<nettime> 5th longest serving asylum seeker in detention

[David Cohen <dcohen@wiredcity.com.au>]

Less than five hundred metres from where Stephen Khan lives there's a
constant riot of arrival and departure. On an average day at Perth's
domestic air terminal, nearly 10,000 people either fly in or out of the
city, coming from or going to more than 60 locations. At times the
check-in line for flights to Melbourne and Sydney snake out the sliding
doors to the pavement. People climb out of taxis, lug suitcases, get into
cars - they're on the move.

Stephen Khan, however, isn't going anywhere. He hasn't been going anywhere
for more than three-and-a-half years. He's the fifth-longest serving
detainee in Australia, the second-longest in WA, the longest in Perth -
and is one of about 20 asylum seekers who have been in detention for more
than three years.

He lives at the Perth Immigration Detention Centre, a squat anonymous
brown 1960s building just across from the terminal. The Centre blends in
with the unlovely and utilitarian architecture of the buildings around it
- until you notice the razor wire and barbed wire strung around the top of
the high brick walls.

The Centre is set on a plot of land little bigger than the typical
suburban quarter-acre block. But instead of being home to a family, it
holds up to 50 people who aren't welcome in Australia. Khan sleeps with
five other men in a bunk bed-filled dormitory about half the size as a
family living room. With that many people in the room, sleep can be
elusive. If one man is awake, the others usually are as well. The
slightest sound rouses those who have managed to drop off to sleep. Since
he's been in the Centre, Khan's sleep patterns have changed: he usually
nods off at about three o'clock in the morning, and wakes around noon. Two
of the dormitories lead out into a small exercise yard. The yard sometimes
has up to 40 people in it - if a farmer kept 40 animals in the same-sized
space, he'd be pursued by the RSPCA, and his animals would be taken away
from him.

There's a recreation room with a pool table, three toilets and four
showers. There's a laundry, kitchen and store. Beyond the main security
door is the property room and nurses' quarters, the dining room for
Australian Correctional Management (ACM) staff, a family room, control
area and a new recreational room under construction. The Centre's capacity
will soon be 60 - more rooms are being converted to dormitories. There's
also a visiting room. It's in this room where Centre detainees can meet
people who have come to see them. Inside are plastic chairs, a long table,
a Coke machine, three tatty sofas and pictures of a European mountain
scene and dolphins on the walls. Getting into the visiting room takes a
few minutes. To visit a detainee, you have to be on the official list. You
go through the front door and fill out a form, indicating the 100 points
of identification you have (a passport scores 100). You divest yourself of
metallic objects and store them in a locker. Once ushered past the first
security door, you sign the register and are scanned with a metal
detector. A plastic strip is attached to your wrist.

"What's this for?"  "Security," I was told. Once through another security
door, you walk past the staff dining area and are escorted into the
visiting room. You stare at the snow-capped mountains in the picture on
the wall and wait. "The strip is in case there's a fire or something like
that," Khan explained to me. "That way the guards know not to get you
mixed up with the rest of us."

The visiting room can get very crowded, especially on weekends. There have
been 25 people in the room at one time: babies, children, adults,
detainees and their visitors; perched on sofa arms or milling about. Khan
never expected he'd spend so much of his life next to an Australian
airport. He was born in Kashmir, the mountainous valley of lakes and
rivers subject to a long-term territorial dispute between India and
Pakistan. His home village, Pulwama, is south-west of the Kashmiri
capital, Srinigar, and not far from the Pakistani-controlled sector. With
its houseboats on the lakes, Srinigar used to be an exotic tourist
destination, but twelve years of ugly conflict between India and Pakistan
over the land have put an end to that. There are many groups in Kashmir
either fighting or agitating for independence - like the Islamic Front,
the Democratic Freedom Party, the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen and the Al Umer
Mujahideen - and the Khan family was swept up in the slipstream of
separatist violence.

"I was 20, and studying for a diploma in mechanical technology at Srinigar
Polytechnic," Khan recalls. "One day I was told my father had been killed
by Indian security forces. I went back to Pulwama and viewed my father's
body. There were visible signs of torture."

Khan says his father's fatal mistake was allowing a separatist group, the
Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), to use his printing press to issue
anti-government literature. "My mother was extremely distressed and
eventually collapsed into a coma," he says. "She never recovered, and died
three months later." Two years later, Indian security forces arrested Khan
and three friends. Since his father's death, he'd become increasingly
involved with the JKLF - protesting peacefully, he says, against the
Indian government for an independent Kashmir.

"After a search of our home they found some anti-government mujahideen
literature," he says. "We were taken to an interrogation centre, separated
and tortured. I never saw two of them again. I was stripped and forced to
endure the nights in a freezing cell. They regularly threw water on me.
Lights were shone in my face and I was woken up at odd hours." The, he
claims, his captors took a wooden roller and put it on his legs while he
was held down. A man stood on the roller and rolled it up and down. "The
pain was enormous," he says. "They kept asking questions about the
mujahideen, but I didn't know anything about them. Then they ripped out
one of my fingernails and poured chili into the wound. That was very
painful and horrible." After about ten days in captivity, Khan was told he
was going to be moved. He presumed this meant he was going to be executed.
But he got lucky. "Our convoy was ambushed by the Pakistani guerilla
group, Lashkar-e Tayyaba - a section commander was one of the prisoners,"
he says. "They freed me and saved my life."

Khan escaped, and spent a year as a fugitive in Kashmir and the Punjab, a
northern Indian province below Kashmir. By 1997, he'd had enough, and flew
to Singapore on a false passport. He went to the port and stowed away on a
container ship, with no idea where it was going. It was a relatively short
journey: the ship docked in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea's capital.
While in Papua, Khan acquired the name Stephen. Church workers there
couldn't pronounce his real name, and he uses his new name for fear of
reprisals from the Indian security forces, should be he returned to India.
Khan decided to try and reach Australia. He almost didn't make it - he and
five others crammed into a dinghy that had a 40 horsepower engine, and
aimed for Queensland. For seven days they battled monster waves, sharks
and crocodiles. "I can't swim, and the waves were huge," he recalls. "At
times we were vomiting, crying and just praying we wouldn't die.
Eventually we made it to Saibai Island, in the Torres Strait." Khan had
arrived in Australia - it was 9 September, 1998. He didn't have any
documents on him. It was a long way in both time and distance from
Kashmir. He didn't know much about this country, but he had heard it
accepted refugees. Unlike many other asylum seekers, he hadn't paid anyone
to get to Australia. He considered himself a persecuted person, but
expected there would be an initial period of questioning and detention.
Nearly three-and-a-half years later, he's still in detention, and has been
moved from Queensland to Perth, via Port Hedland. How is it so? How can a
person endure torture and fear, uncertain travel, no income and be locked
up for so long? Khan's first mistake was during his first interview with
Australian authorities in Queensland. He told them who he was, where he
was from and how he had got to Australia - but he didn't mention his
arrest and torture in Kashmir.

"They wanted to know how I'd arrived, what routes I took, what documents I
had," Khan says. "They didn't ask me about torture. They said, 'we'll give
you a lawyer and you can apply for a protection visa.' Until the lawyer
arrived, I was in isolation. When he came, he said I should tell them
everything. I gave him my whole story - so then there was a problem,
because I hadn't mentioned the torture." More than 18 months ago, Amnesty
International had become concerned at the length of time Khan had been in
detention. In a June 2000 letter to the Minister for Immigration and
Multicultural Affairs, Philip Ruddock, they wrote: "...we note that the
Department questioned Khan's credibility because initially he did not
mention his arrest and torture. Amnesty would like to point out that often
asylum seekers do not disclose all information on arrival, especially
after long journeys when the asylum seeker may be tired, disoriented and
fearful." There's also an issue over Khan's identity. He's told officials
his name, and where he was born, and other details about his life - but
without papers and documents, it's tricky convincing authorities he is who
he says he is. "The Australian Government knows he's from India," says his
lawyer, Mary Anne Kenny. "They want him to fill out a passport application
form so they can deport him - but he refuses to sign the documents. They
have said they're satisfied he's a Kashmiri, and that he was probably a
member of a separatist group. But, because he wasn't a prominent member of
a separatist group, he should be able to go back to India and live
somewhere else instead of Kashmir." It's ironic - Khan isn't a big enough
troublemaker to perhaps warrant a visa. If he was a lawbreaking and
prominent separatist identity, he might be able to stay here. As it is,
he's not dangerous enough. So the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) suggested
he return to a 'safer' part of India to live.

In a letter to Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock in April 2000, the
Kashmir Council of Australia claimed no Kashmiris are safe in India. "To
be in the fighting age is a crime itself to qualify for death," the
Council wrote. "In (our) opinion Khan will certainly face death if he
decides to go back to India. He will be safer in Australian jails rather
than in the so-called save (sic) havens of India." Kenny has struggled to
obtain information about Khan's circumstances. Most disturbingly, a
Freedom of Information application on Khan's behalf submitted more than 18
months ago stills shows no sign of her seeing documents relating to his
case. "I can't get confirmation of what they've done and haven't done,"
she says. "In July 2000 I submitted an FoI request, seeking documents
relating to his removal back to India. In September, I received some
documents - but they weren't the right ones. In May 2001, I was told the
relevant documents weren't on the file, then they said they couldn't find
the file. I've complained to the Ombudsman, who requested the documents
urgently." The Immigration Department says, bureaucratic blunders or not,
Khan has exhausted all legal moves to stay in this country. "He would have
been released from the Centre a long time ago," a spokesman for Ruddock
says. "As he's refused to provide proof of his nationality, the Government
is unable to issue documents. He's not unable to provide the details, he's
simply refused." The spokesman says Immigration officials are going
through rolls in India - working their way through villages - in order to
try and locate definitive proof of Khan's identity. "It's going to be
long, slow process - if he was more cooperative it could have been
established a long time ago. Until the Government of India are satisfied
about Khan's identity, we will not issue travel documents to him. "He's
certainly one of the longer-serving detainees...he believes if he holds
out long enough, we'll give in. That strategy is not a proper basis on
which to allow people to stay in this country." "I don't believe I'll be
allowed to stay," Khan says. I've seen other detainees deported after
years in detention. But I do believe that as long as I'm here my life is
safe. No human being wants to die." Khan's RRT application was rejected in
January, 1999. Afterwards, he says, he was depressed.

"I was convinced I was going to be sent back to India," he says. "I had no
idea about the Federal Court (the appeal process) then. I was put in
detention for seven days, in a padded room. I also went on hunger strike,
and lost up to 20 kilograms." Thinking he was going to be returned to
India, Khan decided to escape from detention as soon as he had recovered
from his hunger strike - which was about three months later. The spark for
the resolution was a detainee from the Punjab telling him he had some
money, and they should escape together. "Myself, another Kashmiri and two
Punjabis decided to escape," Khan says. "The Punjabis had been students,
and were caught in South Australia before being sent to Port Hedland. One
of them had $2000 hidden in the heel of one of his shoes. They knew what
was happening in Kashmir, said they had this money, and that they would
help." So, early one morning in April 1999, Khan and three other detainees
made their big break. They went over four fences of wire (one 10 metres
high) in sixty seconds and escaped. As they did, an Iranian detainee saw
them and shouted she'd tell authorities.

After escaping they went to the beach and washed the blood from their
hands (caused by cuts from the wire), but didn't know what to do next..
"One of the Punjabis had trouble walking - I think after he jumped from
the fence he twisted his ankle," Khan remembers. "We went back into town,
to the post office, and rang a taxi from there. But we didn't know where
to go. We thought maybe we should catch a bus to Perth or Melbourne." When
the taxi arrived, the driver took one look at them and said it would be a
payment-up-front fare. The four escapees told him they wanted to go to
Karratha, 245 kilometres away. The driver said it would be about $350. "We
thought we could catch a bus from Karratha - the driver suggested he drop
us at the McDonalds," Khan says. "We arrived there and we got out of the
taxi. The staff inside told us they'd be open in 15 minutes." Khan and his
fellow escapees couldn't wait. The Golden Arches! Fast food! They were
hungry, and were keenly anticipating the McMuffins and hash browns. With
the Punjabi's cash, they could've bought hundred of McBreakfasts! Things
were starting to look much better - after a feed, they'd be on the move
again. The two Punjabis decided to sit out the wait at the rear of the
building, and walked around the wall, out of sight of Khan and the other
Kashmiri. "After about five minutes of waiting, the taxi came back," Khan
says. "We thought he wanted breakfast, too. He drove in a circle in the
car park, and then drove off." A short time later, vehicles pulled up in
the car park and disgorged Federal and local police. Khan had a sinking
feeling he wasn't going to be able to buy his egg and sausage McMuffin,
but tried to bluff his way out of trouble.

"We didn't think they'd come for us - how could they know we were there?"
he recalls. "They said, 'What's your name? Where are you from?' I said I
was a student, and I was here for a wedding. They said, 'Where are the
other two guys?' I said, what other two guys? But they said, 'Yes, the
other two who escaped with you.' They told us to put up our hands and
spread our legs. By the time we got in the van, the two Punjabis were
already in there, and they took us to the Karratha lockup." In his
subsequent court appearance, after he'd spent a week in the South Hedland
lockup, Khan was made to serve as an example. He pleaded guilty to
escaping from custody, and was hoping for a six-month good behaviour bond.
But the prosecutor argued a custodial sentence was needed as a deterrent:
there were 350 detainees at the Port Hedland Detention Centre, and letting
Khan off scot-free would send the wrong message to those people.

"I served three months in prison," Khan says. "Afterwards I was
transferred to Perth. Conditions in prison are better than those in
detention centres, so this could hardly be considered punishment. While I
was in prison I was allowed to study: I was admitted to TAFE for a course
in Small Business Management, but when I was transferred here I had to
stop." Since his arrival in Australia, Khan has spent 1,273 days in
detention. 956 of those days have been in Perth. He's kept himself
occupied: his spoken English is excellent, whereas before he came here it
was rudimentary. He takes a keen interest in current affairs - the
detainees get a copy of The West Australian and The Australian every day
to read - and is especially interested in reporting on the asylum seeker
issue. An article on a possible plan by the Federal Government to deal
with long-term detainees, for example, prompts hours of discussion in the
Centre. Khan is also responsible for bringing Foxtel to the Centre. ACM
used to hire videos for detainees: it was appreciated, but they soon got
sick of watching the same movie several times per week, before the new
batch arrived. Khan crunched the numbers and showed ACM it would save them
money if they stopped the videos and got Foxtel. Now they watch news,
sports and music. "We also really like the animal and nature
documentaries," Khan says. And study is a possibility this year: some
people at Murdoch University in Perth are seeing if Khan can begin some
type of external course with the institution. Khan is aware the Perth
Detention Centre is preferable in many respects to the other ACM
facilities in WA, Curtin (at Derby) and Port Hedland. He's more accessible
to visitors, and the relatively-small number of detainees make for a more
human relationship with the ACM staff. But living in a small space with
other desperate people takes its toll. There have been suicide attempts
and mental breakdowns as other detainees crack under the uncertainty and
sense of hopelessness.

And the Perth detainees have had to bunk down with some decidedly
unsavoury types. On a recent visit to the Centre, I was waiting in the
visiting room for Khan to arrive. Also present was an overweight man in
his 50s, talking with two visitors. He was discussing with his guests on
how best to avoid the media when he returned to New Zealand the next day.
The man was Rodney James McCormick, described by WA Attorney-General Jim
McGinty as a "very serious sex offender." McCormick had been imprisoned
for 12 years, after being convicted of sexual assault and deprivation of
liberty. Once he had served his sentence, the WA Department of Justice
handed him over to the Federal Department of Immigration, who deported him
to his native New Zealand. (McCormick failed to give the media the slip.
Hounded by reporters and TV cameras at Auckland airport, he eventually
tried to take refuge in a prison.) Another recent deportee from the Perth
Detention Centre was David Little, who was put on a plane to London last
month. He killed his wife and allegedly raped her daughter. What can it be
like for asylum seekers, sharing living quarters with murderers and
rapists?

What would Khan do if he was given a visa? "I just want to live a normal
life," he says. "I'd like to study, probably, and finish my diploma. I
don't want to be a burden on the taxpayer. I'd try to be a good citizen."
Would he stay in Australia? "I don't know," he says. "I want to live
wherever my life is safe. I didn't choose to come here - I just ended up
here. I want to live a normal life." He says his present existence, in a
legal limbo, is frustrating and senseless.

"Three years behind razor wire is too much," he says. "It doesn't make
sense: if I didn't have problems in Kashmir, would I choose to stay this
long in detention? Surely three years is enough to check my character and
health? Do I have to stay in detention forever? Sometimes I feel like I'm
in a grave with four walls. My morning starts with fear, the days are
spent in limbo, and the evenings in defeat."





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