World Refugee Day – from Sydney to Sudan

“We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
John Howard, Australian PM, prior to the 2001 election.

The infamous ‘Tampa election’ of 2001 where Prime Minister Howard made the comment above, was fought very much on issues pertaining to refugees. It’s a quote that perhaps many Indigenous Australians wish they had the opportunity to put into practice back in 1778, when Captain Cook arrived.

Yet six years on, as we near another election, it is worth reflecting on what we have learnt about refugees in that time and examining the difficulties faced by some of the world’s most vulnerable people trying to make their way to Australia.

Today there are a staggering 21 million recognised refugees in the world – a number almost equivalent to the total population of Australia.

Almost 9 million of these ‘refugees’ are actively seeking refugee status. Over 6 million are Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), forced to flee their homes largely due to internal conflict in countries such as Sudan, Burma, Afghanistan, Columbia and Iraq. Over forty percent of the total refugees are from our own neigbourhood of Asia and around one quarter are from Africa. The remainder hail from Europe (18%), mostly the eastern states, Latin America and the Caribbean (12%) and a tiny 0.4% in Oceania.

These statistics leave Australia in an awkward position. Although we remain one of the richest countries in our region, a region where many refugees are located, we take in but a tiny number – approximately 13000 in total, 6000 who are allocated under the humanitarian category. Currently more than 70% of the total refugee population seek refuge in the developing world. The fifty least developed countries are home to more than one quarter of the global refugee population.

Hence the complications of providing health, education and opportunity for many of the most vulnerable on our planet falls to governments that struggle to satisfy these needs to their own populations.

In Australia last year we took in around 13000 refugees – approximately 0.06% of the Australian population. Many of these asylum seekers were fleeing conflict in their own country or persecution for their religious, cultural or political beliefs.

Over recent years we have had the opportunity to hear many of their heart breaking stories. For instance thirteen year-old Mortezza Poorvadi was born in Iran to an Iraqi mother – a source of constant persecution for Mortezza’s family. His family struggled against Iranian Mullahs and the army of Saddam Hussein before finally escaping to Australia seven years ago after paying people smugglers in Indonesia to transport his family. “We were desperate,” said Mortezza, “we had no power at all. We were like toys in the hands of people smugglers, and they were passing us around. We knew it, but we couldn't do anything about it.”

Put on a four metre by twelve metre fishing boat with 284 others, Mortezza and his family were picked up by the Australian navy near Christmas Island and put into detention. During his detention, Mortezza attempted suicide seven times. Fortunately in 2003 he was granted detention and is now training in mathematical science. A true survivor who is likely to go to succeed – the classic refugee done good tale.

Mortezza’s story is unique though the generalities pervade many of the stories of recent arrivals seeking asylum. In a way Mortezza, although derided along with the others on his boat by the Australian Government as a ‘queue jumper’, is one of the lucky ones. For the people of Darfur for instance, there is no queue to join.

Marian Hassan Adam is a refugee from Darfur in Sudan currently living in Kakuma refugee camp in Northern Kenya. Mariam recently explained her horrific story to New Internationalist.

“I was hit during the (Sudanese) Government bombing raid. I still have shrapnel embedded in my head. Then men on horseback came in and stabbed those who were still alive. They took the men and killed them. My husband disappeared – I don’t know what happened to him. They took all the boys from their parents and murdered them. My baby boy was thrown on the fire in front of me. My daughter was older. They thought she was a boy so they slaughtered her too – they snapped her neck like a chicken. Some of the children they threw down the well. After, they raped the women. They cut off their breasts to make them suffer. They used those of us who were left as donkeys. They made us carry their things – even the men themselves – on our backs. I have so many marks where they beat me.”

Marian managed to escape and live in the bush for three months living on leaves. Attempting to get into displaced people camps was difficult as militia chased them away. Finally Marian managed to make it to Kakuma, where she has been waiting to get on the UN refugee list for several years.

Over 150,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting in Darfur, a further 250,000 have died from diseases and starvation. 2.8 million remain displaced within Sudan. Organisations like Caritas are providing humanitarian access to more than 3.6 million people who are dependent on humanitarian aid. In all, more than four million people have been impacted by the crisis in Darfur. Of this enormous human toll only around 50 families have relocated here between Sydney and Melbourne as refugees.

The Darfur Australia Network (DAN) is a relatively new organisation that has formed to bring together the voices of Darfuri and Australian people to raise the issue of Darfur and the genocide that is going on there.

On World Refugee Day, June 20, the Darfur Australia Network will deliver a letter to the Australian Prime Minister John Howard demanding immediate action to assist the people of Darfur and greater access to humanitarian visas for the millions who need them.

Australians like to know their country as the land of the ‘fair go’. Ours is a country that was founded and has prospered on the principles of migration. The current humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the devastating human toll provides an opportunity to offer the hand of hope to some of the world’s most vulnerable. Through getting involved in initiatives like DAN, Australians are joining with Darfuris and standing up against injustice and standing with the most vulnerable. You can’t get more Australian than that.

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In recent years the Australian Government has backed down on many of the harshest of its policy practices related to refugees. The grassroots campaign orchestrated by organisations such as Chilout and Rural Australians for Refugees, has seen children freed from detention centres and refugees welcomed in several remote communities. The Cornelia Rau and Vivian Salon cases, where Australian citizens were locked up, and in the Salon case wrongly deported to the Philippines, highlighted the extreme deficiencies of the ‘processing’ process and brought a massive public and media backlash.

Despite the softening of policies to asylum seekers, the ‘Pacific Solution’ implemented by the Howard Government prior to the 2001 election remains in place. A policy of extreme political expedience, it relies on the assumption that if asylum seekers do not make it to our mainland, then they can be ‘processed’ in other countries around the pacific. Australia’s own territorial lands, such as Christmas Island, and Ashmore reef have been excised, so that even if asylum seekers make it to Australian territories such as these, they still are not considered refugees until they make it to the mainland and are able to be ‘processed’ offshore.

The Pacific Solution utilises Island states such as Nauru to house many of the asylum seekers whilst they are processed – some cases have been underway for more than six years. Bizarrely our aid program, which has ‘poverty alleviation’ as its main focus, is used to foot the bill for this inhumane policy. The Government explains this as explicable expenditure under the aid program, although it has no focus on alleviating poverty, as spending on refugees is allowed under the OECD criteria. Hundreds of millions of dollars of Australian aid has funded the Pacific Solution over the last six years.

Yet, the Australian Government has a moral imperative for dealing with the most vulnerable people in our world. The politics of locking up asylum seekers offshore is controversial but ultimately it is a matter for Government policy. There are many arguments that can be made to illustrate the negative emotional, physical, social and psychological impacts of the current policy of mandatory detention. What can not be doubted is that Australia’s aid program should not be expediently used to fund policies that have no focus on poverty alleviation. To continue to use Australian aid money to fund a politically expedient ‘solution’ to the refugee crisis which is sweeping our world, is cynical at best. At worst it is indicative of a Government that is without morals.