Where Do We Go From Here?
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday September 7, 2001
The smugglers, the border crossings, the boats and the terrors are overcome. But, as Penelope Debelle reports in the last of a five-part series, a new problem arises for those who've made it through the refugee pipelines how to fit into the Australian community.
THE flat is plain and to our eyes bleak. There is almost no furniture, only a makeshift prayer mat and in the corner a television. The kitchen offers home brand cereal, bread, sauce and not much else.
Five men live in this flat in Adelaide's northern suburbs and only one has the courage to speak publicly. The other four, all Afghan males recently released from the detention camps, fled before we arrived.
Mohammed H will be photographed but is too frightened to give his name. He has left behind in Afghanistan 10 brothers and sisters and his identity could place them at risk. Through an interpreter he says his flatmates are fearful because in Afghanistan betrayal could mean death and outsiders were not to be trusted. They suspect we could be agents of the government or spies with information trails back to their homeland.
In fact their links with Afghanistan have been severed. Having been accepted as refugees, there is no going back and even contact is impossible. Their country is so destroyed by war there is no phone system and no-one even has a postal address.
Mohammed, 26, is a member of the Tajik tribe who left the small rural area of Lagar three hours south of Kabul just five months ago. His older brother had his leg blown off when he trod on a landmine and all of Mohammed's memories are of war. Earlier this year the Taliban came to his area and recruited him for their militia.
``When the Taliban came we heralded them as saviours because there had been such long periods of poverty and war," he says. ``But they moved in and were dependent on the village. They took food from the families."
He was the second eldest son and able bodied, so the Taliban claimed him. They gave him a week to say goodbye to family and friends before joining the armed bands that rove around most of Afghanistan enforcing the Taliban's literal and oppressive interpretation of the Koran. All families were expected to contribute a son, Mohammed says, and many had died. ``They would dump dead recruits just outside the city outskirts and people would just find out from the stench that they were there and their loved ones were dead," he says.
He had felt their arbitrary power. Three times he was lined up with other young men and questioned about his family and religion. The Taliban are Sunni Muslims; Mohammed and his family are Shia. They hold the same fundamental beliefs but differ in their view of the clergy and in some religious practice. More fundamentally, they compete for political and economic power and the ruling Sunnis have banned some forms of Shia worship. Once they heard he was Shi'ite, they beat him. He escaped, he says, by kissing their feet and begging for mercy.
His family decided for him that he would leave.
``My mother said she could not bear to see me perish in front of her own eyes," Mohammed says. They had been well off, with a farm and two butcher shops, and used money set aside for his dowry to pay the smugglers $US6,000 ($11,500) to take him away.
All he could take was two sets of clothes and one personal item, a handkerchief embroidered in the Afghan style by his mother. He handles it today with reverence and carries it in his pocket.
For the first 11 days he was kept indoors, passed from house to house along a chain of people who make a little extra by helping the people-smuggling networks. By then he was already further from home than he had ever been in his life, in the Pakistan city of Lahore. Here he cut off the beard the Taliban compelled him to wear as a symbol of compliance and discarded his turban. He was eating only mouldy bread and rice, he says, and his body shook constantly with fear.
In Pakistan he was given a fake passport and flew to Bangkok, then Jakarta, where he was taken to a small village and kept for a month. He was joined by almost a hundred others who fed in from all over the Middle East.
They left on an old wooden boat so small they slept sitting up and could not stretch their legs. There was some rice and bread but it ran out and they encountered storms. The engine kept breaking down and after 21 days at sea when they saw the Australian coastguard plane overhead they cheered with joy.
His story is similar to others. Johnny Mohammed Jamily is a member of the persecuted Hazaras, also Shia Muslims, who have fared badly under the Taliban. His father was beaten to make him reveal the whereabouts of his sons and his arm was broken. One son was already lost; he had gone to Kabul and had disappeared, feared killed. Johnny was hidden while his family sold their truck and paid $US5,000 a year ago to get him out.
He travelled on a fake Pakistan passport to Kuala Lumpur, then to Indonesia where he joined 62 people in a boat which broke down at sea 12 hours from Darwin. He was taken to the Curtin detention camp in northern Western Australia where he spent five months before he was processed and released.
The Australian destination of people like Johnny and Mohammed was irrelevant to them because it was not their choice. Their motivation, like that of all genuine refugees, was escape, not economic betterment. The majority of those coming here from Afghanistan and Iraq fit this category. The most recent figures from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) show that in the past year 85 per cent of asylum seekers from Afghanistan were accepted, as were 92 per cent from Iraq. The year before the Afghanistan figure was even higher, at 94 per cent. While DIMA says the lower figure this year reflects greater success in detecting bogus refugees from countries like Pakistan, acceptance runs high.
Mohammed is uneducated. When he got his fake Pakistani passport he had no idea what was on it. His education was three years' study under a Shia elder and he knew nothing about Australia or where it was. Similarly Johnny says he did not choose Australia, he was fleeing Afghanistan. ``Yes, I am pleased to be here but it was not my choice, it was the smugglers'," Johnny says. ``We asked them to take us away and they took us here."
Having found the peace of an Adelaide suburb, they are trying not to make trouble or complain. They had heard of the Tampa crisis and of Australia's hardening stance but were unable to make much sense of it and did not relate it to themselves. ``I am hearing something from my friends but I feel very welcome here," Johnny says. Similarly Mohammed has seen coverage on the news but does not understand.
Without good English and most from Afghanistan have little or none refugees have great difficulty even beginning to access broader Australian society or the workforce. They are highly dependent on refugee and welfare organisations who daily witness the frustrations of asylum seekers, whose rights fall short of an Australian citizen.
``It is very hard," says Johnny. He is an electrician but has no way of proving his credentials. Six months ago he was relocated from Curtin to Brisbane where he tried in vain to find an English class that would take him. Under the Government's new Temporary Protection Visas, or TPVs, he cannot access federally funded English lessons.
``We looked for 11/2 months and there were many English classes but they don't take us because we have temporary visas," Johnny says. ``It is important to have English classes, then you can have a job. But they say: `What is your visa? Temporary visa? Sorry."'
He came to Adelaide because a friend told him there were English lessons here. He has studied there for six months but still has no job. ``For two months I tried different companies but I cannot get a job," he says. ``Some of them ask me for a certificate but I haven't any. I had it in Afghanistan."
Sayed Manan Hussaini, 19, a carpet weaver from Kabul whose brother was taken by the Taliban and is presumed dead, hopes this article might help him. He has been out of Woomera for just 10 days, having left Afghanistan six months ago, and is already looking for work. He is a middle-class Afghan whose father sold carpets and he is desperately keen.
``I hope to start living, I hope to find a job," he says. ``I will find a job in an office, to do some small, small job, anything I can find I will do it, just put me in an office to work."
Australian Refugee Association SA employment co-ordinator Farhad Noori says most arrive full of hope but the reality is different. The government job networks almost routinely downgrade them as potential candidates because of language and culture. Yet in terms of reliability, application and attitude, Noori says, some employers who have taken a chance have come back for more. ``Some employers are very pleased and prefer them," says Noori, who is also a settlement co-ordinator for the Coalition for Justice for Refugees in SA. ``The fact they don't have any other pastimes and they concentrate on work as the first priority means the employer reaps the benefit. They are also very mobile and generally move near the factory or the farm where they have gained employment."
These are mainly young men who are on the brink of starting new lives. They want to work hard, earn money and fit in. Mohammed says he sees work as worship and if there is anything he can do, he will do it. ``It is difficult now because we do not speak English and it is hard to find the first job," he says through the interpreter. ``But if something comes up, I will go for it at full force. I know that as soon as I get my first job, the employer will not let me go."
But months after arriving many refugees are still searching. Noori says many are so desperate to find a job they feel they cannot afford time to study or retrain. ``Our observation is that they do not necessarily want to be in full-time English classes because they feel that is slowing them down from getting a job," he says. ``It is a catch-22 situation."
They are not complaining, in fact the gratitude of those like Mohammed, who feels he has escaped with his life, is almost overwhelming. His dull little overcrowded flat with its electricity, television and running water is more than he has ever had before.
``Australia has joined his line of prayers," says his interpreter. ``When he prays to Allah he thanks Australia for giving him the opportunity to have a fresh life. He has no complaints. At Woomera they were looked after, given clothing and food and there were medical services or people were sick. He did not expect that. He is feeling very welcome."
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald