Jola Jones
On December 2, immigration minister Amanda Vanstone handed down her decision on the future of the 41 Iraqi asylum seekers detained on Nauru. She announced that 27 Iraqis would be given refugee status and said this reflected the "government's commitment to assess the effect of changing circumstances on the protection claims of individuals".
However, the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) decision not to grant refugee status for 14 Iraqis suggests only a partial recognition of the inhumanity of forcing asylum seekers back to war-torn countries. The department's advice to those Iraqis deemed "non-refugees" was to "return to their home country as quickly as possible". The United Nations High Commission for Refugees has recommended that all Iraqis, whether refugees or not, should be granted complimentary protection.
In a place they call "hell", 29 Afghanis, 47 Iraqis, children as young as two and detainees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Iran have been divided from their families and from the rest of the world by barb wire for over three years on Nauru.
It has taken this long for the 82 asylum-seekers to get a decision about the direction of their lives. The emails and letters from the detainees to refugee supporters around Australia reveal a collective experience of perpetual anguish, uncertainty, depression and anxiety. Management strategies on the island include jailing those who talk back to staff. Detainees feel unprotected and abandoned by the legal system and by international human rights law.
The detainees are depressed, restless, frustrated, confused and they grieve for their stalled lives. In a November 15 letter to a refugee supporter, one detainee wrote: "We have been spending our beautiful days and nights of youth in the gloomy climates on the desert of sorrows with more anger or resentment and bitter recollections of quiet agonies".
This kind of imprisonment also produces physical side effects. Many detainees have speaking difficulties, have lost weight and experience heart and thyroid problems, diabetes and deteriorating eyesight. Some have lost the use of their limbs. There are also reports of young mothers forced to stop breastfeeding in order to be medicated.
The constant pressure from DIMIA on detainees to return to their homelands augments their distress. Asylum seekers have reported insidious attempts by DIMIA to find any excuse to vilify the Iraqis in detention and to set them up as possible "terrorist sympathisers". In their letters, Iraqis describe being asked strange questions during reassessment interviews regarding their thoughts on Jordanian-born Islamist and alleged al Qaeda associate Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and whether they support the resistance in Iraq. Considering these Iraqis fled the country more than three years ago, such behaviour by DIMIA amounts to scapegoating and entrapment.
By dumping these people on a remote island, the Australian government hoped that the asylum seekers would be forgotten. A young Afghan refugee wrote from Nauru to an Australian friend that "men, women and children are all feeling that their ambition for freedom will not be completed because there is no-one to hear the sorrowful scream that is sought for freedom and justice".
We must never forget the innocent asylum seekers on Nauru and worldwide. As freer people we must be their voice and shout for their liberation. We must draw strength from their courage. In struggling for their peace, justice and freedom we also fight for a politics that bears compassion and restores and lives up to the true meaning of such ideals as freedom, peace and justice.
From Green Left Weekly, December 15, 2004.
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