http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20763005-29277,00.html
Yesterday, the High Court of Australia decided that the Government is much more easily able to send home asylum seekers who have held TPVs. A couple of years ago, the Federal Court found that the it was the responsibility of the Government to prove that it is safe to send people home before doing so, but yesterday the High Court disagreed. Meaning that whensoever DIMA decides that the Taliban doesn't exist anymore (in spite of any overwhelming evidence to the contrary), they can just send people home. And this decision seems to have been made in complete disregard of the fact that this year the Taliban has made a major resurgence in the power vacuum left by the almost totally defunct government of Hamid Karzai.
As usual, Justice Michael Kirby dissented, and made a lot of sense. You can find a few (pretty damn valid) things which he said about this judgement in the article. " Justice Michael Kirby dissented, saying that in both cases Australian decision makers, safe in this country, might regard the beheading of 12 Hazaras as an unimportant or isolated incidents.
"But to a person whose experience had already invoked a well-founded fear of persecution, occasioning flight to Australia to seek refuge and official acceptance and recognition of refugee status, such an instance might be indicative of more widespread, systematic violent activity apt to occasion a well-founded fear of continuing persecution," he said."
This means that people on temporary protection visas have absolutely no guarantee of being given protection in Australia in future, further extending their period of displacement, uprooting and uncertainty. And decisions regarding their futures will be made by the Department of Immigration, which has approx a 50% margin of error for first-instance decisions on asylum cases, and a notorious level of hostility, suspicion and mistreatment of vulnerable people.
Just for fun, I feel like posting some photos of the extremely "safe" Kabul, seen here in the wake of the US attacks. Would you send your family here?
Let's remember all of this in the context of the Edmund Rice centre report released in August citing at *least* 9 examples of people who have been sent home by Australia and killed almost immediately. These people were sent homewhen Australia considered it "safe". Are we willing to take that risk again? I - for one - am absolutely, categorically NOT.
When will the calculated, malicious, cruelty stop? How much more blood needs to be spilled? How many more lives need to be destroyed before our country will take up its obligations and honour them with the respect and observance they deserve?
If you are not yet convinced or aware of what the Taliban is capable of, click here for pictures of the massacre at Yakawlang (Hazarajat) in 2001. Warning: there are some extremely graphic images. Extremely graphic images which have comprised the lives, the memories and the trauma of people whom Australia locks up in desert prisons and then deports whenever it feels like it. You are in a position to choose whether or not to see this stuff - many thousands have no such luxury. http://www.rawa.org/yakw-hrw.htm
2 comments:
Thanks Jessie for posting so many of the real problems which can occur when someone who has been found to be a refugee is forcibly returned to the original place of persecution. It's for exactly this reason that I announced my intention to change Labor's policy to one which abolishes temporary protection visas. If someone is found to not be a refugee they should be sent back to use the official immigration channels. But if people are found to be refugees they need to be able to get on with their lives.
Tony Burke
Labor Shadow Minister for Immigration
Jess,
have you read the whole case? It sounds quite bizarre!! (I haven't had a look at it, prob. won't have enough internet access to do so for a couple of weeks)
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