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Letter
from Afghan asylum seekers currently imprisoned on the MV TAMPA.
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This letter was given to the Norwegian
Ambassador when he visited the ship Exhibit B1 - Appt EV To the Australian government, human rights
organisations and Australian We hope you accept regards and warm feelings of the miserable and oppressed Afghan refugees turning around Christmas island in the middle of sea, while having no shelter, cloths to change after ten days and even toilet and bathroom. Respected Australian government and gentlemen and ladies. You know well about the long time war and its tragic human consequences and you know about the genocide and massacres going on in our country and thousands of innocent men, women and children were put in public graveyards, and we hope you understand that keeping in view all aforementioned reasons we have no way but to run out of our dear homeland and to seek a peaceful asylum. And until now so many miserable refugees have been seeking asylum in so many countries. |
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In this regards before this Australia has taken some real appreciable initiatives and has given asylum to a high number of refugees from our miserable people. That is why we are whole heartedly and sincerely thankful to you. We hope you do not forget that we are also from the same miserable and oppressed refugees and now turning around Christmas island inside Australian boundaries waiting a permit to enter your country. But your delay while we are in the worst condition has hurt our feelings. We do not know why we have not been regarded as refugee and deprived from rights of refugees according to international convention law (1951). We request from Australian authorities and people, At first not to deprive us from the rights that all refugees enjoy in your country. And in the case of rejection due to not having anywhere to live on the earth and every moment death is threatening us. We request you to feel [...] for the life of (438) men, women and children. Thank you Yours Sincerely, Afghan refugees |
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COMMENT By ANNE SUMMERS Let's hope the leaders of the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru were able to negotiate a good deal with John Howard in return for giving him the face-saving "out" of being able to claim he had solved the Tampa asylum seekers crisis without having to allow them to land in Australia. Clearly, he was running out of options after Indonesia's leader refused even to pick up the phone, and the United Nations politely intervened to say that East Timor had enough problems of its own. Yet the Prime Minister had to wangle something if he was to avoid a total capitulation and thus risk losing the extraordinary ratings boost this shameful episode has delivered him. After all, he had said this week: "The boat will never land in our waters - never!" The resulting deal is a duplicitous and cynical exercise that allows Howard to claim a win - but only if the terms of the agreement to separate the Afghan families and send the women and children to New Zealand, and the men to Nauru, are not subject to any kind of critical scrutiny. New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, has said New Zealand can accommodate the cost of taking in 150 women and children under its refugee program, but it is unlikely she would have done so if she had not been pressured by John Howard. Even so, she has shown us up with her humanitarianism. It is a totally different story with Nauru. This tiny country - its total land mass is 21 square kilometres, or eight square miles - is too small to even have a capital city. Its population in July last year was 11,845. Its main claim to fame in the past was its phosphate - the entire island consists of phosphate rock - which was mined and exported for superphosphate. But since last year when the reserves of phosphate were mined out, Nauru has been desperate to replace this income. It has gone for the Cayman Islands option, trying to become a tax haven by offering registration to offshore banks and corporations. But only a fraction of the tens of billions siphoned through these accounts stays on the island, whose total GDP is around $100million - less than the net worth of a good number of rich-list Australians. Nauru now produces nothing except coconuts, and must import all necessities, including fresh water from (no prizes for guessing!) Australia. Nauru uses the Australian dollar as its currency, receives economic aid from Australia and, although it is nominally a republic, the country might as well be a territory of Australia, so dependent is it on us. And, as John Howard announced on Saturday, Australia will bear "the full cost of Nauru's involvement in this exercise". That cost will have to include everything: housing, clothing, food, water, medical supplies and the immigration and other staff needed to administer to the refugees and to assess their claims. What could have been done easily on Christmas Island is in effect being deployed to this tiny Oceanic outpost - at God knows what additional stress and suffering to these boatpeople - just to accommodate the Prime Minister's political pride. Talk about hubris! The Prime Minister has already admitted that "those assessed as having valid claims from Nauru would have access to Australia" for permanent settlement. In other words, those who are judged to be genuine refugees will end up in Australia anyway, so why go through this extraordinary charade? Why could they not have been processed on Christmas Island, where the local population was ready, willing and able to receive them, and where the infrastructure is already there? They could have been dealt with in the time spent last week in the unedifying standoff that has humiliated the Prime Minister, shamed the opposition and almost totally nullified the international goodwill Australia garnered from the Olympic Games. |
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Instead, the diplomatic resources of the country were used to beg or beat up whatever nations in our vicinity we could find any leverage over. Nauru must have seemed a no-brainer. I hate to even think what was threatened. I prefer to think that, instead, we showed decency and that in return for saving the Prime Minister's hide we offered the people of Nauru a future. You see, Nauru, whose highest piece of land is 61 metres above sea level, is one of the front-line states when it comes to the greenhouse effect. As oceans rise due to global warming, Nauru will be one of the first nations to disappear, literally to drown. Australia, as one of the world's leading carbon-emitters and a nation that refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, could perhaps be seen to have a bit of a moral obligation here. But sadly so far, when it comes to environmental refugees, we have shown about as much compassion as we have towards economic and political asylum seekers from the Middle East. (This is in contrast to the leniency we display towards over-stayers from Europe and the United States.) When another tiny Pacific nation, Tuvulu, recently asked if it could move its population of around 11,000 to Australia because they know their number is rapidly coming up, it was refused. Let's hope Nauru got some assurances, in writing, that its population can immigrate before agreeing to become an asylum seekers' outpost for Australia. In fact, Nauru might look to this as a new, albeit short-term, industry. Now that the Prime Minister has increased the surveillance of waters between Indonesia and Australia to prevent more boats from penetrating our seas, we could end up with a series of Tampa-like situations. What are we going to do if future waves of battered fishing boats bearing hundreds of asylum-seekers park themselves just inside our waters and refuse to move? Clearly, John Howard, suffering pre-electoral tension, can't afford to let any more boatpeople land. He cannot afford to disappoint those Australians who are practically foaming at the mouth with enthusiasm at our new and brutal "anywhere but here" policy. This week's agreement with Nauru represents the perfect solution for Mr Howard. He gets somewhere to send the boatpeople that is not, technically, Australian territory. It costs us plenty, in money and reputation, but he has not allowed our shores to be breached. Eventually, as Nauru sinks under the sea, they will all end up here anyway. But that will be then. This is now. Anne Summers is chairwoman of the international board of Greenpeace, and a former adviser to Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating. |
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Australia's treatment
of refugees
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