[Nettime-bold] We don't come here to sell our blood

[francesca da rimini <gashgirl@systemx.autonomous.org>]

Adelaide. Small seething city of lies and whispers. South Australia, a cut
above those other states in its proud colonial history; no petty convicts
here, only state-sanctioned rapists, murderers and thieves, thank you. The
foundations of colony - Parliament House, Government House, Pilgrim Church
- built with the bones of the ancestors, the great grey rocks blasted out
from the right-angled bend in the river. This is the place of the kangaroo
dreaming. Small moments of grace with the vote for women, gay rights,
decriminalisation of marihuana. But she was always England's dour
daughter, once fair skin pocked with the daughter radioisotopes of
uranium, obsequious accepter of mother's little atomic bomb tests, uranium
mines, theft of artesian waters, nuclear waste dumps. Come on down, you've
fucked the rest, now the fuck the best!

Woomera, central-north South Australia. 1950's boys' own rocket town, far
far away from what is considered as centre. Deemed the perfect place for
the national repository project, a facility to dispose of low level
radioactive waste. Watch this space. And recently another spectacular
transformation. Notorious prison camp (sorry, Immigration Reception and
Processing Centre) to house the inconvenient sons and daughters of
globalisation. Some of the 20,000,000+ asylum seekers adrift in the world
right now. Fleeing political persecution. Afghanistan. Iraq. Iran. Hey,
wait a minute, they must be terrorists. Punish them all! Lock 'em up and
throw way the key. They're "rejectees" according to Philip Ruddock,
Australia's Immigration Minister, and we're gonna teach them a lesson they
will never ever forget.

1,618 people in detention as of 12 April 2002. Mainly people, families,
who arrived into Australia's territorial waters by boat. Claiming refugee
status as defined under the United Nations Refugee Convention.

60,000 people unlawfully in Australia as of 30 June 2001. People having
overstayed their tourist/work/student visas. 

Do the sums. What's really going on here? Why is the Australian Government
squandering millions of dollars of public money in a systematic and
sadistic program of the denial of human rights?
Are we really compelled to endlessly repeat our brutal colonial history,
adding new forms of dispersals, extirpations and massacres to our already
bloody history?

Every Indigenous South Australian - Mirning, Ngarindjeri, Kuarna,
Narungga, Adynyamathanha, Arabunna, Kokatha, Yankuntjara - I have heard
speak about the refugees has said more or less the same thing - "The
refugees are welcome here. We know what it is to be dispossessed and
locked up far from our families and we don't want anyone else to suffer
that. Not on our land. We know how to welcome strangers in the right
way. Let them free."

Last night approximately 200 people had the chance to meet with and hear
some of the Afghani refugees who have been released from Woomera IRPC on
Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs). The occasion was the second in a series
of traditional Afghani dinners hosted by the Otherway Centre, home of the
Aboriginal Catholic Ministry. Since September 2001 the Otherway Centre has
grown to be a second home and strong community support base for most of
the 200 Afhgani Hazara refugees. Ex-detainee Hussein Rezaiat is now the
Centre's full-time Refugee Worker. In a statement last November the
Otherway Council made this statement:

"We stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers who are asylum
seekers and refugees. We have no trouble putting ourselves in their
shoes. We reject the harsh and cruel treatment being offered to desperate,
persecuted and needy people who have come to Australia for help. We ask
the Australian government and opposition to begin to act with humanity. We
know what it is to be oppressed – we have experienced much of the past 200
years as oppression. We know what it is to be alienated and estranged in
our own country. We know what it is to fear for the future of our
families, our young people and our children. We know what detention
centres are - our people were pushed onto reserves and had to have
exemptions to leave them. Australian prisons have excessive numbers of our
people. We know what it is to have no right of appeal – there was no
appeal for our people either against protection and assimilation or
against the taking of children. We know what it is to be called “illegal”
- it was illegal for us to consort with non-Indigenous people, illegal to
leave the reserve, illegal to drink alcohol. We know what it is to be
powerless. We know what it is to be refugees in our own land. For more
than 200 years we have watched boat people come to our land. They came to
escape poverty, persecution and the effects of war. They came to make a
better life for themselves and their families. Now that the descendants of
the “first illegal boat people” are no longer poor and powerless, it seems
ironic that they would deny the same chance and hope to present day asylum
seekers and refugees."

Shirley Peisley AM, Centre Executive Officer and Fr Tony Pearson, Chaplain
welcomed us to the dinner with an Afghani saying - 'guests are a gift from
God'. South Australia has a long colonial history with people from
Afghanistan, as many Afghani camel workers came here in the 19th century
to open up the transport and communication lines through the central
desert region. In the 1990s Afghanistan had the world's highest number of
refugees living outside of its borders. Today there are an estimated 4-6
million Afghani refugees. Most of the asylum seekers in South Australia
are Hazara people from the central part of Afghanistan (Hazarajat or
Hazaristan). They speak the Hazaragi dialect of Farsi and represent a
mixture of Turkish, Mongol and other races. The Hazara have been
discriminated and against for more than 200 years in Afghanistan under a
various regimes, with more than 60% of their people massacred in the 19th
century.  The most recent massacres occured in August 1998 at
Mazar-i-Sharif (more than 8,000 men, women and children slaughtered) and
the Bamiyan Massacre, also in 1998.

Qader Fedayee (real name used with his permission) is 18 years of age and
living in Adelaide on a Bridging Visa after some months spent at Glenside
Hospital recovering from severe depression and six suicide attempts. He
spent nearly two years incarcerated in Woomera as an Unaccompanied Minor,
and shared a little of his story with us. He is from Mazar-i-Sharif, where
his whole family were killed by the Taliban in the massacre of 1998. He
escaped to Charkein and lived for 8 months with not enough food, water or
shelter. Many died during this period due to the extreme cold. He
travelled to Orezgan where the Taliban killed his uncle and his
friend. His extended family gave him money to pay a smuggler and he
travelled to overland to Pakistan, and then by boat to Thailand, Hong
Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and finally Australia. The boat voyage was
frightening and an Australian plane helped to rescue people. He was
brought straight to Woomera from Ashmore Reef. "In Woomera I wished that
the boat had sunk and that I had died." He is now studying English five
days a week. 

Qader Fedayee still has to prove to the Australian Government that he is a
refugee!

Hassan (sorry but i couldn't find him to ask his full name) was released 3
months ago from Woomera. As a community leader, he began by acknowledging
the people at Woomera who are currently on a hunger strike. Hassan's
applications for refugee status have been rejected at the primary stage
and also before the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT). He explained why "the
process is not fair" to asylum seekers. A refugee's  first interview is
with a Case Officer, the second with Immigration officials. A third
interview and then the language of the refugee is analysed. The fourth
interview is with a Migration Agent who acts as a legal witness (rather
than as a legal advocate for the refugees), and then a fifth interview
with the Case Manager and the Migration Agent. This process takes about 25
days, with asylum seekers then waiting around 9 months for a decision. 

They generally face rejection because of a language objection, and
subsequently spend another 12 to 30 months in detention during the appeals
process. According to Hassan most of the language objections are baseless,
with the people entrusted to analysing the language having left
Afghanistan 30 years ago. I think he was referring to the fact that these
'experts' are out of touch with the living language, and social conditions
which effect language and necessity to learn a second language of the
dominant power group. 

Now Australia has signed an agreement worth $59,000,000 with the newly
installed Afghani Government to send the asylum seekers back.

"We came to Australia as refugees. We don't come here to sell our
blood. It's a matter of life. We would like to work in  Australia. We
would like to pay tax. About 90% of Afghani refugees are working now and
paying tax. We would like the opportunity to live in the middle of
liberty, which we never had in Afghanistan. We are tired. We paid a lot of
cost. We paid genocide and massacre for over 100 years. We don't like to
be targeted anymore. We would like to ask the people of Australia to help
us, to live in the world of humanity. We are not harmful to the
country. We would like to have a real liberalism and liberty. Please ask
the people in Australia to contact the media and talk on behalf of
powerless people in Detention Centres. We need your support."

Hassan's powerful and eloquent words were followed by those of Hussein
Rezaiat. He began by saying that he wanted to speak about happy news.

"But how can I when my friends are on a hunger strike in the Detention
Centre? How can we talk happy story when our people are suffering in
Afghanistan, in refugee camps in Pakistan, in camps here?"

Hussein then told the story of Mustafa, an 8 year old boy who lost all of
his family in 1998, and ended up in Woomera. This is another big story and
rather than try to retell it here I will ask Hussein if he would like to
tell it himself.

Speaking of his fellow asylum seekers he asked, "Why are they sewing their
lips? Why are they hanging themselves, crushing their bodies? It is
because they are hopeless. They came to Australia and found another
jail. Unkind government, unkind guards, treated them like shit, and they
became hopeless.

They tried to speak. They wanted the media and Human Rights groups to come
in to the Detention Centres. They didn't allow us. When we tried to speak
with them they didn't listen. They tried to speak with you with a hunger
strike. We will be hungry and thirsty until we die." 

Aunty Shirley Peisley ended this very moving and strangely joyous evening
(those beautiful babies and children bounding and abounding helped) by
saying to the refugees, "You are welcome in our country...Your presence
enriches us and we love you very much."

The Otherway Centre is considering hosting similar evenings and I can
totally recommend the experience. They are also looking for volunteers to
help with English classes, computer training, and other forms of social
and skills-based projects. So....here is a really practical way to help
make a difference.

Otherway Centre, 185 Pirie Street, Adelaide, 5000
Phone:  (08)8232 1001
Email:  AfghaniNights@acc.asn.au


Hunger Strike Update, 12.15pm, Thursday 27 June 2002

I have just spoken with Ali Hader (name used with his permission, sorry
about the spelling) at Woomera. He said that 190 people including women
and very small children are continuing the hunger strike. He said that
many of them have been in Woomera for 18 and 19 months. They are very
tired. They came here for freedom. Not to be put in detention centres.
  

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