Afghan girls kick goals while Australia fouls refugees
A friend of mine has sent me some good news about girls in Afghanistan: they are for the first time playing competitive football in Kabul, at the Ministry of Defence sports field, no less.
Presenting a trophy to the Maiwand team, the UN Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan, Ameerah Haq, noted that five years ago, girls were not allowed to attend school, let alone play sport. Now the Afghanistan Football Federation has fifteen teams of girls aged 13-20.
Said Fantana, one of the players: "Today I feel that I am the luckiest girl to be part of this. We did not have the right even to acquire knowledge under the Taliban and now we take part in all social activities."
Another player named Uzra took the opportunity to convey a ‘message to the world’: "We Afghan women are capable to contribute to the reconstruction and development of our beloved homeland as other women of the world."
Meanwhile, tragedy has befallen two other Afghan girls and their family, as a result of Australia’s infamous refugee policies. Members of a Catholic NGO called the Edmund Rice Foundation have, at personal risk, attempted to find out what has become of Afghan and Colombian asylum seekers deported by Australia. Their three-year investigation into the fate of 200 asylum seekers rejected by Australia reveals nine Afghans now thought to be dead and others who report arbitrary arrest, detention and torture. It is illegal under customary international law for any country to refoule an asylum seeker, sending them to a place they might face danger.
Abdul, a member of the persecuted Hazara ethnic group of central Afghanistan, is one who has suffered refoulement. Under Australia’s notorious ‘Pacific Solution’ policy of sending asylum seekers who arrive by boat to the independent island nation of Nauru, 31-year old Abdul spent over a year in detention on Nauru until his refugee application was rejected. Australian authorities told him Kabul was safe and deported him. "Kabul was not safe," he told the Edmund Rice Foundation, "We were lied to."
Four months after his return to Afghanistan, Abdul’s house was bombed, killing his 9 year-old daughter, Yelda. His younger daughter, wife and mother were also seriously injured. Six-year-old Rona cried continually for six weeks until she died of her injuries. Says Abdul:
"My two children are dead. I have lost everything. My house was bombed because they say we are Communist and the opposite of mujaheddin. I told [the Australian immigration authorities] this would happen. In interviews on Nauru they did not believe me. Now my children are gone."
This and other cases documented by the Edmund Rice Foundation are a damning indictment of Australia’s widely criticised system of refugee determination, at a time when the Australian parliament is voting on whether to expand the ‘Pacific Solution’ to include asylum seekers who reach the Australian mainland by boat, not just the remote islands previously deemed ‘excised’ from Australia’s ‘migration zone’.
One difficulty with sending asylum seekers to Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing is that they have reduced access to legal advice and opportunities for appeal. Under such circumstances, well-founded fears of persecution are more likely to be rejected.
Australian immigration minister, Amanda Vanstone, claims that "no-one was returned involuntarily from Nauru". If that is true, ask yourself what choice they had. And consider how they were told by Senator Vanstone’s department that Kabul was safe, backed by such threats as, ‘You’ll be kept in the camp for many years,’ and ‘You’ll never see your families again.’ After months or years in detention on Nauru, they were offered $AUD2,000 ($US1,530) each to leave ‘voluntarily’.
Governments ought to review the outcomes of their refugee determination processes to evaluate the quality of their decisions. Lives are at stake. Vanstone questions the Edmund Rice Foundation’s claims, in part because they have withheld the surnames of some victims. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation this week revealed the full names of two ethnic Hazaras amongst those said to have been killed after being refouled by Australia. You may like to join me in writing to Senator Vanstone to ask what has become of Mohammed Moussa Nazaree and Yacoub Baklri.
[…] I wrote to the Minister regarding the fate of Mohammed Moussa Nazaree and Yacoub Baklri, among others, and have received a reply from her Assistance Secretary (sic.), John Okely. His letter of 5 September makes no mention of Nazaree and Baklri, Afghan asylum seekers detained by Australia on the independent island nation of Nauru and then deported to Kabul. The Edmund Rice Centre says they were killed by local militias after their return. […]