Australian government tries to buy back asylum status of Afghan refugees

Detention centres are really immigration prisons. The
term 'immigration prisons' is a more honest title for these hellholes.
The Reintegration Package offered to Afghan asylum seekers is an offer to buy back the asylum afforded to people who fled persecution and landed on our shores. There is little reintegrating inherent to
the offer.
I can't comfortably use the word reintegration to discuss the offer.
In my mind it is the Australian government's asylum buy-back offer.
Below are my first reactions to the Australian Government's Afghan Refugees Asylum Buy-Back Offer:
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Reading the fine print of Howards offer to Afghan refugees
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The big brown government envelopes have been sent out to Afghan refugees in Australia. They contain an offer by the Department of Immigration and Indigenous Affairs to buy back the asylum given to refugees who fled Afghanistan.
The offer is called a reintegration package.

There are not too many surprises in this package. It is pretty much as advertised, an offer of money to people on temporary protection visas to give up their claims for asylum and go home to Afghanistan.

Some interesting observations:

1. Hidden in the fine print is a little surprise. Several times in the supporting, clarifying documentation it is explained that asylum seekers must give up all immigration cases before Australian courts.
This is no surprise. We were all told that this would be a condition of the package. However we were not told, and not mentioned anywhere except in the fine print of the 'Declaration of Voluntary Return', another clause has been included:
I/we further understand that I/we will be required to fromally withdraw/discontinue any matters before UN Treaty bodies such as the UN Committee Against Torture or the UN Human Rights Committee prior to my/our departure from Australia.
Why has this not been explained in the lengthy documentation DIMIA has provided?

2. Payments will be in cash at Sydney airport.
What sort of an idiot cashes up returning refugees. How long will they stay cashed up after arriving in warlord governed Afghanistan? Would you like to walk
around Kabul with $10000 in your pocket? Would you feel safe knowing that all the world knows that you are carrying cash?

Will the theives and warlords be assisted again with the photos of the returnees on the internet provided by Mr Phillip Ruddock, the Australian Minister for Immigration?

3.To get the money, one needs an Afghan passport. To get the passport, DIMIA will forward all their files on the asylum seeker to the Afghan embassy. Aren't these files confidential?
For people who are fleeing a corrupt regime, this is maybe the scariest bit of all.
It appears that DIMIA is now going to tell the Afghan government everything that our asylum seekers have said about Afghanistan. Can't our stupid government see that this will endanger many lives?

4.For the first time, DIMIA has bothered to provide an English version AND an interpreted version in the refugees's native language.
Has DIMIA changed its policy of not providing translations of its communications? or does DIMIA only translate documents it wants refugees to read?

5. Nowhere does DIMIA advise consulting a lawyer. Surely this advice is essential if people are to sign contracts of such significance.

6. Nowhere does DIMIA say what will happen if an asylum seeker is not interested in the package.
For instance, we are told what will happen
if the Declaration of Voluntary Return is submitted before the TPV expires (one can stay until the expiry date). We are not told what happens if the TPV expires BEFORE the 30 June 2003, and refugees do NOT want to go back and face death.
Many people are in this group and they have not been informed what DIMIA will do with their applications for permanent protection.

Do TPV holders who choose not to accept DIMIA's offer have to wait at least a further six months?
They have been given similar status to refugees from East Timor.
Does this mean that DIMIA intends to just wait until they can send them back involuntarily? Like they waited so they could say East Timor is safe?

7. The signature on the buy back offer for asylum status is illegible.
It is disrespectful to not give a name on such an important document..

Does anyone else feel that dealing with this government is like dealing with shonky car salesmen?


Lynne Murphy
Project SafeCom Inc.
http://www.safecom.org/refugees.htm