A policy of "go back to where you came from."

September 24, 2012

Australia's Immigration Minister Chris Bowen is painting the return of 16 asylum seekers to Sri Lanka as a victory in the fight against human smugglers who sell spots on rusty boats. The men arrived in Australia after the August 13 decision to reinstate offshore processing on Nauru, and decided to return to their home country rather than wait in tents on the remote Pacific Island for an indefinite amount of time as their refugee claims are assessed.

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Both the Nauru transfers and this group of adult Sri Lankan men choosing to return home provide further evidence that the people smugglers are selling lies and misleading asylum seekers about the situation they will face if they reach Australia by boat," Bowen said in a press release Saturday. "People who pay smugglers to risk their lives on a dangerous sea journey are throwing their money away, as demonstrated by the speedy return of this group."

Opposition leader Tony Abbott told the media it's proof the Labour government can't secure the nation's borders and Liberal MP Steve Ciobo went further, telling Sky News that "what this is a sign of is that a lot of asylum seekers that are coming to this country are not genuine refugees."

Jana Favero, spokeswoman for the Melbourne-based Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said to paint the return of these men as evidence they are not legitimate refugees is false. 
 

Favero said the Australian government is offering relocation packages, which she says calls into question whether these men are truly returning voluntarily. 
"You can't underestimate how much pressure they are under to return and whether it is informed consent," she said. "There have also been cases of people taking money to return only to be tortured or jailed." 

Favero also said it points to the "horrific" conditions of the detention centres, particularly the makeshift tent city on Nauru, that they would rather return home despite possible risk of persecution.

The resource centre's CEO and founder, Kon Karapanagiotidis, told me last week the best way for Australia to stop people from getting on dangerous boats to cross the Indian Ocean is to open fast and efficient processing centres in Indonesia or Malaysia where refugees are waiting. 

The return to offshore processing on Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island is part of the Australian government's promise to implement key recommendations of an expert panel report released Aug. 13. The report also recommended revoking family reunification benefits for refugees who arrive by boat. Canada has implemented similar penalties for boat migrants under Bill C-31, including a five-year ban on family reunification, travel or permanent resident status. 

Katie DeRosa is a Times Colonist journalist, investigating Australia's mandatory detention policies in light of Canada's tougher refugee reforms under Bill C-31. 

 


   

 

 

A circle of friends

September 16, 2012
The families at Inverbrackie call Sunday "party day." It's the day that volunteers from the Hills Circle of Friends come through the minimum security gates of this detention centre in the Adelaide Hills, bearing food, toys and clothes for the families living in detention. Circle of Friends coordinator Maggie McMahon invited me to join her enthusiastic group. After having my visitor request approved by Serco, the private company that manages the detention centres, I was fortunate enough to sha...
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Return to the Pacific Solution

September 14, 2012
The first planeload of 30 asylum seekers arrived on Nauru early Friday morning, but not the last, as the Australian immigration minister indicated women and children could also be sent to the remote Pacific island as a deterrent to human smugglers. The Australian government is fulfilling its promise to reinstate offshore processing, a policy instigated by the Howard government in 2001 which saw boat migrants sent to Nauru and Manus Island before they could be processed in Australia. The polic...
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This place is a prison

September 10, 2012
On Sunday I visited the Fremantle Prison, a fascinating relic of Australia's history as an island for convicts. It was the first British convicts in Western Australia who in the 1850s built their own jail — The one metre by two metre cells with rusty buckets instead of toilets; The solitary confinement rooms where misbehaved prisoners were locked in complete darkness for 23 hours a day; And they built the gallows where 43 men and one woman were hanged. Eventually the cells would be doubled ...
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Detention centre in the jungle

September 6, 2012
Christmas Island is like no place on earth. The plane descends into the jungle, finding a small strip of runway next to an airport so small it looks more like a gas station. The thick, humid air engulfs me and I quickly shed a layer of clothing. I jump in my rental four wheel drive and start exploring. The landscape looks like a cross between Jurassic Park and Fern Gully, both places I thought were entirely fictional up until now. A few wrong turns here and there (the map given to me by the c...
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The detention centre on the hill

September 2, 2012
The Yongah Hill Detention Centre appears suddenly amidst the farmland and bush of the Avon Valley, located just outside of the town of Northam, about 80 kilometres east of Perth in Western Australia. Beyond the electric fence of the imposing steel and concrete structure are 521 asylum seekers who have travelled to Australia by boat. The men, most Hazara, Tamils or from Bangladesh, have been transferred here from remote Christmas Island, the first processing centre for boat migrants. The anti-...
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A tragic day in Australia

August 30, 2012
The day I arrived in Australia, the top item on every news station, radio program and newspaper was the desperate search for a boat loaded with asylum seekers that had sunk off the coast of Java, after leaving from Indonesia. As of Friday morning, only 55 people had been rescued from the ocean, out of the 150 men, women and children believed to be on the boat. The boat made the first distress call on Wednesday morning. The Indonesian search and rescue authority, Basarnas, initially responded ...
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Divergent views in a Vancouver bar

August 29, 2012
I learned just how divisive is the migrant ships issue in Australia before I even arrived in the country. I was in a bar in Vancouver, the Speakeasy on Granville, busy with travellers and regulars on a Sunday night. While waiting for my friend to arrive, I started to chat with a pair of backpackers. One was from Brisbane, the other an Italian who had spent a year in Australia and a year in New Zealand, which resulted in a very peculiar and unplaceable accent. They asked why I was going to Aus...
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