The Guardian 15 November, 2006
Asylum seekers.
Out of sight, and going out of mind
Peter Mac
Last year the Howard Government transferred asylum seekers off the notorious Nauru detention centre, after receipt of a psychiatrist’s report on their mental condition. The government also decided to terminate detention of more asylum seekers at South Australia’s Baxter Detention Centre, another notoriously cheerless place of official confinement.
In doing so, the government was not motivated by humane considerations, but by a desire to avoid acute political embarrassment. The psychiatrist reported that confinement at Nauru had brought the 27 detainees to the very edge of suicide. He recommended their removal from the centre, which he described as having an "environment and atmosphere of consistent hopelessness", generating "extreme levels of hopelessness and worthlessness".
Two detainees remained, however, following adverse ASIO reports. The suicidal tendencies of one caused him to be transferred to a Brisbane hospital. The other has pointedly asked the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs whether it would only resolve his situation if he also exhibits such symptoms.
The 25 released detainees were permitted to enter Australia under temporary visas. Some are still not able to apply for permanent residency, or are still separated from their families overseas.
Four asylum seekers who suffered mental breakdowns while in detention centres are now living under community detention in NSW and South Australia.
Fourteen other "unresolved case" detainees have been left in agonising uncertainty. They include ten detainees on Christmas Island, two of whom had spent 30 years in refugee camps in Thailand, before finally getting to Australia by boat recently, as well as another who had escaped from West Timor, and who with amazing courage and tenacity had crossed the treacherous Torres Strait in a canoe.
There is another group of futureless detainees, those who have been given "return pending" visas, under which stateless people can be deported to any country that will accept them.
The most terrible case in this category is surely that of Peter Qasim, who suffered prolonged island detention during his twenties before finally being allowed to enter Australia recently. He is now enthusiastically undertaking study courses. This quiet, intelligent and good-natured young man appears to harbour no grudge against this nation, even though, in effect, it robbed him of six of the best years of his youth.
And finally, there are the bizarre cases of people who have lived here virtually all their lives, but have never applied for citizenship, and who may be deported for criminal offences, or for failing a "character test".
As noted by two Federal Court judges last year, deportation of these people to a country whose customs they do not know, and whose language they do not speak, is an exceptionally cruel punishment. It also "presumes that Australia can deport its problems elsewhere".
However, the High Court has now ruled that under the current law the Immigration Minister is entitled to do just that. The Minister is delighted, and has announced she intends to implement the law in a number of such cases which were deferred after last year’s adverse Federal Court ruling.
That’s the sort of caring and humane government we have in Australia, the land of hope for the desperate exile and refugee.