Children from the camps (2002)

Stories from Australian Detention Centres 2002

The following are true stories from asylum seekers currently being held in detention centres in line with Australian Government policy. The names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the detainees.

Ali

What did your parents hope for you at eight? That you would be happy, that you would go to a good school, play sport, learn to surf, have great friends and have fun? What if, instead, your family had been so afraid for you that they spent all their money smuggling you out of the country, without being able to afford to come with you, praying you would somehow survive?

Ali is an Afghani boy who was detained in Woomera. His family could not come with him. When he arrived, he wandered about aimlessly, day and night, dirty and uncared for. Seeing his state, a family there took him under their wing, and he moved with them to a house in a security compound in Woomera township as part of Minister Ruddock’s pilot scheme of house arrest instead of detention for selected families. Eventually, however, the family were granted temporary protection visas and released. Ali was not. He has lost his own family, and his foster family. Now he finds himself having to bond with a third family. He is philosophical though, and tells others this placement is temporary too.

Ali is eight years old. He knows the Taliban have now gone. He does not know what happened to his family.

Anwah, Hasham, Mika’il and Leila

What would you do if you had a family with three boys and a girl: funny, friendly and smart – good kids – and the government wouldn’t let you send them to school? Think about it. You have a 17 year old – deeply responsible, warm, clever, bilingual. You have a 16 year old – artistic, talented, who reads the papers and becomes engrossed in politics. They have a younger brother, eleven, and a sister six, whom they are trying desperately to protect.

This family left an intolerable situation in Iraq six years ago. They seek political asylum. For the last two years they have been shunted between Curtin, Port Hedland and Villawood. Anwah and Hasham have been locked in solitary confinement. At one point both sewed their lips together and refused to eat – they had no other way to protest. Hasham has attempted suicide twice and has been hospitalised.

The two little ones, and their mother, have also been locked up in solitary confinement. Their toilet was a plastic bag. One day Mika’il and Leila were taken on an overnight excursion – they thought it was a treat. But it was a strange, deceptive treat – when they returned, their family was gone. They were told that their parents and older brothers were in gaol. Distressed and confused, they both stopped eating. The younger one became mute.

The Department of Community Services has recommended that this family be allowed to live in the community with their mother while their refugee claims are finalised, and the Supreme Islamic Council has volunteered to meet all their living expenses. This has been refused.

Aesha

Aesha is now 15 years old. Perhaps she was too young to fully grasp why she had to leave her home, her friends, grandparents – people who loved her when she was 12 years old. She came to Australia and immediately went to Woomera Detention Centre.

She was 12 and locked in solitary confinement during raids by guards in riot gear – batons, shields, gauntlets, boots and black helmets with shields to cover their faces. After that, when she was allowed out of her cell for breaks she was too afraid to go to the toilet.

Now she is incontinent day and night. She is deeply humiliated, and still very afraid.

Faisal

What would you do to protect your children? What if you thought you might be killed, and were terrified of what would happen to those you loved and who depended on you? With no way to stay and survive, and with no chance of getting passport and exit papers from their country, Iran, because of their political activities, Faisal’s parents risked their lives to escape. But when they arrived in Australia – exhausted, afraid, the mother heavily pregnant – they faced a new terror. They couldn’t stop their bright little four year old from seeing what he saw.

First there was the riot at Woomera. The family took no part, but still their room was pounded with water canons, tear gas seeped in around the door and baton-waiving guards burst into their room in riot gear.* Later Faisal witnessed a detainee who shut himself in his room and set fire to it and a detainee threatening to slash his chest with a shard of glass. He saw another detainee climb to the top of a huge tree and threaten hysterically to jump. Faisal began to get sick, to withdraw. He was transferred to Villawood because of his deteriorating health, only to see a man with blood spurting from his wrists after a suicide attempt.

By now deeply traumatised, Faisal stopped eating and drinking. In the end, he stopped talking. He was hospitalised eight times before being placed in a foster home – separated from his family against all the advice of the medical team. With their mute, terrified charge, the foster family were unable to cope.

Eventually his mother and sister, who was born in Woomera, were released from Villawood to care for him. His father is still in detention awaiting the results of their case in the full Federal Court. Faisal longs to live with his father as well as his mother and sister, but now that most of his family are out of detention, he is able to smile. And seeing those smiles, his mother, who has sacrificed everything for him, has blossomed.

* When asked during a television interview about the psychological damage being done to children in detention, Phillip Ruddock, Minister for Immigration, stated that it is the parents’ responsibility to keep them away from traumatising sights and situations.

Fatima and Tariq

What would you do if the Government took away your son after his wife had died? Almost certainly killed. What would your hopes be for their orphaned children? How would you protect them? What would you do to save your grandchildren’s lives?

Fatima and Tariq’s grandparents found people who would save their grandchildren. They thought these people were saviours. In Australia, we call them people-smugglers.

When the children arrived in Australia, they had one interview with the Department of Immigration and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA). The next day, Fatima dressed carefully, took her chair outside their room and waited to be called for another interview. She did this for almost six months. She watched every day as people around her were granted further interviews.

But she and her brother were never called. They had been screened out. No one had told them, you see, what they had to say. No one told them to say: “I was subjected to convention-based persecution in my own country and I have a great fear of returning.” No one told them to say: “I am seeking the protection of your country.” No one told them to say: “I want a lawyer.”

Fatima is 15 years old. Her brother is 11. Six months later, they have been miraculously returned to the refugee-assessment system, but their fate is still far from secure.

The last thing Fatima’s grandparents said to her was, “We will try to raise the money and follow you, so we can take care of you.” Fatima believed this and hung on to this one solid hope in her life. So when she heard that a boat coming from Indonesia had sunk she was certain her grandparents had drowned. Of course she has no way of finding out if they were still in Afghanistan – there is no way of communicating with Afghanistan at all. Fatima is desperately worried. She has no one to turn to.

Rashid

What would you do if one day your husband disappeared, taken by the government, almost certainly to be killed? Then, powerless, you watched as your eldest son was also taken. How would you feel then, when you looked at your younger son, still a child, knowing it must be his turn next?

Rashid’s family are Hazarah, persecuted in Afghanistan for generations. It was the Taliban who took his father and brother. In desperation, his family sent him alone to Australia. He cannot contact them.

Now 18, Rashid has spent more than two years locked up. He was in Villawood, but when he took part in a hunger strike – in a desperate plea to be heard – he was taken at four in the morning with other hunger-striking detainees in a government-chartered plane to Port Hedland and locked in solitary confinement. Noone hears you in solitary confinement.

Rashid cries uncontrollably. He stutters when he talks. The detention centre is unbearable for him, but he is even more afraid of having to return to Afghanistan. He has entered his manhood traumatised, afraid and deeply alone.

Hanif

Do you know what happens to you after a week without food? What about after two? After more than two weeks of hunger striking, Hanif’s hands shake uncontrollably. He is 16 years old, and so angry he can no longer deal with life. His withdrawal from his family and from the makeshift community in Curtin is all but complete.

Hanif’s fourteen year old sister, Layla, had been allowed to attend the local school with three other girls from the detention centre. But when she also went on hunger strike, in protest at their treatment in the camp, her schooling rights were removed for four months. Particularly bright, Layla is devastated by this punishment. A priest who recently visited the family says her fear of detention is especially debilitating. He could only watch – there was nothing he could do to turn around their disintegration.

Fashid

How long do you think you could stand in gaol without a trial, without a charge, without a crime. One year? Two? Fashid is a 21-year-old Algerian who has spent four years in detention at Perth, Port Hedland and Villawood. In July last year, after three-and-a-half years locked up, he escaped to New Zealand, but gave himself up to Immigration officials at Auckland airport, expecting to be given asylum. Instead he was returned to Villawood. He remains in maximum security, also known as ‘Stage One.’ Three slightly older Algerian men protect him – he is the youngest there and afraid of the 40 Vietnamese drug criminals amongst his fellow detainees. Inside it is a pressure-cooker. Fashid believes it is only a matter of time before things blow up and someone gets killed. There are brutal fights when guards lock non-participants into their rooms to protect them from the criminal detainees. Officially, Fashid is stateless. He has no other home to return to.

These are case studies from Jacquie Everitt, a lawyer who has worked inside Woomera .