Sarah Stephen
In the eight months leading up to the end of March, the Refugee Review Tribunal heard appeals from 132 Afghan refugees whose claims for permanent visas had been rejected by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs. In 111 cases, or 84%, the RRT overturned DIMIA's decision and ruled that the applicants should be granted a permanent visa.
In March 2004, there were 8885 refugees in Australia on temporary visas. Of those, more than 40% — 3606 — were on bridging visas because their temporary protection visas had expired and they were waiting to find out whether their applications for a permanent visa had been accepted. By the middle of 2005, almost all TPVs will have expired. Afghans comprise around half of all TPV holders.
Case summaries published on the RRT's website indicate that there are a range of reasons why Afghan refugees are being accepted.
Despite the fact that the Taliban is regrouping and increasing in strength in many parts of Afghanistan, it was generally not considered sufficient for a refugee to claim continuing fear of the Taliban. This is consistent with Western governments' assessment that the Taliban will never become a significant political force in Afghanistan again.
However, according to one tribunal member, "The tribunal found that while the political and military landscape had drastically changed, the direction the country and the new government would take in the short- to mid-term future was very uncertain. It found that there were no permanent functional state structures and the Taliban was emerging as a military force."
One Hazara, whose application for a permanent visa was approved, told the RRT that although the Taliban were no longer in power, they had not gone but had "just shaved their beards and put away their turbans".
Riz Wakil, a Hazara refugee who was granted permanent residency on May 18, told Green Left Weekly that some people have been misunderstood when they talk about still being afraid of the Taliban. "When Afghans say 'Taliban' it's often a general term for warlords who have ruled Afghanistan for a long time, and who continue to rule the country. It's a word that describes the mentality, the kind of society that supports Islamic hard-liners."
The cases of a number of Hazaras were successful when they argued that they still faced persecution on the basis of their ethnicity. One RRT member found that there was "a selective denial of state protection to residents in the Hazara residential area of Kabul".
Some of the successful refugees provided evidence that they were supporters of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan left-wing government, which was in power until 1992. Others provided evidence that they were supporters of a particular political party that opposed the mujaheddin fighters who became the Northern Alliance and now govern Afghanistan. Some were considered to be vulnerable to persecution because they were communists and/or atheists.
Others proved that they were in danger because of conflicts in their villages. The RRT rejected the idea that refugees could be made safe by relocating to a different part of Afghanistan. A number of human rights organisations have argued that it would be very difficult for a returning refugee to settle outside his or her area of origin because of Afghans' heavy reliance on social and family networks for survival.
Wakil explained that in the course of 2004, there has been a sudden change in DIMIA's treatment of Afghans' applications. By the end of 2003, 89% of the 604 applications had been refused by DIMIA, and only 4% — 27 refugees — had been granted permanent protection. "People were rejected no matter what — even highly recognised left-wing activists!"
But in the first four months of this year, Wakil estimates that DIMIA has approved around a third of the cases that he knows of. Wakil said that the Afghan community thinks it has something to do with the high approval rate by the RRT.
But there are undoubtedly other factors as well.
Despite sustained pressure from the government, very few refugees — 33 out of 4000 — have accepted its offer of $2000 to return to Afghanistan "voluntarily". This is a problem for PM John Howard because the Afghan government is refusing to accept forced returns.
That leaves the government with having to detain rejected asylum seekers while awaiting the Afghan government's approval for forced returns. This is a big political risk given the strong community opposition to the government's treatment of refugees.
Because of the appalling state of the countries they have fled from, all Afghans and Iraqis should be granted the right to stay. The problem with case-by-case assessment, where DIMIA stubbornly continues to reject the majority of applications for permanent visas and refugees are forced to appeal to the RRT, is that it could take more than 20 years to finalise all of the 8900 TPV cases still to be decided.
For those who have some chance of being granted a permanent visa, there is a glimmer of hope that they will be able to recover from the trauma of their experiences and start to plan their lives in Australia.
But many of those who arrived after September 2001 will never be eligible for a permanent visa. Many refugees could be on rolling TPVs for years, even decades, thanks to legislation introduced in the wake of the Tampa affair. Under this legislation, asylum seekers are given additional punishment for reaching an "excised" Australian territory such as Christmas Island or Ashmore Reef or, on their way to Australia, spending more than seven days in a country which could have offered them "effective protection" (this includes countries such as Syria and Indonesia).
Legislation introduced in September 2001 assigned new arrivals one of two types of TPVs — either a five-year TPV with the possibility of permanent protection if still assessed to be a refugee at the end of five years; or a three year TPV with no possibility of permanent protection when it expires. A refugee still in danger if returned to the country they fled from is only eligible for a new three-year TPV — another three years of uncertainty and fear.
That's why we need to continue to campaign until temporary visas are abolished once and for all.
From Green Left Weekly, May 26, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.