abscond.

· Children under 18 and their immediate families will be released from detention immediately pending determination of their applications unless a judicial officer finds that they pose a danger to the public or are likely to abscond.

· People who have been found to be bona fide refugees but have been granted only temporary protection visas will be permitted to remain in Australia permanently.

The second bill proposes a model of reform so that the problems that have arisen under the current system do not recur. Its features include:

· Asylum seekers who don't have a visa will be able to be detained only if it is necessary to detain them on specified grounds, for example, to verify identity and to protect public safety. Detention decisions will be subject to Federal Court judicial scrutiny. Departmental officers will be able to detain people initially for up to 90 days and then must show cause to the Federal Court as to why further detention is required. The Federal Court may order continued detention for recurring periods of 90 days.

· Everyone who is found to be a refugee will be granted permanent residency.

In recent months, many Australians have told me that they supported the framework of stringent measures in the context in which they were introduced. But they now believe that reform is necessary and can be achieved without compromising the security of our borders and our community. I agree.

They are disturbed that children, women and men are imprisoned for lengthy periods simply because they came without prior authority, without any independent assessment of whether they pose a risk to our community. They believe that fundamental Australian values of fairness and decency demand a new approach. I share those feelings.

The measures I am proposing constitute a carefully designed package and in no way undermine our capacity to protect our borders and prevent abuse. One of the enduring strengths of this nation is our commitment to justice, tolerance and compassion for others. Our treatment of refugees and asylum seekers who have arrived uninvited must surely reflect those deeply held values.

*Petro Georgiou is the federal Liberal MP for Kooyong.

Source
=============================================

Labor Missing In Action
By: Mike Steketee

What does it tell us when it takes Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou and a few colleagues to defy the Prime Minister and make the running on relaxing the Government's brutal policy of mandatory detention?

That once again, the Labor Party is out of touch and has been left behind. The Opposition could have taken the opportunity offered by the divisions in Government ranks that have been evident for many months. It could have taken the initiative on an issue in which humanity has long demanded a different approach and on which, in any case, community opinion has swung away from a lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach.

But then Labor would not have had its heart in it, not judging by the attitude of its spokesman on immigration, Laurie Ferguson. When it comes to refugees and mandatory detention, Ferguson is a hardliner, whose real views are closer to former immigration minister Philip Ruddock than to many people in the ALP -- certainly those on the Left of the party to which he nominally belongs.

That may not always be clear from his public comments. But it is from his private correspondence. A Sydney refugee activist, Stephen Langford, recently wrote to Ferguson arguing for Labor to show some leadership in this area and asking him to take up the case of an Iranian who has been in Villawood detention centre in Sydney for almost three years.

In his reply, Ferguson launched into a tirade. "I am afraid to reveal a major secret -- the self-styled refugee advocates do not have a monopoly on morality and automatically following their prescriptions is not necessarily the only 'leadership' position," he wrote.

Ferguson went on to complain about his "thankless" decision to agree to look at individual cases and then concluded by sharing a few more of his true thoughts. "Finally, as for moral righteousness, I would raise that the pass rate on TPVs [temporary protection visas which grant refugee status but only for two years] is over 90 per cent. This is absolutely incredibly at variance with the UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees], European and North American processing and Australia's offshore outcomes. Think about this and tell me the people in the camps and slums of Peshawar, Nairobi, Ankara etc are getting a good deal, as opposed to the people smugglers and their clients."

Oppositions usually try to work with interest groups that agitate against Government policy. Ferguson has succeeded in getting them offside.

Nor was he backing off yesterday. Langford, he said, was "a well-meaning guy" who had sent him "a very pompous, self-important, self-righteous letter. I get a bit sick of these people lecturing me."

Ferguson's letter makes it clear that he thinks that many of the asylum-seekers we have let in are not really refugees and, presumably, should be shipped back to Iraq and Afghanistan. He would not quite admit that yesterday but he came close.

He said he believed the high rate of approvals had been influenced by Government thinking that US firepower would quickly restore peace to Afghanistan and Iraq, meaning that refugees on TPVs could be returned. "I don't know why it should be higher onshore in Australia than where people are in camps for a decade or two, and I would like someone to objectively tell me."

Ferguson has a point about refugees in camps, as did Ruddock, who also argued they should be given priority. Let's expand our refugee program to take more of them, by all means. But that does not make people who flee by boat in fear of their life unworthy. That is like saying that we should not pick up someone we find in the gutter because people may be even worse off overseas.

Whatever happens in next week's debate in the Government partyroom, Georgiou's supporters say he is intent on exercising his right as an MP to move two private members bills in parliament to change the policy.

So will Labor support the bills? If it does and the Government allows the debate to proceed, the legislation could become law if 12 other MPs supported Georgiou. So far, three Liberal MPs have backed him -- Judi Moylan, Bruce Baird and Russell Broadbent. Independent Peter Andren said yesterday he fully agreed with the legislation. Other Liberals feel strongly on the issue but whether they are prepared to stand up and be counted remains to be seen.

Many of Georgiou's proposals, such as time limits on detention, the release of children and their parents and allowing TPV holders to stay permanently are identical or close to Labor policy. "We would be reasonably happy with a lot of it," says Ferguson.

"We have to move towards a position where more people are released while cases are pending." But he immediately qualified this by saying that Labor would have to be satisfied that those let out into the community were not likely to abscond. "Overseas experience is not encouraging: if you let everyone with a claim out, they will not co-operate with the system."

Refugee groups deny that, based on overseas experience, the danger of people absconding is serious. In any case, Georgiou's legislation aims at screening out such people so that they are not released.

Ferguson is Labor's worst enemy when it comes to projecting a more humane policy on detention. He was appointed to the job by Mark Latham, a fellow hardliner on refugee policy. Latham has moved on and so should Ferguson. Kim Beazley would do the refugee cause a favour by shifting him to an area where he does less damage, or even better, cleaning out his frontbench with a spill of positions.
Source
==========================

ALSO SEE



Immigration Dept Knew of Solon in 2003, Inquiry Told, Interview with Amanda Vanstone

Libs Block Immigration Blunder Debate

Immigration Dept Apologises For Bungles

Palmer Inquiry Cost Nears Half-Million

Dennis Shanahan: Pressure on For a Change to the Menu

Palmer to Resign After Rau Report: Judical Inquiry Needed Into DIMIA Scandals

LATELINE Exclusive: Palmer to Step Down From Immigration Probe

AUST Greens: DIMIA Answers Beggar Belief: Continued Inaction on HREOC Report

Aust Democrats: PM's Conscience Vote Ban Unconscionable

Beazley Rules Out Conscience Vote on Detention Bill

Vanstone Defends Detention of kids

[Mowlana Vector]

When Getting Punished Means Getting A Promotion

More than two years ago, in the wake of the "children overboard" deception, the then Public Service commissioner, Andrew Podger, took politicised bureaucrats politely to task over the issue.

In his annual state-of-the-service report, he suggested the affair provided a "timely reminder of the relevance of the APS [Australian Public Service] values" such as being apolitical, impartial, accountable and devoted to promotion on merit.

The Herald later asked Podger to elaborate on his criticisms, in the light of revelations that the Government's people smuggling taskforce, which co-ordinated the whole charade, had kept few records, had taken instruction directly from ministerial staffers and had given flawed but politically advantageous advice to the Government.

"I think," Podger said, "some of the key players before subsequent parliamentary committees have said there are some lessons to be taken from the exercise. Jane Halton [the head of the taskforce] herself said one of them was about record-keeping. She accepts it was not as good as it should have been."

But Halton, we pointed out, like almost everyone else bureaucratically associated with the affair, was immediately promoted, in her case to become secretary of the Health Department. What signal did that send to the rest of the bureaucracy?

Podger declined to answer.

Which brings us to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and her response to the revelation that officers of her department had known in August 2003 that an Australian citizen, Vivian Alvarez Solon, had been improperly deported to the Philippines.

Amazingly, departmental officers had not only been aware of this but had written about it to the Queensland police and to a TV missing persons program. But they had not, apparently, made any effort to rectify it or passed the information up the departmental chain.

Vanstone, on the ABC's Lateline

on Wednesday night, was asked how this could have happened.

She began her answer by saying: "With respect, I'm not seeking to apportion any blame".

She went on to identify the ranks of those who knew as "APS, I think, 5 or 6 level and one might have been at an APS 6 or EL 1 at the time - at the time."

To translate: they were mid-ranking bureaucrats, although her use of "at the time" suggests the possibility of subsequent promotion.

Host Tony Jones asked: "Were any supervisors in that department or in that section made aware of what had happened?"

Vanstone: "We've accessed the paper records, and the paper records do not indicate that anything was passed up …"

Why are we not surprised?

Source

RELATED: The Skull Beneath DIMIA's Skin



===========================

ALSO SEE
PM Won't Step Up Detainee Inquiry

Australia Below-par On Human Rights

[Mowlana Vector]

Asylum Seeker Drinks Bleach



THE longest-serving detainee at Villawood Detention Centre has attempted suicide by drinking a bottle of bleach.

Palestinian asylum seeker Mohammed Mahmoud was rushed to Liverpool Hospital on Wednesday night after trying to kill himself.

Friends said the 35-year-old had been "severely depressed" about his chances of being released.

To date he has served almost five years in detention in NSW and WA.

Mr Mahmoud reportedly fled his native Syria in 2000 after suffering political persecution.

After arriving in Australia from Indonesia, he spent a year in detention in Port Hedland before being moved to Villawood in 2001.

Friend Jamal Daoud said the long wait for a resolution to his case had taken its toll on Mr Mahmoud, who was last night recovering in hospital.

"He's not asking for much, but he needs some relief. He has to be freed," Mr Daoud said. "He needs to get out of detention while his application for a visa is determined."

Prime Minister John Howard was again forced to stand by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone yesterday, refusing the Labor Party's calls to sack her.

Opposition Leader Kim Beazley tried to censure Mr Howard in Parliament for "failing to sack" Senator Vanstone after she referred 201 cases of possible wrongful detention to the Department of Immigration.

Mr Beazley also called for a royal commission into the Howard Government's "scandalous mismanagement" of the immigration system.

"It is the Prime Minister who should have [Senator Vanstone's] head on his table, that is what should have happened," he said.

Mr Howard resisted, saying: "I do not intend to relieve Senator Vanstone of her responsibilities."

Former Australian Federal Police chief Mick Palmer, who is heading the closed-door inquiry into the wrongful detention of Australian woman Cornelia Rau and the wrongful deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Alvarez, will now look at the additional 200 cases.

Mr Howard said he would consider taking further action, such as setting up a judicial inquiry, but only after Mr Palmer had submitted his recommendations.

He also defended the immigration department, saying "nothing critical" could be said of the way the department was doing its job.

The 201 cases of possible wrongful detention accounted for just 0.2 per cent of the 88,000 suspected illegal immigrants detained in Australia between July 2000 and April 2005, he said.

"What [Senator Vanstone] did was to instruct the department to go back over the available records, to find the 201 cases where people have been released and, in order to find out whether that 201 included any Rau or Alvarez-type cases, refer all of them to the Palmer Inquiry.

"That is not the behaviour of a minister who is trying to cover something up," Mr Howard said.

Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Peter McGauran said a royal commission into the immigration department would "take years" and cost up to $50 million of taxpayers money.

Source

[Sam]

Subhanallah ... how heartless is this government.

[Mowlana Vector]

... and unashamedly hypocrite!!!
=================================
Vanstone Sorry For Corby Distress

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says she feels sorry for Schapelle Corby and her family after the Australian's conviction on drug smuggling charges in Indonesia.

Senator Vanstone would not comment on Corby's 20-year sentence handed down by a Bali court. But she said it was a distressing time.

"It's obviously a very distressing matter for her and her family but it's not something I'd choose to comment on," Senator Vanstone told a press conference on indigenous affairs in Canberra.

"I'm very sorry about what's happened but that's for other people to comment on."

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer would be giving the Government's response.

"I've got no comment to make at this stage," he said at the same press conference.
===========================================

[Mowlana Vector]

Don't Let Facts Get in the Way

[idriys]

ok, I give up: so, just keep worrying about how the mouse suffers in the trap, without asking, what was the mouse's intention, when it went into the place marked: beware of traps! Mean while, back in reality, most Australians feel pretty well put off by anybody who gatecrashes a party, or who tries to get into a show, without a ticket, or who think themselves far too worthy to wait their proper turn; especially when others have been waiting long before they arrived on the scene. Australia was not their first port of call, and they were not exactly being persecuted, or the like, in Indonesia; so. let them enjoy what they have earned. I simply have no sympathy for self-inlicted injuries, nor for those who do seem to condone it. Like it or lump it, that is the truth, and no amount of Sophistry can escape it. Please, try to think as Moslems: not as dumb yuppies! A<udhu bilLahi min ash-shaytani n-nirajim.

This post has been edited by idriys: 28 May 2005 - 08:21 PM

[Mowlana Vector]

Quote

Please, try to think as Moslems: not as dumb yuppies!



With Moslem sympathiser(s) like that, who really needs zealous intellectual Hansonites?!
===============================

Religious Leaders Unite In Support of Bill

In a rare expression of political unity, religious leaders have thrown their weight behind the private member's bills aimed at releasing children and their families from detention.

The influential Sydney Anglican diocese was the latest to condemn immigration detention as flawed. The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, and his bishops have called for more compassionate measures as well as greater transparency and accountability and an independent review process outside the department.

The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils said the immigration system portrayed Australia as an uncaring society.

The private member's bill would not diminish the Government's ability to select who entered Australia but would protect the Government from allegations of abuse and satisfy most of the concerns of national and international human rights monitors, its president, Dr Ameer Ali, said.

The Uniting Church's president, Reverend Dr Dean Drayton, is leading a letter-writing campaign to lobby Coalition MPs for a "magnanimous gesture to people whose lives have been devastated by situations we are fortunate enough to barely comprehend".

"It is our firm conviction that the Government policies of temporary protection and indefinite and unreviewable mandatory detention are harmful to people's well-being, unnecessarily punitive and a breach of our international human rights obligations," Dr Drayton wrote.

A separate letter has gone to Labor MPs.

The Sisters of St Joseph, one of the largest congregations of Catholic sisters, issued a rare statement yesterday, saying many Australians were unwilling to "pay for 'the integrity of our borders' by inflicting suffering on children, the mentally ill and those who have a legal right as refugees to seek asylum".

Sister Joan Healy of the Congregational Leadership Team said policies that denied "human dignity" had consequences not only for the individuals concerned but for policy administrators and Australia as a whole.

Source
===========================

SEE ALSO
Call For Hard Heads, Soft Heart

Gutless Labor Runs Dead On Georgiou Bills

Tim Costello :Politicians Must Unite to End Child Detention

Inside the Coalition's Fractured Conscience

Liberals of Conscience, An Endangered Species

The Meaning of Liberalism: Judi Moylan Speech to the Liberal Party Room

Heretics Rattle the High Priests of Howard's Broad Church

[Mowlana Vector]

Detainees Languish In Prisons

HUNDREDS of immigration detainees have been held without trial in the nation's toughest prisons to live alongside hardened criminals, some for years at a time.

The Immigration Department was unable to provide an estimate yesterday of how many cases have passed through the nation's maximum security prisons, but confirmed there were 14 detainees in state-run jails.

The Australian understands the practice has been routine for at least five years. The revelations come as John Howard agreed to consider plans raised by rebel backbenchers to deliver the "speedier" release of long-term detainees and children in Australia's immigration detention centres.

Despite ruling out an end to mandatory detention, the Prime Minister is considering the release of all women and children while freeing long-term detainees after one year.

But as the political spotlight focuses on those detainees, others have been left languishing in jails. Three detainees are now in prison in Queensland -- the same state in which it was revealed Cornelia Rau spent three months in the Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre. Two are in Brisbane, and one is in a north Queensland jail.

Queensland has no detention centre. However, the little-known practice of sending detainees straight to jail has occurred at Sydney's Silverwater and Long Bay jails, Perth's Roeburn prison, Broome Regional Prison, as well as an Adelaide prison.

State prisons hold detainees on behalf of the commonwealth through memoranda of understanding, based on the Migration Act, which overrides state law.

Last year, Victorian barrister Julian Burnside QC challenged the legality of the practice of holding detainees in prisons on constitutional grounds, but lost the case. Mr Burnside slammed the practice yesterday.

"To be held for months as Cornelia Rau was is outrageous," Mr Burnside said.

"This really amounts to throwing people into the rubbish bin."

Detainees were taken to prison by immigration officials, based on evidence gathered within detention centres, and transferred without legal argument to the prison system. Some were on remand for months facing charges such as assault and rioting, with the charges eventually dismissed by courts.

One detainee, West Papuan asylum-seeker George Dimara, told The Australian it was not uncommon for the Brisbane jail in which he was held to contain 30 immigration cases at one time.

Mr Dimara was released from Arthur Gorrie prison in February this year. Speaking from Port Hedland centre, Mr Dimara said some fellow Arthur Gorrie detainees had been held there for more than two years.

"Sometimes we were locked up in our cell for three days inside the jail," Mr Dimara said.

"It happened about two times or three times a month. When we got out from the room, sometimes I was sick and coughing."

Premier Peter Beattie has refused a request from bureaucrat Mick Palmer to provide evidence to the federal government inquiry into Rau's detention. Mr Beattie argued evidence should only be provided to an inquiry with judicial powers.

Cornelia Rau's sister, Christine, said detainees in jail would be at serious risk of harm from other prisoners.

"The thing that struck me was how alien an environment it would have been for her and how vulnerable Cornelia was," Christine Rau said.

"A lot of the other women in there didn't like her at all and were angry with her sometimes, so during her time in Queensland she was probably at greater risk from her fellow inmates than she was during her time at Baxter."

That fear was resoundingly proven by evidence from detainees.

Five years ago, the Commonwealth Ombudsman investigated the housing of detainees in state prisons.

A 2001 report recommended the practice be abolished -- but it was not until the Cornelia Rau affair erupted that Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone responded.

In February, Senator Vanstone imposed a 28-day limit -- in all but exceptional circumstances -- on the time people could be held in prison, a watch-house or similar state corrections facility.

But the department will still allow detainees to stay in prison if "exceptional circumstances" exist.
==============

ALSO SEE
Group of 15 Found to Be Refugees

Anger @ Vanstone 'Rdeness'