Vanstone dodges the question: What happened to Nazaree and Baklri?
Have you received a reply from Australian Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone?
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.
Instead, Okely reiterates the Minister’s claims that (a) the Afghans deported from Nauru were not refugees, and (b) that they returned to Afghanistan voluntarily. To quote his letter, in part:
"The contentions that these people were refugees and that they were returned focibly to Afghanistan are both incorrect. Those who returned to Afghanistan had had access to a reliable refugee assessment process and had been found not to be refugees. They returned to Afghanistan voluntarily . . ."
Technically, John and Amanda may be correct. Presumably, none of the 420 Afghans repatriated from Nauru were found by Australia to refugees. But is Australia’s system of refugee determination — most especially that conducted on behalf of detainees in Nauru — reliable, as Okely claims? On what basis can the government make that claim if it doesn’t follow up failed asylum seekers, as the Edmund Rice Centre has done, in order to see whether it was right?
Mr Okely goes on,
"No one was pressured to decide in favour of return."
Given their rights-forsaken position on the mine-blasted island of Nauru, and subject to an alleged combination of threats, bribes and lies, the asylum seekers seemingly had little choice but to agree to return ‘voluntarily.’ Okely mentions "counselling, information and assistance" provided by Australian immigration officials and staff of the International Organization for Migration, but fails to mention what independent legal advice was available. They may have boarded the plane without a need for handcuffs or sedation, but it appears disingenuous to suggest there was no pressure involved.
Representatives of the Edmund Rice Centre have been to Afghanistan and spoken to former Nauru detainees and their families. Australia may be failing to identify genuine refugees and (if you’ll pardon my French) refouling them to situations of danger. Preoccupied with insincere wordplay, the Department of Immigration has not refuted any specific feature of the ERC’s grave allegations.
Further reading: Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers by David Corlett (Black Inc, Melbourne 2005)
This important, prize-winning book has been reviewed by Ian Mathews:
Read another review in The Age newspaper.
Following Them Home has won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Harry Williams Award for a Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate.