BY SARAH STEPHEN
The Murdoch family's Australian newspaper and the Fairfax's Melbourne Age have spent a number of weeks helping the government in its campaign to destroy the credibility of the Baktiyaris, a Hazara family who are seeking asylum in Australia.
Ali Baktiyari, the father, was first accused of fraudulently obtaining refugee status in April. The immigration department no longer believed his claim that he was from Afghanistan.
The August 14 Australian ran an expose on the "real" story behind the Baktiyaris, titled "No recognition in Afghanistan". The Age ran a two-week investigation in Afghanistan, armed with photographs of the family, the names of people Baktiyari knew in his village and detailed UN maps of the region. None of the villagers of Charkh or nearby Chaper could identify the Baktiyaris.
According to Cyrus Sarang from Sydney's Refugee Action Collective, who has also been acting as Ali Baktiyari's interpreter, the journalist went to the wrong village he should have gone to Charkh Knowlege. Sarang argues that the apparent inconsistencies were due to misunderstandings, in translation over a satellite phone, about the name of Bakhtiyari's village.
A week later, the same two newspapers ran sensationist headlines claiming that Baktiyari had admitted he had spent two years in the Pakistani town of Quetta, something he had earlier denied. The August 23 Melbourne Age ran a story headlined "The truth behind Bakhtiyari", while the August 23 Australian ran a story titled "Asylum dad 'admits Pakistan origin'".
The August 24 Age reported the government's gloating: "Prime Minister John Howard said criticism of the government over its treatment of asylum seekers and the case of Ali Bakhtiyari and his family was unjustified, given the revelations in the Age. 'I would just invite people who've been so ready to criticise [immigration minister] Philip Ruddock, and so ready to brand the government as heartless ... to have a look at this material and just accept that we're not people who are behaving unreasonably,' he said."
Immigration officials are currently in Quetta investigating the Baktiyari family's background. Ruddock told the August 24 Age that Ali Baktiyari would have between 14 and 28 days to respond to the case against him. The department would then move to cancel his temporary protection visa.
Roberto Jorquera from Free the Refugees Campaign in western Sydney told Green Left Weekly: "The government's accusation that Ali Baktiyari is Pakistani is blatantly false, and the media's willingness to offer this up as investigative reporting is a disgrace. He admitted that he spent two years in Pakistan. That doesn't make him Pakistani.
"To meet the definition of a refugee under the UN convention, asylum seekers must be outside the country in which they have suffered persecution. Close to 3 million Afghan refugees, fleeing the Taliban from 1996 onwards, spent anywhere up to six years in the cities and refugee camps of Iran and Pakistan. This doesn't invalidate their claims to refugee status, which is based on a well-founded fear of persecution if they were to return to their country."
"Asylum seekers often leave out details of how they arrive in Australia in order to avoid implicating those who have helped them get here", Jorquera added, "but this shouldn't invalidate their claims. The government and the Refugee Review Tribunal are notorious for rejecting asylum claims when there are inconsistencies. They're not interested in why asylum seekers are scared about revealing their whole story."
From Green Left Weekly, August 28, 2002.
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