By Martin Hughes
MELBOURNE — "I escaped from jail to jail," was how one political refugee described his arrival in Australia. After fleeing persecution in his own country and learning that his was brother had been executed as a reprisal for his escape, he hoped to find freedom in Australia. Instead he was arrested on arrival at Melbourne airport. For the past nine months, he has been imprisoned at the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre.
To highlight such injustices, about 150 people protested outside the centre on April 25, Anzac Day. The protest was organised by the Anti-Deportation Action Campaign. Speakers included representatives of the Turkish, Fijian, Iranian, Somali and Chinese communities.
Anzac Day was chosen to highlight the connection between Western military adventures and Third World poverty and oppression, which forces people to leave their homelands. The Australian government's practice of declaring certain migrants illegal makes them more exploitable and reinforces racism.
Speakers pointed to Australia's colonial-settler history, and the protesters chanted "Who gave Captain Cook his visa?"
The protest also highlighted abuses of human rights at the centre. On April 1, 15 political refugees awaiting decisions on applications for refugee status wrote to the Department of Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs requesting that they be given treatment similar to other migrants with the same legal status but housed in hostels.
While the centre is not classed as a jail, some hostel residents have been held there as punishment for fighting. The centre also resembles a jail in other ways:
- between midnight and 7.30 a.m., detainees are locked in small dormitories, four to a room.
- they have access only to a tiny concrete yard and a recreation room, which is about eight by 10 metres and contains a couple of televisions, a pool table and a ping-pong table.
- security cameras cover the whole building, allowing detainees no privacy.
Unlike prisoners, the detainees do not work and have no access to education or even English classes. In their letter, refugees held for periods of up to 18 months complain that their physical and psychological health is suffering.
Many refugees believe Australian authorities are reluctant to grant se political background makes them potential activists in this country. At the detention centre, political refugees, who are a minority of the detainees, feel they are often the victims of petty discrimination.
While relations between them and the other detainees are generally good, on April 30 a Liberian refugee suffered a brutal and unprovoked assault at the hands of three men detained for overstaying their visas. The assault lasted 10 minutes, and guards who were present made no attempt to stop it. No action was taken against the assailants, and the guards were seen "laughing and joking" with the assailants after the attack.
The victim was left unconscious and seriously injured, but for three hours was denied medical attention.
Refugees regarded as misbehaving at the centre may be transferred to other prisons. However, their main concern is deportation to their homelands, where they face possible torture and death.
In 1990, two Iranian detainees, Mustafa Rahimi and Jaffer Hashmeti, were taken to Melbourne's Pentridge jail. According to a member of the Iranian community, Rahimi's crime was to attempt to write down complaints about the centre's management.
After a month on hunger strike, Rahimi and Hashmeti were moved to another Melbourne prison. Then, on December 1, Rahimi was ordered to take a Qantas flight to London, where his brother had been granted refugee status.
He had, in fact, been booked on a connecting flight from London to Tehran, but while transiting at Heathrow airport he applied to British authorities for political asylum. On December 5, he received an order from the British Home Office denying his request. Green Left Weekly has obtained a copy of this order which, in part, reads: "Iran is not the only country to which you can be removed. You arrived from Australia where you spent 10 months ...
"Australia is a signatory to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and ... the Australian authorities would not further remove you to Iran without first considering in accordance with its obligations under the 1951 UN Convention, any application you may make, for asylum in that country."
If the British government believed this, it was wrong. Rahimi was put on a December 6 Qantas flight after an assurance from Qantas he would be taken all the way to Melbourne. However, at Singapore, Australian embassy officials boarded the plane, removed Rahimi and put him on a flight to Tehran.
Since 1988, the Iranian government has systematically executed political opponents. According to Amnesty International, there were at least 2000 political executions between July 1988 and January 1989.
Iranians in Melbourne have not had news of Rahimi since his Iran. Many other political prisoners at the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre also fear that a deportation order may be a death sentence. n