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