Mission & Justice

5/6/08

A US marine has been cleared of covering up the massacre of 24 civilians in Iraq. Women and children were among those killed by US forces in the town of Haditha in 2005. The killings in Haditha are the most serious war crime allegations levelled at US forces since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Lieutenant Andrew Grayson, 27, was found not guilty by a jury on Wednesday of ordering photos of the slaughtered civilians to be deleted from army computers. Grayson, an intelligence officer, was not present when the Iraqis were shot dead by US marines on November 19, 2005, shortly after a roadside bomb killed a US soldier nearby.

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Mark Metherell; 29/5/08

The Department of Immigration has paid $620,000 to eight former detainees and has written to more than 130 others to say they may be next in line for compensation. Department officials have told a Senate estimates committee the department sent 149 letters to notify individuals they “may have been unlawfully detained”. The development is a sequel to a series of inquiries triggered by the controversy over the department’s mishandling of the cases of the Australian resident Cornelia Rau, who was unlawfully detained, and Vivian Alvarez Solon, an Australian citizen who was deported to the Philippines.

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Ean Higgins; 28/5/08

At lunchtime on Friday, Bangladeshi Hafizur Rahman was working as a printer in Sydney’s western suburbs, with his boss Iain Ramsay singing his praises as the sort of skilled and keen employee the company needs. By that afternoon, Mr Rahman’s 12-year struggle to build a life in Australia was ended by the Department of Immigration, which ordered him to leave the country by June 6 and stripped him of his right to work. Mr Rahman was ordered to present within two weeks a plane ticket out of Australia. Barring an extraordinary reprieve, Mr Rahman has come to the end of the road in his claim that he is a political refugee from a repressive regime in Bangladesh. After all his legal avenues failed, Immigration Minister Chris Evans examined his request for ministerial intervention and ruled that he did not qualify for political asylum.

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Ean Higgins; 24/5/08

Immigration Minister Chris Evans yesterday announced the first results of the Government’s efforts to speed up the processing of asylum-seekers, with those allowed to stay slightly outnumbering those being deported. The announcement drew criticism from asylum support groups, who fear for the fate of the thousands of people claiming to be political refugees. Senator Evans recently reviewed the cases of 72 people in immigration detention for more than two years. Of those, 24 have or will be removed because Senator Evans believes they have “no valid reason to be in Australia”. Five of the people have already been deported while steps are being taken to “fast-track” the removal of the remaining 19.

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Safia Al-Asmari; 23/5/08

Across the Kingdom, solemn looking and shabbily dressed Afghan children often sell gum to diners and shoppers leaving restaurants and supermarkets. While many people harbor ill thoughts about the parents who send their children to work on the streets, very few understand the poverty that forces these parents to do so. Afghanistan has seen conflict for decades, leading to thousands of Afghan refugees coming to Saudi Arabia. Although many Afghans here are legal, others reside illegally. Arab News met a number of illegal Afghan families who use Makkah’s winding alleyways and poor neighborhoods to hide from officials from the Passport Department. Mariam Muhammad, an Afghan woman, had come to live in Makkah with the help of smugglers two years ago. She traveled from her native Afghanistan via Pakistan and Yemen to join her husband who had come here four years before her.

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Arnold Zable; 19/5/08

Last week’s federal budget signalled the abolition of the Temporary Protection Visa system, introduced by the Howard government in October 1999. Since then 11,000 asylum seekers have received this visa. The TPV system was cruel and unjust. It undermined the spirit of international conventions for the protection of refugees. TPV holders were deprived of travel rights, given little access to settlement services, and could not be reunited with family members. People who had fled from persecution in their homelands were condemned to years of mental anguish and uncertainty.

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David Manne; 19/5/08

In recent years protection for human rights in Australia has degenerated. This has been especially marked in the area of immigration. Indeed, the refugee regime in Australia may represent the Western world’s worst practice. Key features have included mandatory, indefinite, non-reviewable detention, temporary protection visas, the Pacific/Indian Ocean Solutions, naval repulsion of asylum seekers arriving by boat, and ‘excision’ of Australian territory to prevent people from applying for asylum in Australia. Although the changes made after the Palmer enquiry mitigated the human suffering, the changes have been largely bureaucratic. The change in Government has opened the way to a more fundamental review of refugee policy and legislation.

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Jewel Topsfield; 17/5/08

When former immigration minister Kevin Andrews sparked a race row over his claims that African refugees were engaged in crime and failing to integrate into Australia he was acting contrary to advice from his own department. In a confidential briefing to the minister, obtained by The Age, the Immigration Department stressed that studies suggested it was not ethnicity that determined criminal behaviour but a combination of socio-economic problems and other disadvantage. The briefing was prepared for Mr Andrews in response to an article in the Cranbourne Leader suggesting that transit police believed Sudanese men were responsible for 99% of assaults and armed robberies on two Victorian rail lines.

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17/5/08: http://www.smh.com.au/letters/index.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

The scrapping of temporary protection visas for refugees is long overdue and very welcome (”1000 refugees receive protection, not detention”, May 16). The Opposition’s claim that this sends a “clear message to people smugglers that Australia’s borders are open for business” should not go unchallenged. The Immigration Department’s statistics show that more people came by boat in the two months following the introduction of TPVs than had arrived in the previous10 months. Before TPVs, men travelled alone on the boats to Australia hoping to sponsor their families to join them later. But once TPVs came in, they could not access the family reunion program. With no legitimate way to be reunited with husbands and fathers, wives and children turned to people smugglers. Before TPVs, very few children were among asylum-seeker boat passengers. After TPVs the percentage of children on the boats increased. On SIEV X, the boat that sank en route to Australia killing 353people, more than 35 per cent of the passengers were children, most of whom drowned. - Sue Hoffman Bassendean (WA)

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Jewel Topsfield; 16/5/08

The terror of fleeing the Taliban and ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan, a hair-raising journey in a rickety boat and three years of detention on Nauru is more than anyone should have to endure. But even after asylum seekers such as Mohammad Dawlat-Hussain were found to be genuine refugees, the former government sought to punish them for another five years, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said yesterday. Mr Dawlat-Hussain, whose boat reached Ashmore Reef in 2001, is one of almost 1000 refugees who will be granted permanent residency within months of the Government’s abolition of the controversial temporary protection visa.

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