[La`Dee]

4UEyez said:

Thanks Sis for your very kind welcome. Greatly appreciated

welcome welcome

[WarriorEtte]

Salaamz 4ueyez

Great to have u back bro..

I was kinda missing ur resourceful and inventive Hyperlinking-posting style

Ozimedia Junkie has also adapted this strange Craze that you have displayed..

Lol...Makes me wonder how much time you actually spend on the Computer?

lol..

I imagine one day ur wife will slash the computer cord ? hehe

Just Joking bro...

Salamz

[WarriorEtte]

Lol this is what your computer will look like after what your wife does with it..









Salamz

This post has been edited by AfghanSister: 11 September 2004 - 07:27 PM

[WarriorEtte]

Lol...

one sentance..

lol


you got served!

[Mowlana Vector]

Letters To Ali
Reviewer: Sandra Hall
The Sydney Morning Herald (23 September 2004)


Directed by Clara Law
Written by Eddie L.C. Fong and Clara Law
Rated M ( Palace Verona )

Clara Law's new documentary is a meandering trip into the dead heart of the Australian detention system. It takes her and her partner, Eddie Fong, across central Australia to Port Hedland in company with a family on a mission.

When the journey begins, Trish Kerbi, a Victorian doctor, her husband, Rob Silberstein, and their four children have been trying for almost two years to help a detained 16-year-old Afghan boy get a bridging visa so they can have him to stay with them in their home.

The legal system has thrown up a variety of ingeniously devised obstacles, including a bone X-ray claimed to prove that the boy is not 16 but 18, and therefore an adult. Trish, with her medical training, is of the view that the X-ray as an unreliable method of determining age, and the claim is eventually dropped. But still the hearings and appeals grind on, and in July last year, the Silbersteins take their second trip to Port Hedland to show Ali, as they call him, that they haven't given up on him.

With them go Law, Fong and their digital camera and the result is a strongly felt plea on behalf of Ali and others like him - one which seems to have the endorsement of a large part of the film industry, judging from the list of those who have contributed by waiving fees for goods and services.

There's only one element missing - the boy himself, for Ali isn't his real name. Law and Fong have rightly gone along with the Silbersteins' wish to protect his identity for fear of compromising his case. Nor are they able to film inside Port Hedland, where cameras are banned. So Ali's story must come to us secondhand in interviews and voice-over - about the Taliban's threat to conscript him, his father's decision to pay for him to be smuggled out of the country and his own expectation that the rest of his family would soon follow. Instead, inquiries by the Red Crescent have failed to turn up any news of them since the Afghan war.

And there's more - about the boredom and frustration of being 16 and living behind razor wire, together with his claim that he spent time in solitary confinement for his own safety after complaining of sexual harassment. But because we can't get in to see him for ourselves, Law and Fong turn the film into a meditation on Australia, beginning with their own experiences as relative newcomers who migrated here from Hong Kong a decade ago, relishing the light and space of their Australian suburb but finding it so tranquil that at first Law couldn't sleep at night.

A digression? Definitely. And for all the elegance with which these memories are conjured up, they do diminish the film's impact. The indefinite detention of children and teenagers is a question crying out for confrontation and disputation, but even that comes secondhand - in footage amplifying an interview with a veteran of the Port Hedland protests of several years ago as he talks about the intensity of the detainees' desperation. And while the footage is as disturbing as ever, none of it is exactly a revelation. Nor are Law's interviews with Malcolm Fraser and Ian McPhee, a former ethnic affairs minister in the Fraser government, who has been a stalwart supporter of a non-discriminatory immigration policy.

Which leaves us with an extended record of a camping trip with the Silbersteins, who, admittedly, are inspirational company. With four children and a medical practice, Kerbi might be thought to have enough to fill her life, but after reading one too many news stories about the treatment of asylum seekers, she decided she wanted to do something to help them. It was the campaigning group Freedom Bus who put her in touch with Ali, and she and her children immediately began writing to him. Only once did she baulk - when he asked her to help organise his legal defence. This was too much, she thought at first, but she made a start, anyway, and soon found a pro bono lawyer.

Her efforts offer eloquent proof of the wonders that can be performed by the generosity of individual Australians, and for all the film's structural flaws, it does the job. Eventually, Ali's silence becomes a statement in itself. Because we can't hear from him, we're left at the end with one nagging question: why?



==> Watch the Trailer for Letters To Ali here ...

======================================================
SEE ALSO

Actors For Refugees

Stories of Refuge, Asylum and Displacement

Forgotten Rights –Responding to the Crisis of Asylum Seeker Health Care

Refugee Council of Australia: The Issues


Throw John Howard Overboard

HumanRightsWatch Commentary On Australia's Temporary Protection Visas For Refugees

Refuge Australia - Australia's Humanitarian Record

Suggested Reading

[Mowlana Vector]

The Tragedy That Australia Refuses To Remember
By: Arnold Zable
19 October 2004

It seems nations can develop amnesia about events that discomfort its citizens, writes Arnold Zable.



On October 19, 2001, a woman gave birth on a sinking boat en route from Indonesia to Christmas Island. She was one of 421 people who had boarded the 9.5-metre vessel, now known as SIEV X, the previous day, in a Sumatran fishing village, with hopes of reuniting with her family, and beginning life anew in Australia. Like many of our ancestors, she was in search of that precious gift called freedom. She was last seen drifting with her baby attached by the umbilical cord.

Amal Hassan Basry, an Iraqi survivor of the tragedy who now lives in Melbourne, says at least three women gave birth as the boat sank. The tragedy induced the births prematurely. Amal recalls the events of that day with great clarity. She knows the exact moment the boat capsized: 3.10pm. Many watches stopped at that time.

"Because I was waiting for my death, I saw everything," Amal has told me. "I was like a camera. I can still hear the shouting, the screaming. I see the people going under. The gates of hell opened up."

Today is the third anniversary of the tragedy, which claimed 353 lives. In the past three years I have given many talks in schools and various forums, and I have asked audiences how many know of the disaster. I have been staggered to learn how few recall it. How can such a tragedy be so readily forgotten? An entire nation, it seems, can quickly develop collective amnesia about events that make its citizens feel uncomfortable.

The boat sank during the infamous 2001 federal election campaign. The front pages of many newspapers featured photos of three beautiful Iraqi girls, Eman, 8, Zahra, 6, and Fatimah, 5. Suddenly, the genie had sprung out of the bottle to reveal the human face of asylum seekers who were being demonised as queue jumpers, and worse. For a brief time, the full impact of what it meant to be a refugee was looking the nation directly in the eye.

In honouring the victims of the SIEV X tragedy we honour ourselves. In forgetting them, we ignore who we are.The girls' mother, Sondos Ismael, whose father was killed by Saddam Hussein's secret police when she was five, survived the tragedy. Her husband, Ahmed al-Zalimi, who had supported an uprising against Saddam, arrived in Australia in 1999. After eight months in Curtin detention centre he was granted a three-year temporary protection visa. Sondos Ismael and her daughters were desperate to reunite with Ahmed after several years of separation, even though he had begged them not to risk the sea journey.

After the disaster, the Howard Government refused Zalimi's plea for special permission to visit his wife in Jakarta. For the next five months, 27-year-old Sondos Ismael grieved alone while immigration officials investigated the details of her visa application. She was reunited with her husband in Sydney in March 2002.

Of the 45 SIEV X survivors, seven eventually arrived in Australia. Those who were sent to other countries, such as Finland, Sweden, Norway and Canada, all received permanent protection. Those countries immediately recognised the trauma they had endured. Their permanent residency has enabled them to begin rebuilding their lives.

Australia was the only country that imposed a temporary protection visa on SIEV X survivors. As a result their trauma has been compounded. Surely the triumphant Coalition Government could finally grant them permanent protection.

The victims of the SIEV X tragedy have not been entirely forgotten. There are Australians who have become passionate about commemorating and documenting the event. One group, with writer Steve Biddulph at the helm, has sponsored an Australia-wide school project by which students have designed a memorial to the victims of the tragedy. An exhibition of their designs will be launched in Sydney next week by former governor-general Sir William Deane. It is hoped the memorial will be erected in Canberra next year.

There is an irony in the fact that the first ALP frontbencher to step down after the election was John Faulkner. His extensive questioning during a Senate inquiry into the sinking and the Australian Government's people-smuggling disruption program, was forensic and courageous. Similarly, former Australian ambassador Tony Kevin has steadfastly pursued the SIEV X affair, and posed a series of disturbing questions about Government knowledge of the sinking. His questions are set forth in his recently published book, A Certain Maritime Incident. Faulkner and Kevin continue to call for an independent judicial inquiry to determine what the Howard Government and its agencies knew about the tragedy.

The SIEV X disaster is an Australian story. It is symbolic of the drama of migration. Except for indigenous peoples, we are all, give or take a few generations, boat people. Many of our forbears braved the journey, often fleeing oppression or extreme poverty.

In the 1840s a journalist travelling in Ireland noted that the people's mouths were green because of their diet of grass. They were eating grass due to a devastating outbreak of potato blight. From Ireland's population of 8 million, about 1 million died of starvation, and 1 million boarded boats for countries such as the US and Australia. Today they would be disparagingly called economic migrants and queue jumpers.

In honouring the victims of the SIEV X tragedy we honour ourselves. In forgetting them, we ignore who we are. And one day that will return to haunt us.

I look forward to the day when an Australian prime minister will have the vision, understanding and compassion to lay a wreath at a SIEV X memorial.

The tragedy should act as a mirror to the recent history of this nation.

Arnold Zable is Melbourne PEN International's spokesman on refugee issues. His new novel, Scraps of Heaven, recalls the traumas of an earlier generation of refugees.
=====================================
SEE ALSO

SIEVX.COM

[Mowlana Vector]

Asylum Seekers Resource Centre
(Australia's Largest Asylum Seeker Aid, Health & Advocacy Organisation)

[Mowlana Vector]

Quote

Woomera Detention Centre Doctor Speaks Out

TONY JONES: Well, the boats have stopped coming - that's the victory claimed by the Federal Government after its tough stance to secure Australia's borders against people-smugglers.

But the policy has had unintended consequences not only for the families who made it to Australia but for the Australians who had to implement government policy.

Dr Simon Lockwood was the longest-serving medical officer at the now closed Woomera detention centre in outback South Australia. For nearly three years he kept a diary of what he saw.

Dr Lockwood's never spoken out about those experiences before.

He's talking to Lateline's Margot O'Neill ...

[Sam]

Subhanallah thats just shocking...

[Mowlana Vector]

Quote

...
Amazingly, a former Australian Federal Police undercover informant and people smuggler, Kevin Enniss, has already admitted to sabotaging asylum seekers' boats. In other words, the Howard Government has been paying individuals to engage in the people smuggling trade.



As disturbing are Kevin's claims of complicity among the AFP, the Coastguard and the Defence Force. Strong evidence points to an unprecedented politicisation of these departments to the extent that the long-held policy at sea - rescue those in distress - is being ignored. Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has already admitted that AFP funding was directed at Indonesian people-smuggling disruption teams.

More Here ...

[Mowlana Vector]

Refugee Blunder Costs ASIO
By: Mark Forbes (Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Canberra)
THE AGE, 10 Nov 2004


Illustration: Tandberg

ASIO has been forced to pay about $200,000 in compensation to a refugee it falsely classified a national security risk, causing him to be locked up for two years.

An assessment from a Middle Eastern secret police service, found to have a dubious human rights record, left the Kuwaiti man in the Maribyrnong detention centre for two years. He was released after ASIO was forced to admit he was classified "directly a risk to Australian national security" solely on information provided by the secret police who had persecuted him.

Mr Mohammed - who does not want his real name used - has fought a lengthy legal battle with ASIO, despite an inquiry by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security finding its security assessment was substantively defective.

ASIO accepted without question information "from a country with a dubious human rights record", the inquiry found. Although one legal report on the case says the information came from Iraqi secret police, intelligence sources said Kuwaiti intelligence was responsible.

The payment was made earlier this year, but no details were included in ASIO's annual report, released last week. Asked why it was excluded from the report and to explain the case's circumstances, a spokeswoman for ASIO director-general Dennis Richardson said "the director-general does not wish to comment on your questions".

For two years, ASIO blocked Mr Mohammed's attempts to appeal against its security assessment in Australian courts, successfully arguing it would jeopardise its relationship with a foreign intelligence agency. In 1999, his lawyer complained to the then inspector-general, Bill Blick, who launched an investigation. Soon after the inquiry began, ASIO reassessed Mr Mohammed and withdrew its claim he was a security risk.

Mr Blick continued the inquiry, finding ASIO had breached its guidelines by accepting "the foreign service's version of events without corroboration or serious question". An internal ASIO review also found "substantive defects in the assessment process".

The reports "should have been viewed with scepticism because ASIO knew that the country concerned has been assessed as having a poor human rights record".

As Mr Mohammed was denied the right to appeal to a court, ASIO had a responsibility to accord him natural justice, the review found. Although Mr Blick recommended compensation, negotiations dragged on for more than three years. The process is believed to have left Mr Mohammed severely distressed and concerned for his security.

He arrived in Australia seeking refugee status in 1997, and was found eligible for a protection visa by then immigration minister Philip Ruddock, subject to a security check. He had been living in Kuwait when it was invaded by Iraq in August 1990. Arrested by Kuwaiti police and deported to Iraq, he came to Australia via Jordan and Syria.

After ASIO's negative security assessment, the agency refused to release its details, or say which overseas agency provided them. ASIO, seeking to block a bid by Mr Mohammed to overturn the assessment of him, had told the Federal Court it had received "a written response from the overseas agency refusing to agree to the disclosure of the material". But a migration law update says "the appeal was basically by ASIO so that ASIO did not have to disclose the confidential information provided to it by the Iraqi Secret Police".

A spokesman for Mr Ruddock said results of Mr Blick's inquiry and Mr Mohammed's payment indicated "checks and balances in the system are working".
=========================================================

[Mowlana Vector]

Lost In Translation
The Sydney Morning Herald (20 Nov 2004)

Refugee children who have seen the worst of humanity are setting teachers new challenges in learning and literacy, writes Linda Doherty.

They are among the most traumatised children to have arrived in Australian schools. The Sudanese youngsters have seen parents, siblings and friends tortured and murdered, bodies decapitated and disembowelled.

The refugee camps in which they lived for years had no pencils or paints, no toys, no schools; few hints of how childhood is meant to be.

"I have never seen a group of kids who just want to play so much," says Warren Hopley as he watches the neatly attired children tuck into their morning tea.

Hopley, the principal of St Joachim's Primary School at Lidcombe, says the students' stories of survival are so horrific they are outside the consciousness of Westerners.

The Sudanese and other African students from war-torn countries are putting enormous pressure on NSW schools, because the students often cannot read or write in any language. Even 16-year-olds may never have been to school and psychological problems are common.

"They have difficulty focusing in class because they are not used to routine or freedom," Hopley says.

A principal of a public primary school in western Sydney says teachers are instructing the children in the most basic of emotions. "They are the loveliest kids and they have fabulous parents but they come with a lot of psychological problems. We are teaching them what 'happy' means and how to smile," he says.

Virginia Casanova, head of the Catholic Intensive English Centre at Lewisham, says half of the 75 students this year are African refugees - from Sudan, Zambia, Liberia and Rwanda - who are taught alongside other refugees and fee-paying overseas students from countries such as China, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the Philippines.

She has taught migrant and refugee children for 25 years, including Lebanese, Serbians, Cambodians, El Salvadoreans and Vietnamese boatpeople. But she and her colleagues are shocked by the needs of the African students.

"The last couple of years have been particularly challenging for teachers who felt they were experienced in dealing with students from traumatic backgrounds," she says. "For the Sudanese, trauma has been a lifestyle. They have stories of fleeing villages and losing family members, displacement, then the story of the journey [out of Sudan] and arriving in refugee camps that were unsafe."

Three brothers, aged 14, 15 and 16, started at the centre last month after six years in a camp that was too dangerous to even walk around.

"The damage is not always the direct effect of war but the negative experiences in the host country," Casanova says. "We are experiencing behaviours we have not seen before in traumatised children."

Some are scared of closed spaces like classrooms and are destabilised by changes to routine, like a teacher being absent for a day. Loud noises - balloons bursting or fire drills - can trigger terror. Other teachers say discipline and, occasionally, aggression and violence are problems. Many schools are now using specialist agencies such as the Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors, psychologists and counsellors to help teachers help the students.

A year is the usual stay for a student with minimal or no English to spend in an intensive English high school before they are integrated into a mainstream school. But Casanova says the Sudanese students need about 18 months. Although they often speak three languages - a little English, Arabic and the traditional Dinka - it is not unusual for a 16-year-old to have a literacy level below that of an eight-year-old Australian.

"They might never have learned to read or write in any language so there is nothing to hang new learning on," she says. "We're teaching 16-year-olds how to hold a pen, how to hold scissors.

"Their strength and dignity keeps us moving forward. They have seen things children shouldn't have seen but they are determined to move on."

In the melting pot of multicultural education, state and federal governments buck-pass responsibility on who should pay for the extra teachers needed to give children from non-English-speaking backgrounds the literacy tools to tackle the curriculum.

The so-called literacy crisis most affects the 41,000 NSW students who have been assessed as needing English language tuition but do not receive it because of the funding shortfall from both tiers of government.

In 1987, 15 per cent of NSW public school students were from non-English-speaking backgrounds but, with an increased migration and refugee intake, the rate is now 26 per cent, or almost 200,000 students.

Not all require help with language but even Australian-born children of migrant parents often speak and write English only at school. A third of public schools, including selective schools, have English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, and more than 8000 HSC students this year did the ESL course for the mandatory English exam.

The ratio of students to ESL teachers has doubled in primary schools in 20 years: for every 110 students needing this help, there is just one teacher. The NSW Department of Education acknowledges in internal documents that there has been "a significant deterioration in ESL program access in both primary and secondary schools".

The work of ESL teachers and other specialists in intensive English centres is difficult but rewarding. Kathie Power, the deputy principal of Cleveland Street Intensive English High School in Surry Hills, says "everything I do has to be translated or interpreted".

She has started a HAPPY group (Harmony And Peace-loving People, Yeah) to foster a sense of belonging for the students from different countries. After 30 to 40 weeks of learning English and other subjects, the students make a farewell speech and are helped in their transition to a regular school. "They often cry and say, 'We've been so happy here'. It's their first experience of education in another country," Power says.

They have completed a journey that often starts with what Power calls a "silent period" of culture shock.

The latest arrivals are refugees from Sudan and Iraq but the demographic mix of the 200 students changes constantly; currently it also includes migrants from China, Indonesia, South Korea and South America.

When asked through an interpreter what she likes about Sydney, 15-year-old Suha Saeed from Sudan answers "everything". Less than six months ago she was reunited with her mother and siblings after two years.

Iraqi Evan Audesh, 15, has been here for four months after two years in Jordan. He misses Baghdad but is "happy that I am here" where he plays soccer, cricket and basketball.

Thushi Ragunathasarm, a Sri Lankan Tamil, fled Jaffna with his family because "the militants were fighting and we couldn't live there peacefully". His father, a Hindu priest, sponsored the rest of his family into Australia this year and Thushi, 15, is the proud boys' leader of the HAPPY group.

STEPHEN Luka named his son Warren after the principal, Warren Hopley, gave him the "present" of employment as a teacher's aide at St Joachim's.

Next year he and another teacher's aide, James Mayol, will start training as teachers at the Australian Catholic University, which has set aside 15 full-time student places for Sudanese refugees in a unique program to break down cultural barriers in the classroom.

Both Luka and Mayol were children when they were separated from their families during 1986 militia attacks on their villages. Mayol was reunited with his mother two years ago; Luka has no knowledge of his family's fate.

Mayol's father and brothers were murdered and he spent years in "slave" camps, eventually escaping to Eritrea then to Egypt. Luka matter-of-factly talks of "running and running and running" for days with one brother who "got blown up by a landmine". "Out of fear, I can't even bury the body," he says.

Hopley says the employment of Sudanese teacher's aides has helped the children feel safe and they are making up for lost time in their school work. Mayol, who works at the intensive English centre at Lewisham, said parents often "don't have the inner peace to control their children" so there is "ill-discipline" in the classroom.

But Mayol now allows himself to dream of a future for his wife and two boys. "All my life there were disruptions and difficulties but I was happy the day I arrived in Australia," he says. "I want to thank all the teachers in Australia and all those Australian people who are now struggling to understand our issues. We're sure we have been blessed."
=========================================================================
SEE ALSO

HWR: Children's Rights

[Mowlana Vector]

High Court Gives 'Jihad' Member Second Chance
The Sydney Morning Herald (8 Dec 2004)


Amanda Vanstone ... her department
refused a protection visa to Naff.
Photo: Mike Bowers

A man arrested over a bomb plot in India and claiming to be member of the Jihad Movement has won a High Court case against Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone.

The High Court ruled a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal did not allow the man, known as Naff, procedural fairness.

It quashed the tribunal's decision to refuse Naff refugee status and ordered it to redetermine his application for a review of the case.

Naff is a Muslim Tamil who said he was an active member of the Indian Union Muslim League and of a committee of the Jihad Movement.

He was president of an organisation in his village associated with a movement led by a benevolent Muslim industrialist, Dawood Ibrahim, whom he said he met in Bombay.

Naff was arrested with 30 other Muslims in India in December 1998 and accused of planning to plant bombs.

He said he was severely beaten before being released a few days later and later decided to flee India to save his life.

In March 2000, an Australian Immigration Department officer refused Naff's application for a protection visa, rejecting his claim he met Ibrahim in India and that he was involved with the Jihad Movement.

Naff applied to the tribunal for review of that decision.

The tribunal held a hearing into Naff's case in February 2002, with questioning revealing inconsistencies in his evidence, including the dates he was detained and the number of detentions.

At the end of the hearing, the tribunal member told Naff that given the inconsistencies she would write to him asking for more information.

However, she failed to write and instead the tribunal rejected his application, saying Ibrahim was regarded by Indian authorities as a gangster so he was unlikely to have travelled to India and met Naff.

The tribunal also said belonging to the Jihad Movement contradicted Naff's claim of opposing violence.

The Federal Court of Australia dismissed Naff's application for orders quashing the tribunal decision.

However, the High Court granted Naff special leave to appeal over the failure of the tribunal member to write to him.

The court today held that with her closing remarks, the tribunal member was acknowledging that the review's purposes had not been completely fulfilled.

"She was indicating that she had not yet finished receiving the presentation of arguments by the appellant which he had been invited to make," the High Court said in its judgment.

"She was saying that procedural fairness required some further steps to be taken.

"It is clear that the tribunal member was in the best position to judge whether the review process was incomplete.

"Her conduct is only consistent with the formation of a firm impression that it was."

The High Court held that depriving Naff of the opportunity to answer questions was a breach of procedural fairness and unanimously allowed his appeal.

It quashed the tribunal's review decision and ordered it to redetermine the application for review.

AAP

High Court Full Judgement

[Mowlana Vector]

Howard Knew Overboard Claims False: Inquiry
The Sydney Morning Herald (9 Dec 2004)



A parliamentary inquiry has backed claims from a former defence adviser that he told Prime Minister John Howard claims that children were thrown from an asylum seeker boat were false.

The Senate set up an inquiry in August into new revelations by Mike Scrafton, a former senior adviser to former defence minister Peter Reith, that contradicted the government's children overboard claims.

Mr Scrafton said he had told the Prime Minister in November 2001 that a videotape was "at best inconclusive" as to whether there were any children in the water.

He said he had also told Mr Howard he did not support the proposition that the event had occurred, that photographs released in early October 2001 were definitely of the sinking of the refugee boat and not of any children being thrown into the water and that no-one in defence believed that any children were thrown overboard.

The inquiry report, tabled in parliament today, said Mr Scrafton's evidence had shed new light on the children overboard affair.

"His evidence also corroborates the (children overboard inquiry) report's findings that the prime minister's office was alerted to the misrepresentation of the photographs before the Prime Minister's Press Club appearance on 8 November (in which had made the children overboard claim)," the report said.

The report said Mr Scrafton's evidence also suggested that Mr Reith, his chief of staff and his media adviser all knew that the photographs were being misrepresented, but decided not to correct the public record.

The inquiry was from a Labor and Democrats dominated Senate committee and included a minority report by coalition senators dismissing the claims.

The asylum seeker issue is considered to be one of the key factors in the government's re-election in 2001.

In their minority report, government senators said Mr Scrafton's version of events was inconsistent.

"The fact that Mr Scrafton is, by his own admission, a person who was prepared to lie about these matters can only make the credibility of his recently-made allegations even more doubtful," they said.

"The 'finding' of the majority report that Mr Scrafton is a credible witness is not just counterintuitive; it is virtually impossible to sustain on a fair reading of the evidence."

AAP
===============================
SEE ALSO


In Defense of My Howardite Mate

[Mowlana Vector]

Field Notes From An Amateur Philologist

From the hand of Julian Burnside QC comes a book, seemingly unconnected to Mr Burnside's main professional engagements as a Barrister and human rights lawyer. Could that really be the case?

At Project SafeCom we don't think so; we suspect that the spirit, intent and probably also the content of this book is strongly related to Mr Burnside's ongoing speaking out about Orwellian language coming from the Australian government. That's also the reason the book is amongst our collection of "essential tools" for refugee advocates and other spin-busters.

If we take Mr Burnside's article about Doublespeak as a guide, this book is likely to be a tool to help you stay awake while listening to the news coming from the Murdoch and Packer network about the ongoing slaughter of Iraq and its people, and it will help you understand what Attorney-General Philip Ruddock tells you about the ASIO laws, and it will help you read press statements from DIMIA and the Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone about mandatory detention.

"Doublespeak uses language to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into comfortable minds. The Nazi regime were masters at it. The Howard Government is an enthusiastic apprentice." (from A bit about words)

"....in this witty, erudite collection of essays [Burnside] explores his obsessions and interests with the glee of a child in a lolly shop." (Bookcaffé, Gleebooks)

"...the word I think we need to introduce as expressing "not truth" is Reith. We could have truth, lie and Reith. You know, the sort of sludgy, the sludgy falsehoods that masquerade as a form of truth." (Don Watson:) "You could turn it into a verb - you Reithed it." (ABC The World Today)

About WORDWATCHING

Author: Julian Burnside
Title: WORDWATCHING, field notes from an amateur philologist
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Website: http://www.scribepub.com.au/
Format: 198 x 129mm cb
Extent: 240 pp
Format: 198 x 129mm cb
ISBN: 1 920769 382
Price: $32.95
Release: December 2004

For More Info, Click here ...

[Mowlana Vector]

2004 HUMAN RIGHTS MEDAL AND AWARDS

[Mowlana Vector]

We Treat Some Killers Better Than Asylum Seekers
The AGE (22 Dec 04)

The people suffering indefinite detention are being slowly broken, writes Arnold Zable.

The two-week hunger strike by Iranian inmates in the Baxter detention centre is a desperate cry for help. It is not blackmail. It is not a demand, but a plea. It is an attempt to reveal the horrors of indefinite detention, and a passionate cry for freedom.

Some inmates are now spending their sixth year in detention. After talking to people who have been in touch with the strikers this past fortnight, one overriding message comes through.

As one striker put it: "We have applied for asylum. We have been here too long. Please, let us out." Or, as another inmate said: "I am going mad. I just cannot take it any more."

Indefinite detention creates madness and severe depression. It drives inmates to contemplate suicide and, at times, to attempt it, as several have in recent weeks. One dug a grave and buried himself, and when he was taken from the grave he tried to hang himself. It was indefinite detention that drove three Iranian men to spend 11 days this month on the tin roof of a gymnasium, where they weathered severe thunderstorms, torrential rain and temperatures as high as 40 degrees, and unfurled banners pleading for help.

On Tuesday, December 13, Dr Louise Newman, convener of the Alliance of Health Professionals for Asylum Seekers, summed up the inmates' predicament: "This latest outbreak of despair and self-harm is entirely predictable. Long-term detention damages psychological health and the prospect of indefinite detention results in hopelessness and mental deterioration."

After observing the short sentences sometimes given in Australia for deliberate murder, one detainee remarked, "yet we get indefinite years just for asking for asylum from persecution. The sense of injustice in us is strong. We are every day degraded and humiliated by being locked up and treated like criminals, and in the end we will all crumble."

How can it be that in a democratic country that prides itself on its decency, there are people who languish in prison for trying to seek a new life, free of oppression for themselves and their families? This is a human right under the terms of the 1951 UN conventions on refugees, to which Australia is a signatory.

These inmates have not been convicted of any crime, yet they do not know when, if ever, they will be released or when they could be summarily deported.

The hunger strike raises many issues. Baxter is, in effect, a high-security prison surrounded by an electrified fence. To enter, visitors must pass through a series of electronically controlled gates and doors. Inmates are locked away from public scrutiny and are subject to mental abuse.

The centre is managed by a private company, GSL. Running prisons for profit is not conducive to humane management. Of particular concern is the scandalous use of solitary confinement in isolation cells at the infamous "management unit" as a means of controlling behaviour, including attempted suicide and extreme distress.

Coupled with the horror of detention is the seemingly arbitrary nature of the refugee determination process. While some Iranians have finally gained temporary protection, or bridging visas, all too many remain incarcerated.

There is the predicament of Iranians who have converted to Christianity, a crime punishable by death in Iran.

The suffering of Iranian Shiites and inmates of other faiths are of equal concern, as too is the suffering of inmates from countries such as Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. The deteriorating situation in Iran has increased fears of returning. Amnesty International is one of a number of agencies that have recorded numerous human rights violations in Iran in 2003 and 2004, including torture, imprisonment and public hangings. We should not be sending asylum seekers home to such situations.

Yet all these considerations are overridden by the simple fact that asylum seekers should not be detained in the first place, whether it is in Baxter, on Nauru or in other detention centres.

Whatever the asylum seekers' original claims may have been, their trauma has been compounded by the gross human rights abuses they have been subjected to at the hands of Australian authorities. Indefinite detention is in itself an abuse of human rights and breaches Australia's international obligations. After so many years of imprisonment, these inmates should be let out and allowed the proper counselling and care needed to help restore them to normality.

It is time for the Australian Government to find a dignified and humane solution. What is needed is a circuit breaker, an act of humanity that can immediately end the despair of detained asylum seekers. The Immigration Minister can quickly exercise such an option by issuing humanitarian visas, as she is entitled to do, on a number of grounds.

Long-term mandatory detention for asylum seekers should be abolished. There are humane alternatives practised in countries such as Sweden, and there are a range of well-thought-out alternatives that have been proposed by agencies such as the Refugee Council of Australia, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, and the Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker project. The jailing of innocents in such hellish places is a barbaric practice. It should end before more inmates are driven to attempt suicide, or sink into madness. We are breaking their bodies, their minds and their spirits.

Arnold Zable is the spokesman on asylum seekers for the Melbourne Centre of International PEN. On Saturday he joined a 24-hour fast in empathy with the Baxter hunger strikers.
==============
SEE ALSO
The New Australian Fair Go

[ludz]

I hate those camps...and im a member of the Liberal Party. But this must be said, they were never always like that. If you look at the detention centers they were vastly different from those we have now. What has happened over time???

[idriys]

Surat anNur has the relevant ayat to this topic: let us see if any one can find them.

[Mowlana Vector]

AA


idriys, on Dec 26 2004, 03:51 PM, said:

Surat anNur has the relevant ayat to this topic: let us see if any one can find them. 



Bro, What are you trying to imply here?

Allahu'Alam

W'salaam

[Mowlana Vector]

When A Family Tree Casts Only Shade & Doubt

The Bakhtiyaris say they are Afghan refugees, but as Russell Skelton reports, the evidence is patchy, often contradictory, or doesn't exist.



Amina, Mazhar and Samina Bakhtiyari at the Port Augusta detention centre
with their mother, Roqia. The Refugee Review Tribunal found Mrs Bakhtiyari's
evidence lacked credibility. (Photo: Paul Harris)

I first became aware of the Bakhtiyari family in 2001, when a welfare worker at the Woomera detention centre - then a place of violence, frustration and rage - told me about an Afghan teenager she had befriended.

The woman told me this boy had arrived at Woomera brimming with optimism but had quickly succumbed to the desperation and manipulative influence of older male detainees.

His name was Alamdar Bakhtiyari. She was deeply troubled by the alarming decline in his emotional state and filed a detailed report to ACM - the US company contracted to run Woomera - requesting intervention.

Alamdar, 12, had suicidal thoughts and had engaged in numerous acts of self-harm, including cutting the word "freedom" in his forearm with a razor blade.

The most distressing moment for the boy had come when he learnt from his mother, Roqia, that his father, Ali, had not been killed by the Taliban but was alive and working in Sydney. The boy could not understand why he could not join him.

While the accounts of Alamdar and his brother Montazer relayed to me by other ACM employees reflected the brutal environment that children were subject to at Woomera, where self-mutilation and attempted suicide were common occurrences, Roqia and her family were also the subject of speculation among other asylum seekers, especially Afghans.

When Roqia and her five children were refused refugee status by the Refugee Review Tribunal on July 26, 2001, after hearing evidence that the family was from Baluchistan, in Pakistan - a region bordering Afghanistan - it confirmed the suspicions of some detainees who had believed all along they were Pakistanis simply seeking a better life in Australia.

Tens of thousands of Hazara Afghans - descendants of the Mongols who settled in Central Asia centuries ago - had fled into Pakistan since the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and had become linguistically indistinguishable from Pakistanis.

There was also considerable speculation about the nature of Roqia's relationship with her younger half-brother, Mazhar Ali, who had chaperoned the family from Pakistan to Jakarta to Darwin by boat in January 2001.

Mazhar Ali mentored Alamdar and Montazer in their father's absence and they bonded closely with him, so much so that both boys told me during an interview over several days at the Baxter detention centre in 2002 that they loved him more than their own father. When Mazhar Ali was deported to Pakistan just days after the interview, the boys became distraught and alienated from their father. I learned later they partially blamed him for Mazhar's removal.

Since his arrival in Pakistan, Mazhar Ali has been in regular contact with Roqia and her lawyers and has apparently devoted himself to finding evidence to establish the family's Afghan history. The Sunday Age understands he has travelled to Shahrestan in Uruzgan province, ironically a region of Afghanistan the Bakhtiyari family said they could never return to. The evidence he has gathered, including a voter registration that can be purchased by any Afghan on the blackmarket for $US20, is inconclusive.

THE first time I saw Alamdar and Montazer was when they scampered behind Sister Brigid Arthur through the foyer of a Collins Street office block early one morning in July 2002 to request political asylum from the British Consulate, in a cynical stunt contrived by refugee activists. The exercise had nothing to do with the welfare of the boys, who had been living in safe houses in Melbourne ever since they escaped from Woomera during a riot, and everything to do with discrediting the Government's policies on mandatory detention.

They had been on the run for weeks, but appeared wiser than their years. I later learnt that Alamdar was suffering acute back pain from an injury he sustained in the escape, and that both boys, distressed at being separated from their mother and sisters, had become unmanageable, refusing to stay indoors.

The stunt captured headlines around the world, but it destroyed any hope of the family ever obtaining refugee status in Australia, and infuriated the Federal Government.

The family's best interests were consumed in the divisive debate that followed as the pro-refugee lobby - a broad church of lawyers, clerics, ALP, Democrat and Green politicians and anything-goes radicals - and the Government waged their arguments through the media.

Then immigration minister Philip Ruddock made his intentions clear, telling ABC radio the day after the Bakhtiyari boys were taken back into custody: "There has been information that the department has received, information from people who have known the family abroad, that they are, in fact, Pakistani . . . That information has been put to Mr Bakhtiyari as part of a process for determining whether or not his visa would be cancelled."

In another interview Mr Ruddock, to the surprise of some in his own department, went further, declaring the family to be Pakistanis and not Afghans.

Within a matter of weeks I found myself and two interpreters sitting on richly coloured rugs among scores of Hazara men in a hostel on the outskirts of Kabul. The men were anxious to help us find a safe route to Charkh, a tiny village in Uruzgan province that Ali and Roqia consistently claimed they had grown up in and from which they fled during the dark days of the Taliban. The men knew Charkh, but had never heard of the Bakhtiyaris.

Before leaving Australia I had interviewed Ali in Sydney at length about where to go and who to interview to verify his story. Speaking through an interpreter, he volunteered the names of people, places and even tea-houses. It has since been claimed by activists, lawyers and minor celebrities who have embraced the Bakhtiyari cause that I and the late Alastair McLeod, a freelance journalist retained by The Australian to make the same trip, went to the wrong place.

I went to Charkh because that was where Ali Bakhtiyari told me he came from and where he directed me to go. It was also where Roqia insisted she came from in her first record of interview and during her appeal to the Refugee Review Tribunal. The phrase Ali used in his conversation with me was: "I am from Uruzgan province, Shahrestan district and Charkh village." Nothing could be clearer.

On arriving in Afghanistan I contacted the United Nations, which has the most comprehensive and detailed maps of Afghanistan, and the Afghan transitional government's department of the interior to pinpoint Charkh. There is only one Charkh in Uruzgan and that is where I took a team of experienced interpreters, including one from Time magazine who had covered the war and one from Australia who had worked for Immigration and ACM before quitting in the wake of the Government's refugee policies. Our guide was Mohammad Jan Peicar, a Hazara schoolteacher who had taught in the Charkh Chaprasak district since 1992 and was clearly a respected local figure.

It is now a matter of record that we found no trace of the Bakhtiyaris in Charkh or the district. It is also a matter of record that when Ali Bakhtiyari was confronted with this during a telephone conversation with two of The Sunday Age interpreters and a village elder, he suddenly and quite inexplicably changed his story, claiming that he came first from Charkh Nolije and then Charkh Chaprasak before hanging up. A search of both villages turned up no trace of the Bakhtiyaris.

What is not known is that since my visit, the Karzai Government has dispatched a mission to exactly the same area at the request of migration agents AMPI, representing Roqia Bakhtiyari, and also found no trace of the family ever having lived there or in the district. The Afghan embassy in Canberra has confirmed this.

Last year I went to Baxter and interviewed the Bakhtiyari boys and their father over three days. The boys were disturbed and upset. Alamdar had been classified as a potential runaway and he was showing signs that years of institutionalisation were seriously affecting his emotional state, which I wrote about with Ali's permission.

I also took with me photos of Charkh, of the imam and the village elders for Ali and his family to identify. While I agreed to treat our conversation as off the record until Ali's status in Australia was resolved, I can say I heard nothing from him to persuade me that any of my conclusions had been wrong.

It must be said, and it is something seldom discussed by those campaigning for the release of the Bakhtiyaris, that Roqia has a profound credibility problem. In her record of interview and before the tribunal she contradicted herself on numerous occasions. Much of her account of life in Charkh, such as not knowing the name of the Afghan currency, not knowing the names of nearby towns and not being able to cite the years in the Afghan calendar in which her children were born, was implausible. Indeed, Hazara women I interviewed in Charkh were amused by these claims.

Tribunal member Genevieve Hamilton concluded: "The tribunal as constituted usually avoids commenting on an applicant's overall credibility. But in this case the applicant's credibility was remarkably poor.

"The primary applicant is not an Afghan national. The tribunal is not satisfied that the applicants have a well-founded fear of persecution in Afghanistan."

Surprisingly, Roqia has refused to co-operate in any meaningful way with immigration authorities in their bid to establish her identity. She has, however, approached the Afghan embassy in Canberra to investigate her claim that she is an Afghan national. This will take several weeks to process. To make the issue of her identity even more complicated, a man has mysteriously stepped forward in another remote corner of Afghanistan to claim that he is Roqia's nephew.

It is surprising that Ali and Roqia have brothers and sisters, and in Ali's case a mother, still living in Afghanistan and Iran, yet nobody has been able to locate them, not even the two teams of lawyers acting for the family. Evidence from family members as to their true identity would be overwhelming. Only recently have lawyers for Ali Bakhtiyari approached the Afghan embassy in Canberra for help.

Much of the legal effort waged on behalf of the Baktiyaris has gone into a series of costly legal appeals that have failed, and a campaign to discredit Government claims that they are Pakistani nationals.

Behind the scenes, the tactics have been borderline. On one occasion, an affidavit was sent to The Sunday Age interpreter on the Afghanistan assignment with suggested answers to questions. The same interpreter has also been harassed late at night and early in the morning by an activist closely linked to the Bakhtiyari lawyers urging him to renounce the veracity of his work and reports.

For the record, I have never asserted that the Bakhtiyaris are Pakistanis. In years of researching and exploring their claims, I have never made a definitive statement about their nationality, and there is good reason for that.

The Pakistan-Afghanistan border is porous. At least 5 million people have crossed back and forth across it in a quarter of a century of civil war. I have met Afghans returning to Kabul who have lived and worked in Pakistan for 25 years. Their children speak with Pakistani accents, yet they are accepted without a blink as Afghans.

THE fate of the Bakhtiyaris now rests with Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone. With all avenues of legal appeal exhausted and an Immigration Act that requires her to remove asylum seekers who have no valid claim for refugee status, plus documentation from the Pakistani Government that the Bakhtiyaris are Pakistani nationals, her options are severely limited.

She could exercise ministerial discretion and grant the family visas on compassionate grounds, acknowledging that they are Pakistani but also that there is plenty of evidence that they have sustained much emotional damage, and the children cannot be held responsible for their parents' mistakes.

But that would be to create not so much a precedent but a new avenue of appeal for hundreds of other cases, many with far more compelling histories. Does the family that comes from the killing fields of Darfur or a Korean family that has arrived in Australia illegally to obtain specialised health care for a terminally ill child have less claim to Australian citizenship than the Bakhtiyaris?

For Senator Vanstone, the issue is also complicated by the fact that the Bakhtiyaris are a reminder - even an emblem - of Mr Ruddock's controversial period as immigration minister, where compromise was regarded as weakness or an admission that the Government's tough stand on mandatory detention was flawed. Senator Vanstone says the decision has been made, but declines to say when the family will be removed to Pakistan.
=================

SEE ALSO

Leaders' Family Values Go Out the Steel-Barred Window in Bakhtiari Case

Status Denied: Bakhtiaris To Be Deported Today

Govt To Bill Bakhtiyaris For Detention

Bakhtiaris Should Be Relieved: Vanstone


Bakhtiyari Caught Lying By Lying Politicians

[idriys]

http://www.smh.com.a...7497432756.html
http://www.theage.co...l?oneclick=true
Just for a little bit of balance: I expect to be able to present some viewpoints from Pakistan, too.

This post has been edited by idriys: 30 December 2004 - 10:46 PM

[Mowlana Vector]

Why Educate Australians About Refugees?


(Courtesy: The Australian, 31.12.04)

The Temporary Protection Visa Must Go!

Debunking the Myths About Asylum Seekers

[idriys]

All that I can find are these:

www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0409/S00055.htm

www.dailyablution.blogs.com/the_daily_ablution/2004/07/next_time_try_a.htm

www.malignetele.com/id263.htm

www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0%2C4273%2C4465247%2C00.html

www.siari.co.uk/Self-harm_self-injury_latest-news.htm

The rest af the 'Australian News' in Pakistan, is about cricket!

This post has been edited by idriys: 07 January 2005 - 08:15 PM

[Mowlana Vector]

Bakhtiaris In Paper Pickle
(6 January 2005)

The Bakhtiari family was turned away from a hotel on the night they arrived in Pakistan, apparently because they had no passports or identification papers.

Bushra Rauf, a receptionist at Flashman's hotel in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, said the family had turned up on Sunday night.

"We couldn't accept them. They have not any identification papers or passport, so they cannot check in," Mrs Rauf said. "They just left the hotel and we don't know where they have gone."

The director of Adelaide's Centracare, Dale West, a supporter of the family, said an Immigration Department official, Jim Williams, had told him: "We couldn't get passports for them, only entry documents."

Mr West said intermediaries in Pakistan had received two phone calls from the family on arrival and were to have met them but had not heard back from them.

A spokesman for the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said an entry document was the same as a passport: "They had the appropriate travel documents that the Pakistan authorities provide for them."
AdvertisementAdvertisement

Andra Jackson

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

ALSO SEE
Fixing Australia: Bakhtiari Family Taken, Deported To Danger

Google News Archive: Bakhtiari Family

[Mowlana Vector]

Even Nauru Was Better, Says Returned Afghan
By: Andra Jackson
The AGE (7 January 2005)


Ali Atta at work in Kandahar.

Ali Atta, one of the Afghan asylum seekers on Nauru who took up the Government's offer of assistance to return home, says he now feels duped.

Speaking 18 months after his return, he says even conditions on Nauru were better than the life he has returned to.

A member of the Hazara minority, he fled with his family in 2001 after he was jailed for 10 days by the Taliban.

He financed their escape by selling land and an old truck. He paid for passage on a boat from Bali to Ashmore Reef that ended when they were intercepted by the Australian navy and taken to Nauru.

But when he told his story to the Immigration Department, "they don't believe us, they say maybe you are wrong".

He began to despair of having his claim accepted at the same time as the International Organisation for Migration, private managers of the Nauru detention centre, were "pressuring people to go back to Afghanistan".

The IOM kept announcing that dengue fever had broken out, he said.

He and his wife were given $3000 to relocate with their three children, aged 10, eight and six. On his return he struggled for a year to find work amid intermittent fighting. Eight months ago, he found work as a cook in a United Nations guesthouse in Kandahar, where he earns $US300 ($A400) a month, compared to the $US200 Afghan average. But this comes at a price, because by working for the UN he is a target for insurgents.

His family lives in the UN compound with him, and he said "now my family always dreams of conditions on Nauru.

"Nauru was better than Afghanistan now because the water and electricity (facilities) are destroyed and we don't have any house and it is a difficult life.

"My son and daughter don't like school here because they are educated to a very high level now but here there is only a very low level of education for them."

Six months after his return, he heard that Afghans held on Nauru with him had been admitted to Australia. "I was very sad. I would still like to come to Australia," he says.

An Immigration Department spokeswoman said country security assessments were based on a range of sources and not all Afghans reassessed on Nauru were granted protection.
=======================
ALSO SEE
Winter Takes Toll on Refugees Living in Kabul

[Mowlana Vector]

Poms, Yanks Worst Illegal Immigrants

Afghan and Iranian boat people create headlines but it's the Poms and Yanks who make up the majority of Australia's illegal immigrants.

There were more than 10,000 illegal British and American immigrants in Australia on June 30, 2004, making up about a fifth of all people who overstayed their visas and remained in the country unlawfully.

Another 3,900 Chinese illegal immigrants remained in Australia last year, along with 3,000 Indonesians and 2,800 South Koreans.

Afghans don't rate a mention while there were less than 200 illegal Iranians in Australia in June.

The new figures on illegal immigration were revealed in a report on immigration trends released by Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone.

The report said that while visitors from the United Kingdom and the United States accounted for the highest number of visa overstayers, they were rated as low risk because the number was small as a percentage of the total number of Britons and Americans entering the country.

Around 15,000 illegal immigrants had been in the country for more than 10 years but many of the 51,000 unlawful visitors only stayed for a few days after their visa expired.

"Many people who are recorded as overstayers are simply extending a short stay in Australia by a few days or weeks and leave of their own accord within a short period," the report said.

Australia's population reached 20.1 million at the end of June last year.

The population growth in the 12 months to June 2004 was made up of 121,000 so-called natural increases - births less deaths - and 117,600 in net overseas migration.

Most migrants continue to come from the UK, followed by New Zealand.

The brain drain once again affected Australia, with the country losing almost 29,000 skilled workers - most of whom were young - through permanent emigration last year.

However, more than 44,000 skilled workers settled in Australia.

In total, 59,078 people left Australia permanently in 2003-04, the highest ever number.

The report found a quarter of Australia's workforce was born overseas, with computer professionals, accountants and managers/administrators the top three occupations of migrants prior to coming to Australia.

Humanitarian visas were granted to 788 people already in Australia last year, down from 897 the previous year.

The proportion of migrants settling in NSW was at it lowest level since 1983-84 as a result of a regional migration initiative.

Senator Vanstone said students and skilled workers were driving the change in Australia's migration intake.

"In the case of students, in 2001 the government changed the rules to allow overseas students in Australia to be able to apply to stay permanently as skilled migrants at the end of their studies," she said.

The report predicted Australia's population would swell to around 26 million to 27 million by the middle of this century.
© 2005 AAP

Source
=====================================
ALSO SEE

Families Being Split up, Claim Refugee Groups

Overstayers and People in Breach of Visa Condition

[BOAZ_David]

Ziver, on Jun 17 2004, 10:18 AM, said:

According to Mrs Amanda Vanstone, "There are no refugees in Australian detention centres".

Myyyyy goodness.. u just don't get it do u ! The simple FACT is this.
Refugee is a person defined under the UN convention. article 51 if not mistaken.
It is abundantly clear, that a person is a refugee if they are fleeing imminent persecution or fear for their lives. A refugee is NOT someone who wants a better life. Is it 'reasonable' for a man to go FAR away from his wife and children ? rather than remain as close as possible to them in a safe country ? For those who bring the whole family, the same reasoning applies as outlined in point 2 below.

1/ A person who is in fear of his life, yet leaves his family behind to the very fate he is escaping is irresponsible in the extreme.
2/ Such a person, who travels through not 1, but THREE friendly countries 'fleeing for his life' is AUTOMATICALLY no longer a 'refugee' they are an economic illegal migrant.
3/ It is extremely sensitive to the clear majority of Australians that people who are in Macdonalds Jakarta having a laugh one minute but the next they are 'compassion deserving refugees' in a clapped out old boat en route to Australia, and that they are absolutely NOT refugees. Think about it. they come as MUSLIMS thru at least 2 muslim countries Malaysia and Indonesia, which are more culturally and spiritually compatable.. to Australia ??????

During the Tampa crisis, I spoke to a LOT of people, and out of maybe 20 spoken to, just ad hoc wherever I met them, not a single one was in support of those people, not only that.. they were quite emotional about our borders being breached by illegals.
Absolutely no sympathy for people who will subject their families to the danger of old boats when the deliberately choose to flaut our laws, and they ALREADY had 'safety' in countries they visited before attempting to come here.

I mean.. we might look a bit silly.. but really we arn't. We do know a 'con' when we see it.
BOAZ

[Rob]

Sorry BOAZ David, but it is funny! Have you read the UDHR? I don't know much. I'm a simple fellow, but I know almost the entire UDHR by heart as it was my job. There aren't even 51 articles within the preamble of the UDHR. At best Article 51 is found in the bi-section of linguistics and is about the right to use a specific language in a specific region of the world. What's that got to do with refugees?

Perhaps you are referring to Article 14. It's well worth a read.

Plus, I don't think you'll find anyone here advocating the idea that criminals or terrorsist should be entering Australia freely. What most people do impugne is the arbitrary nature of our refugee system. Of course backgrounds, criminal records should be checked etc. But it doesn't take nearly as long as we are told - and it certainly doesn't take years. A good example is in Sweden where a child under the age of 16 won't spend more than 6 days in detention because if the system works then all the info is gathered in a matter of days/hours. This is what most people have a problem with when it comes to refugees in Australia. The use of administration is inadequate at the moment. And it's certainly not because we're swamped - check out the number of refugees that head to Australia versus those that are currently in Pakistan or Chad.

Trust me mate, I know what I'm talking about, I used to do this kind of stuff for a living. And I hope I've given some food for thought. There's no right or wrong about it, but I thought it necessary to clear up a few points.

[Webster]

BOAZ_David, on Jan 29 2005, 09:47 PM, said:

Myyyyy goodness.. u just don't get it do u !  The simple FACT is this.
Refugee is a person defined under the UN convention. article 51 if not mistaken.
It is abundantly clear, that a person is a refugee if they are fleeing imminent persecution or fear for their lives. A refugee is NOT someone who wants a better life.  Is it 'reasonable' for a man to go FAR away from his wife and children ? rather than remain as close as possible to them in a safe country ?  For those who bring the whole family, the same reasoning applies  as outlined in point 2 below.

I think Rob outlined this quiet well

BOAZ_David, on Jan 29 2005, 09:47 PM, said:

1/ A person who is in fear of his life, yet leaves his family behind to the very fate he is escaping is irresponsible in the extreme.

There may be a few points that you are blind to;
1. The person fleeing for his/ her life are attempting to save their families from having to harbour a person wanted by the state. One such man I met had refused to carry out injections of prisoners in order to kill them. This man fled with his immediate family. He is now an important member of the Tasmanian community and has become the local GP in a much needed area. The man in topic had more family and would have taken them with him, had he enough money to bribe the border guards. Having said that, fleeing with four people is less noticeable than fleeing with forty. Hmm it’s starting to get complicated… yes?
I have only presented you with an extremely condensed version of this man’s ordeals. To make such a general statement with disregard to the intricate details of each individual Asylum Seeker or Refugee, is to close your eyes and hold your hands over your ears.

BOAZ_David, on Jan 29 2005, 09:47 PM, said:

2/ Such a person, who travels through not 1, but THREE friendly countries 'fleeing for his life' is AUTOMATICALLY  no longer a 'refugee' they are an economic illegal migrant. 

2. You are right they are ‘no longer a refugee’, in fact they never were a refugee. The correct term used is Asylum Seeker, as pointed out by our Amanda Vanstone. They are seeking asylum in a country able to provide them with economic support and their human rights. So you are not far off the mark.
To say they are automatically no longer a refugee needs some basic interpretation. To become a refugee is not a process that occurs ‘automatically’, as you put it. A person may wonder through every country in the world and not be a refugee. To put the whole process in simple matters to be understood, the Asylum seeker needs to declare they are a refugee to the right person.
Now that we kinda understand what an Asylum Seeker is, as compared to a refugee, we are now able to understand that the statement you made is full of holes and needs to be re- evaluated.

BOAZ_David, on Jan 29 2005, 09:47 PM, said:

3/ It is extremely sensitive to the clear majority of Australians that people who are in Macdonalds Jakarta having a laugh one minute but the next they are 'compassion deserving refugees' in a clapped out old boat en route to Australia, and that they are absolutely NOT refugees. Think about it. they come as MUSLIMS thru at least 2 muslim countries Malaysia and Indonesia, which are more culturally and spiritually compatable.. to Australia ??????

3. Boaz, you must be listening to Allan Jones again, on 2GB. Once again to oversimplify a person(s) case and disregard their whole circumstance over a simple statement such as, ‘people who are in Macdonalds Jakarta having a laugh’. To this statement all I have to add is, ‘how dare they eat Macdonalds, this meal is something that we have, how dare they have something in common with a living breathing human being such as us. I can not believe that they could humanise themselves into believing they are real people’. I understand that it hurts to know that not only westerners have Macdonalds, but hey, it’s a big planet.
I can tell you form personal experience that these Asylum Seekers do not know how far from the shores of Indonesia, Australia may be. They are not seafarers or sailors, they are doctors, nurses, teachers, architects, librarians and children.
The Asylum Seekers are not aware that this newly painted vessel is over run and has a motor that will cease to work about the time they reach Ashmore Reef. The smuggler has assured them in every way possible that they will have a safe journey across the water to the mainland of Australia. In their minds they are not endangering their family but giving them a future.

[quote name='BOAZ_David' date='Jan 29 2005, 09:47 PM']
During the Tampa crisis, I spoke to a LOT of people, and out of maybe 20 spoken to, just ad hoc wherever I met them, not a single one was in support of those people, not only that.. they were quite emotional about our borders being breached by illegals.
Absolutely no sympathy for people who will subject their families to the danger of old boats when the deliberately choose to flaut our laws, and they ALREADY had 'safety' in countries they visited before attempting to come here.

I mean.. we might look a bit silly.. but really we arn't. We do know a 'con' when we see it.
BOAZ

I agree that during the Tampa crisis not many people supported these persons, I think that we as Australians in general are intelligent enough to realise that we did not have the full story at the time, and let me tell you, the full story has never been printed or filmed.
The laws of our great country should never be flaunted.
Boaz, would you please elaborate the article or piece of legislation that makes it a crime to declare refugee status on entering a country?

I know my next statement will surprise you even more…… the Tampa refugees were not all Muslims. Many of the Tampa refugees were in fact Christian…. How do I know?
I was there.