People Smugglers and Australia

A large number of asylum-seekers are trying to get to Australia using people smugglers.

People smugglers are individuals or groups who help people to get to another country. Often, this involves crossing country borders illegally or arriving in countries without the proper papers. People smuggling businesses have chains of smuggling agents who recruit people for the journey in countries like Afghanistan. Once people have paid for the journey they are then sent through trusted intermediaries in places like Dubai, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In the case of Australia, people smugglers are taking asylum-seekers to Australia by boat or helping them to go by plane. In the first half of this year 1,709 people sought asylum in Australia and about half of them arrived by boats organized by people smugglers.

Many of the asylum-seekers trying to reach Australia by boat travel through Indonesia. Indonesia is one of the closest countries to Australia and because Indonesian fisherman often fish near Australian waters people smugglers make use of fishing boats to take asylum-seekers. It is also very difficult to police the long Indonesian coastline and prevent fishermen from becoming crew on boats heading to Australia.  The fishermen are usually very poor.

Australia’s anti-smuggling laws do not distinguish between the organizers of people smugglers and fishermen; all are given at least five-year jail sentences if found guilty. But the fishermen are usually paid very small amounts of money, sometimes as low as 60 Australian dollars and may not even know that they will be breaking Australian law.

Mr. Bamba Maja is a fisherman from Indonesia.  He was one of four crew members on a 15-metre wooden fishing boat stopped by Australian patrol boats off Western Australia in March 2010. He said that he took the job to earn money to help his impoverished family. Mr. Maja was paid just $500 but the asylum-seekers on the boat had paid the people smuggler between $4,000 and $6,000 to make the dangerous journey. Mr. Maja was found guilty in an Australian court and sentenced to five years' jail. The people smuggler who organized the journey has not been tried.

International research shows that people smuggling businesses often develop in local and refugee communities and that people smugglers are motivated by both money and a desire to help people. Several UNHCR-registered refugees have spent time in Australian jails for people smuggling.

Mr. Shadi is an Iraqi born man who tried to get to Australia by taking a boat to Christmas Island. When this didn’t work, he became a people smuggler and for three years helped send asylum-seekers to Australia.

Mr. Shadi was the moneyman and recruiter. He says, “You don't need to sell this, or say things like government will pay you money if you go, no one says that. It's just that everybody knows Australia is much better than their own country. That is it. We know by TV, newspaper, internet, you know what the life is like here, Western life. We give you promise to get there and we will try again and again and again until we get you there. We give you promise to leave in two weeks and if it's longer than two weeks we will pay for your hotel, accommodation, whatever.” When Mr. Shadi was working as a people smuggler a boat usually cost $US20,000. The Indonesian fishermen crew and corrupt airport officials would cost another $US20,000 but each passenger would pay between $US2,000 to $US10,000.

Eventually Mr. Shadi became an undercover agent for the Australian Federal Police. Working with the police he testified against some of the biggest people-smugglers and explained the detailed routes people smugglers used to get people to Australia.

Research suggests that the laws that try to stop asylum-seekers crossing borders actually work to push asylum-seekers towards people smugglers. And because people smuggling is a regional problem it cannot be resolved by one country alone. Widespread co-operation is needed between the countries that are source countries, the countries that are transited through, and the destination countries.

First Forced Deportation of Afghan Asylum-seeker from Australia Delayed

The Australian Government's decision to force the deportation of a failed Afghan asylum-seeker for the first time has been temporarily stopped by Australian courts.

Ismail Mirza Jan, 26 years old, fled Afghanistan as a teenager in 2001, three years after his father was killed by the Taliban. He reportedly travelled to Pakistan, Iran and Greece before applying for asylum in Britain. His application was rejected in Britain and then in Ireland, but he was able to live temporarily in Ireland on humanitarian grounds. He arrived in Australia in February 2010 using a false Turkish passport.

He is currently in maximum security at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney after his refugee application was rejected. His application was also rejected by the Refugee Review Tribunal and Australian courts.

Mr Mirza will be charged $2,000 to be flown to Afghanistan and another $30,000 for Australian officials who will need to accompany him.

The Australian Government ordered his removal to Kabul on 15 November 2011. This would have been the first time an Afghan asylum-seeker has been sent home against their wishes because of a deal to return Afghans between Australia, Afghanistan and the UN Refugee Agency. The agreement between them was signed in January 2011. Australia says the agreement allows Australia to force the deportation of Afghans who do not qualify for refugee status and protection.

On Wednesday 16 November lawyers for Mr Mirza applied to the Australian Federal Court to stop his deportation, planned for Saturday 19 November. His lawyer argued that deporting Mr Mirza would go against the Migration Act. His lawyer also says that his client was denied justice because the Government never informed him of the reasons for rejecting his refugee application.

The Court issued a temporary order to stop his forced removal to Kabul until his case can be heard. A refugee activist said the case would probably not be heard until next year.

It is believed that travel documents issued by the Afghan government will expire at the end of January. Documents shown at Court showed that the Afghan government has already approved the deportation.

There are currently 1,246 Afghans in detention in Australia. If this deportation goes ahead, it is likely that more Afghans will be forced to return to Afghanistan if found not to be genuine refugees.

20 Asylum-seekers die on the way to Australia

At least 20 asylum seekers have drowned when their boat sank off the Indonesian coast on 1^st November 2011.
The asylum seekers were attempting to reach Australia on a small wooden boat.  The boat was carrying around 70 asylum seekers from Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan but it did not have enough equipment.  The boat left from Central Java and was heading for West Java when it sank.
Indonesian authorities said that 52 people were rescued and 8 people were confirmed dead including 4 women and 2 children. Another body was found later and the body of a nine-year-old boy was pulled from the water on Wednesday 2^nd November. At least other 10 people are still missing including three girls aged about two.
The rescue operation has failed to find any more bodies or survivors until now. Injured survivors are being cared for in a hospital and medical centre. The other survivors are understood to be at a police station and navy base.
An Indonesian policeman said "the dead have been identified as being from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The ones survived mostly from Iran. We believe there were at least 59 Iranian, three Afghanis and six from Pakistan. But the number is not supported by documents and there is a language problem too. So, we can't tell exactly the number missing. It's just a rough number."
Indonesia authorities said that bad weather and overcrowding might have contributed to the accident. There are also reports that local fishermen's associations had been warning for days that conditions were too rough to go out in the sea.
One of the survivors is an Iranian widow who had decided to try to start a new life in Australia with her two children, Mahdieh, her 14-year-old daughter, and Mahdi, her nine-year-old boy. “I was feeling sick and I was asleep [on the boat]. They woke me up when it was sinking. I said ‘I can't see my daughter, my people,’” she said. She found a life jacket and jumped into the sea but never saw her children again.
The is the first tragedy since December last year when nearly 50 people died after their boat smashed into rocks off the coast of Christmas Island. There have been many tragic incidents of asylum seekers on the way to Australia in past years, especially during the monsoon season when the weather is bad and the seas become very rough.
Australian authorities are concerned that even more asylum seekers will drown trying to get to Australia on unsafe boats in dangerous waters. The Home Affairs Minister said ''If we do not have the strongest deterrent to prevent people smugglers plying their trade, we will see further disasters ... we do not want to see further tragedies. This really does underline the need for parliament and for all parties involved to put in place the most effective deterrent to stop this awful trade.''
Australian politician Sarah Hanson-Young said the tragedy proved that more needed to be done to create safer options for asylum seekers. “This must include taking more people directly from Indonesia and Malaysia before they set out in unseaworthy vessels,” she said.
The Australian Government continues to look for support for its Malaysia Plan which it believes will break the people smugglers model and deter asylum seekers from risking their lives trying to get to Australia by boat. The Immigration Minister said “this is a terrible tragedy but it is a fact that when you have more boats coming to Australia you will see more deaths. We didn't adopt the Malaysia arrangement because it was politically easy or it was convenient, quite the opposite. We adopted it because we knew that this was the sort of arrangement that was necessary to avoid more deaths at sea.”
The Home Affairs Minister also said the Opposition should support the Malaysia Solution. "This is a tragic event, which underscores the absolutely dire need to put in the strongest possible deterrence to combat people smuggling and to prevent dangerous vessels from embarking on a journey to Australia,'' he said.

Self-harm, Suicide, Sexual Assault and Drug Addiction in Australia’s Detention Centres

More evidence of the worsening conditions in Australian detention centres has been revealed in recent weeks with reports of suicide, self-harm, sexual assault and drug addiction.

A recent Parliamentary committee was told that there had been 289 cases of people hurting themselves in detention centres between July and October this year.  The committee was also told that 451 people had been diagnosed with a mental illness and 228 were receiving anti-psychotic medication.

The deteriorating conditions were highlighted this week by the death of a refugee from Sri Lanka.  The Tamil man in his mid-20s had been in detention for over two years and was recently moved to the family compound at Villawood Detention Centre.  He had been granted refugee status about three months ago.

The man was still being held in detention after being granted refugee status because the Government was waiting for an ASIO security assessment before releasing him.  The Refugee Action Coalition says that “there are over 1500 people, accepted as refugees, being held in detention waiting for ASIO security assessments.”

The Refugee Action Coalition said that the man’s suicide might have been triggered when his request to be released to attend a Hindu festival was denied.  "Whether that was the final straw, it's impossible to know," they said.

This was the sixth suicide in detention in Australia, and the fourth in the Villawood detention centre since September 2010.

Meanwhile an Australian news programme has provided a graphic account of life for people waiting in detention.  In interviews with staff and asylum seekers waiting to find out if they’ll be accepted as refugees detention centres are compared with prisons and even Guantanamo Bay.  It is claimed that mental illness, suicide attempts and self-harm are widespread and many people are unable to lead normal lives, even after they have been released.

A nurse at the Northern Detention Centre in Darwin said that teenagers who moved from the Darwin Airport Lodge to the Detention Centre when they turned 18 were at risk of sexual assault.  "There were a lot of allegations of sexual abuse going on there […] and I would suspect a lot of that was true by seeing the patients' reactions."

There have also been reports about the distribution of sedatives, sleeping pills and powerful painkillers inside detention centres.

One refugee says the pills are handed out by medical authorities inside detention centres.  The man, who spent nearly two years in detention, says the pills make detainees "like robots" and leave them with drug problems which need more treatment even if they are released into the community.

An Australian reporter says one of the biggest problems facing psychiatrists working in detention centres is a widespread culture of sleeplessness.  The journalist reported that mental health nurses in the detention centre use the medication to manage detainees.  She claims that medical company that looks after the mental health of people in detention cannot manage the numbers of people who are depressed and suffering from ongoing sleeplessness and insomnia.

“The short-term solution they've come up with is to prescribe large quantities of Mirtazapine which is actually an antidepressant.”

Some refugees, such as Afghan man Hamid Amiri, took anti-depressant medication while in Curtin Detention Centre and still requires medication despite having been released from detention more than a month ago.

Refugee advocates protested against mandatory detention at the Sydney office of the Department of Immigration on the 26^th of October.  The protest called for an end to offshore processing and for the release of asylum seekers from detention so their claims can be processed while they live and work in the community.  

The protesters also said they were supporting the rooftop protest of a Rohingyan refugee in Darwin’s Northern Detention Centre.  The man has been granted refugee status but has been waiting for two years for his security clearance.

Conditions in detention are likely to worsen as more people try to get to Australia by boat and are detained in already crowded detention centres.

Australia told detention of child asylum-seekers is abuse

Refugee advocates have criticized the Australian Government for sending 73 unaccompanied child asylum seekers to a remote detention centre in rural Western Australia.

A plane carrying 36 teenage boys seeking asylum landed in the remote town after the Australian Government decided to use the town's detention centre to hold unaccompanied youths.

The boys, aged 14 to 17, are believed to be mostly from Afghanistan. Another 37 asylum seeker children will also be flown to the centre.

The Australian Government had planned to send the teenage boys to Malaysia for processing as part of a deal between Malaysia and Australia. But the High Court rejected this plan because Malaysia has not signed the UN's refugee convention.

According to recent statistics from the Australian Department of Immigration the majority of children currently in detention come from Iran and Afghanistan. 246 children have come from Iran and 187 from Afghanistan.

The Refugee Rights Action Network says detaining children is a form of child abuse. “We do know as a matter of absolute certainty that children that are held in immigration detention experience levels of depression, of self-harm and of suicide that is never seen in children that are held in the community", they said.

The Australian Medical Association said it was worried about the mental health of detainees, and that children were suffering from depression and self-harm.

"We are aware of a nine-year-old child who was recently admitted for trying to commit suicide," the Association told a committee of Australian politicians investigating the detention system.

They said hospitals had also reported large numbers of adults with mental health problems hurting themselves on purpose and requiring medical treatment.

Australia has a policy of mandatory detention that requires all people arriving in the country without a valid Australian visa to be detained in remote facilities while their applications for asylum are assessed. Some people wait for a year or more to find out whether they can stay in Australia or not.

A doctor at the Australian Medical Association has said, "Mandatory detention is medically harmful, violates human rights, has no known beneficial effects and is a waste of money".