Rural Australians for Refugees Bellingen and Nambucca Districts

This blog has been set up to further the cause of compassion for Asylum Seekers. We will post letters that have been sent to politicians, building up the pressure to provide compassionate support to all refugees in Australia and anywhere where people have been sent by the Australian Government. Send your letter and any reply to our email address and we will post it on the site. Any other information of use will also be posted. For Facebook page click on "contact us" tab below.

29.1.16

Mike Baird's view of success of resettlement of refugees

It was heartening to read our NSW Premier’s Australia Day address last week. Mike Baird speaking on the subject of resettlement of refugees said ‘ To shut our doors to refugees is not our history and not our character’. The Premier looked back to examples of how refugees, if given opportunities can be successful in many fields of endeavour and can contribute significantly to the future development of Australia . Mike Baird pointed out that we have a choice ‘to continue on the path that brought our nation to where it is today or we can let fear blind us and hate infect us’. These are strong words and an exhortation to the present government to step up its resettlement programme.

Marlene G

26.1.16

Newsletter for 26 January 2016 RAR Bellingen and Nambucca

Meeting for all supporters to discuss future of Rural Australians for Refugees Bellingen and Nambucca Districts group

You will be aware from previous newsletters that we are planning a meeting and lunch for supporters on Sunday 21st February, starting with the meeting at 12.00 pm, followed by lunch at about 1.30 pm. The meeting offers the opportunity for us to reflect on what we have achieved to date and to discuss what actions we would like to plan for the future in addition to current activities. It will be a great chance for you to have your say and to help us to shape our future as a group. We do hope that many of you will want to come along to contribute to the discussion.

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Problems with border protection ships

CAIRNS26-33 °C

Major Navy patrol boat repair work moves from Cairns to Singapore

January 12, 2016 7:10am

JIM CAMPBELLThe Cairns Post

Member for Leichardt Warren Entsch, who toured shipyards in Cairns late last year with Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia Josh Frydenberg, says the decision to move major maintenance of the Navy’s Armidale-class boats to Singapore won’t hurt Cairns. PICTURE: ANNA ROGERS

THE Cairns marine industry will take a big hit with a major maintenance contract being lost to Singapore.

The contract related to the navy’s Armidale-class patrol boats, which have been used heavily in the Federal Government’s border protection program.

Major maintenance programs have been undertaken in Cairns and Darwin but it is understood the navy was not happy with cost and timeline blowouts on the boats, including on the four boats based in Cairns.

Division 5 Councillor Richie Bates was furious the local contract had been terminated.

“These boats have worn out prematurely under the high demands of the Liberal Government’s policy against asylum seekers, and now they are handing over their maintenance to a Singapore company,” he said. “Cairns has had extensive experience in boat building and maintenance.

“We promote our tropical expertise around the world and what does our national government do? Give the maintenance of our navy vessels to an overseas company.”

A Defence spokesman confirmed principal contractor Serco had renegotiated its agreement with the Federal Government and would end its Cairns maintenance program in 2017 – five years early.

“Over a number of years, the sustainment of Armidale-class patrol boats has not allowed the fleet to meet the required levels of availability for this important capability,” the spokesman said.

Member for Leichhardt Warren Entsch insisted the decision would not have a negative impact on Cairns and said the work had been transferred because Singapore had the capacity to do major refits quickly and two at a time.

“They need major refits and they need to do it relatively quickly because the vessels have got to stay in service,” he said. “They (the boats) have done a hell of a lot more than they were ever designed to do.”

Mr Entsch said while major work would now be carried out in Singapore, “routine maintenance” would continue to be done in Cairns and Darwin.

“We just don’t have the capacity to do it in the time that’s necessary.

“This is not a slight on Cairns or on Darwin.”

Mr Entsch also stressed the decision would not affect Cairns’ bid for the $2 billion Pacific Patrol Boat tender, which he hoped would be announced “very early this year”.

24.1.16

Threat to witness of Reza Barati murder on Manus Island Saturday Paper 23 Jan 2016

NEWS

JAN 23, 2016

Reza Barati witness on Manus warned: ‘It’s very easy to kill you’

DI COUSENS

The key witness in the Reza Barati murder trial remains on Manus Island, frightened for his life and receiving death threats from the guards against whom he has testified.

I don’t have the first message Behnam Satah sent to me. Facebook deleted his account and it was lost. I know that it was from October last year. Behnam had already been persuaded to give evidence in the case.

Behnam Satah is an Iranian Kurd who witnessed the murder of Reza Barati on Manus Island on the night of February 17, 2014. When he sent his Facebook friend request, he was the key prosecution witness in the case against two Papua New Guinean men accused of killing Barati. He still is.

In any ordinary situation, Behnam would have been taken from detention on Manus Island and placed somewhere safe – ideally in Australia. But after almost two years, he is still locked on Manus, under the care of the guards against whose colleagues he is testifying. These men have threatened to kill him.

“Every day guards sit outside my window for a couple of hours and stare at me,” he tells me from his new Facebook account. “They swear at me and say, ‘Go back to your country.’ ”

He lives in constant fear, awake all night and trying to sleep in the heat of the day. “No one can ever imagine how it feels to think every time that someone might kill you. Every second I have to be alert at nights. When someone passes here I have to be prepared.”

Behnam began a hunger strike in January last year and after three days of not eating collapsed. He was taken to the medical facility in Manus and put on a drip. “I was receiving a drip,” he says. “Then ERT [emergency response team] came and they spoke with the doctors. My drip hadn’t finished and the doctor took out the needle and said, ‘Go and sit on that chair.’ ”

Behnam was then arrested and after a night in the police lock-up was taken to the Corrective Institutions Service prison, known as CIS. He was kept there for 21 days. During that time the two accused, Joshua Kaluvia and Louie Efi, were also in the prison.

Refugee advocate Janet Galbraith has recorded some of Behnam’s description of his treatment, for the group Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites. “I was in the CIS jail with the two men who I saw murder my best friend, Reza,” Behnam told her. “There was only a two-metre fence between us – a fence that a five-year-old can jump… We were about 60 people in there [CIS]. I didn’t know that I am in the same prison with Joshua and Louie. Joshua [had been] my friend. He was working for the recreation team in the Salvation Army. He also was like a priest for Christian asylum seekers. I was always his interpreter for Kurdish and Iranian people in the centre. Even we made a Persian/Pidgin together. We knew each other well and we were close friends. They [Joshua and Louie] had all of the affidavits in jail with them. I think their lawyer provided them for them. When he [Joshua] found out I am in jail next to them he tells me: ‘Come to fence. I want to talk to you!’ We were in different cells and there was a fence between us. It was easy if they wanted to come to the other side. So I went to the fence; I couldn’t do anything else. He started threatening me and he said, ‘You have to withdraw your affidavit.’ He said the sentence for murder in his country is top three years and murder is normal in PNG. He said, ‘I give you a chance of living if you withdraw your affidavit.’

“Many times before jail I received threats from his relatives. They are still working in the centre. It wasn’t just me, it was other witnesses as well. I reported it to Transfield, Wilson [Security], Red Cross, UN, IHMS [International Health and Medical Services]. Everyone knew, they didn’t do anything. Wilson tortured me and Reza [the second witness to the Barati murder] in Chauka [a high-security compound] before and I reported it to [international lawyer] Ben Pynt when we were released. There was no investigation for that.”

While Behnam was in the CIS jail he was beaten badly by guards and received several injuries, including lacerations to a foot. The foot became infected and for the first few days he received no treatment. “My ankle, I had to put salt on it for many days for avoiding infection,” he tells me. “It was so painful to pour salt in the wound but I had no choice. The infection was coming like water; it was a dirty place.”

After some days he was taken to Lorengau hospital for treatment. Once again, both men accused of Barati’s murder were there and both confronted him. “I sat in a corner, then they both came to me,” Behnam told Galbraith. “There was one prison guard with us inside. They said: ‘It’s very easy to kill you, you know. We can do it right now but we don’t if you withdraw your affidavit.’ They said: ‘We can reach you whenever we want.’ They said: ‘You must do it.’ I said: ‘Okay!’ They said, ‘Don’t forget our deal’ when I left CIS. It’s very bad to feel like someone might kill you always. It’s very bad. I have to be alert all the times. I don’t normally sleep at night because when someone walks I wake up. I sleep in the heat in that time.”

Behnam was later persuaded by the Papua New Guinea court to give evidence against Kaluvia and Efi. He was promised protection by Justice Nicholas Kirriwom and the Manus detention centre management, but has received none.

Immense suffering

The suffering on Manus Island is immense. It fills my conversations with the men there, beyond Behnam. One Pakistani man tells me he spent 19 days in prison without any charge. He was beaten by guards. “We become crazy here,” he writes. “We have mental health issues.”

I am told about repeated suicide attempts and a strange situation where a man was left sitting in the rain for two days, in a dissociated state, before being brought inside and given medical attention. The guards just walked past him.

A Burmese Rohingya man tells me: “My life continues in this terrible prison. The food is getting worse and the dirty toilets have caused so many infections. You would not believe how many men are sick… I hear men crying and screaming in their sleep. It is so painful but I do not know what I can do. I need help and no one is helping us.” He says there are about 40 men in his room. There is sickness everywhere. “I worry about my future. I feel easily tired. I think I got heart problems. I am so worried about my life.”

The Kurdish Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani says the Australian government is torturing the asylum seekers on Manus. “What can I say about this hell prison and how can I describe the pain and suffering? Who can answer our questions and explain what human rights and freedom means? … I feel a strange pain in my mind and heart because nobody can answer my questions and they are treating me like a criminal. We begin the day with pain and we sleep under nightmares.”

An Iranian man who was also a witness to the murder of Reza Barati dreams every night of being killed. “Last night I had a dream that they put us inside the plane,” he tells me. “When the plane is above the sky they open the door and then they throw out each person by force to the sea.”

Petitioning the PM

A psychiatrist on Manus last week confirmed that Behnam has post-traumatic stress disorder. He has chronic chest pain, which is being managed only with Panadol. It has led to a loss of function in his left leg and left arm. He has been given no X-rays, and the excruciating pain in his chest has not been treated. In the past few days he has developed a strange feeling of coldness when going to sleep. He says it feels like dying. “Sometimes when I want to fall asleep my body becomes cold,” he tells me. “I think I won’t wake up but I wake up again. I have become very tired. It is hot here and I don’t use a blanket. That feeling is very strange. As soon as I want to fall asleep it comes one or two times and then after 15 minutes I sleep. It is like my soul goes out of my body and I feel cold.”

On November 25 last year, I wrote to the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and asked that Behnam Satah be brought to Australia because he should be protected as a witness. Turnbull’s office advised that my letter was forwarded to the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, but Dutton has not replied. On January 6 I delivered a petition to Parliament House addressed to the prime minister requesting Behnam’s immediate release and transfer to live in the community in Australia. The petition had 600 signatures. On January 11 I sent the same petition, with 4280 signatures. On Monday, I sent the same petition to the prime minister – now with more than 16,000 signatures – again requesting Behnam’s release and transfer to the Australian community.

Behnam Satah’s life is in danger, both from the guards at Manus whose friends he has put in the dock and from the breakdown of his own health. In my ordinary life, I am a university administrator and have written risk assessment plans. As a risk manager, you have to plot the likelihood of events and the seriousness of the consequences. Death is considered a catastrophic consequence, and where death has previously occurred and the conditions remain the same it is classed as “highly likely”.

It is highly likely that Behnam’s life is at risk, and his death would be a catastrophic consequence. Someone responsible for managing these risks would act immediately to bring him to Australia and would provide the necessary medical care. What we have, unfortunately, is a government that has failed to recognise the risks and failed to manage them. We have a situation of catastrophic negligence.

Australian taxes paid the wages of the guards accused of killing Reza Barati. Behnam’s protection as a witness is Australia’s responsibility. All of the suffering in the offshore camps has happened on our watch. The situation has gone long past risk – the embedded suffering that is normal life in these camps must stop.

“I have been trying so much to survive that I have forgotten how to live,” Behnam tells me. “I am still in the same boat in a dangerous ocean in which there is no place to land. For 31 months my call for help has gone nowhere. SOS.”

19.1.16

Newsletter for 19 January 2016 Bellingen and Nambucca Districts

Meeting to discuss future of Rural Australians for Refugees Bellingen and Nambucca Districts group




The event will take place on Sunday 21st February 2016, starting at midday with a meeting to discuss progress and strategy, followed at 1.30 pm by lunch. Please put the date in your diary. Further details will be circulated nearer the time.


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Immigration wastes money on medals for its staff - Sydney Morning Herald article

Immigration spends more than Defence on medals for its staff

Date: January 16, 2016 - 9:58PM

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Adam Gartrell

National Political Correspondent

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"Not only are these medals costly but they demonstrate the government's intention to create a military style and culture within the Australian Border Force": Labor's waste watch spokesman Pat Conroy. Photo: Andrew Meares

The Department of Immigration is spending more than $1.3 million on medals for its staff, outspending the Department of Defence and prompting new concerns about the militarisation of the portfolio.

Government tender documents show the department has signed a contract worth $1,320,000 over three years with Melbourne-based company Cash's Awards and Promotion Solutions for medals.

The $440,000 a year contract was signed after an open tender process but appears more expensive than many of the comparable contracts available on the AusTender website.

Illustration: Matt Golding

For example, the department's previous six-month medal contract – with the Royal Australian Mint – cost just $48,000.

Immigration appears to be spending more than the Department of Defence, which spent about $300,000 on medals, spread over eight contracts, in 2015.

However, the quasi-independent Defence Materiel Organisation also awarded two major contracts for medals – worth about half a million dollars – shortly before it was absorbed back into the department six months ago.

The Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor General is the government body that typically spends the most on medals and awards – about $2.2 million in 2015 – but that is not surprising given it is responsible for the Australian Honours and Awards system.

The Australian Federal Police appears to have spent only $23,000 in 2015, while the Department of Industry, Innovation and science spent $136,000.

Labor's waste watch spokesman Pat Conroy said immigration's bill was part of the "quest to militarise" the portfolio.

"The problem is that not only are these medals costly but they demonstrate the government's intention to create a military style and culture within the Australian Border Force," he said.

"When you put this in the context of the Operation Fortitude fiasco we start to see a picture emerge of the way this department is being led."

The cost of the medals comes on top of the millions of dollars spent on the rebranding related to the creation of Australian Border Force, the department's paramilitary frontline agency.

But the department said the medals did not relate to the rebranding.

12.1.16

News letter for 12 January 2016 Rural Australians for Refugees Bellingen and Nambucca

Meeting to discuss future of Rural Australians for Refugees Bellingen and Nambucca Districts group







The event will take place on Sunday 21st February 2016, starting at midday with a meeting to discuss progress and strategy, followed at 1.30 pm by lunch. Please put the date in your diary. Further details will be circulated nearer the time.













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Asylum Seeker children on Nauru abused, sexually harassed at school : former teacher

Sydney Morning Herald article 9 January 2016

Nicole Hasham

A five-year-old asylum seeker was urinated on by a group of Nauruan boys and asylum seeker girls have been sexually harassed at school, a former teacher says, saying many parents are too scared to send their children to school in 2016.

The claims are backed by asylum seeker children who report that Nauruan students threaten them with knives and teachers routinely swear at them. One Iranian boy reported his female Nauruan classmates offered sex for money.

I will not go to school because… the education is really bad, the teachers swear at us and the students hate us

In one alarming allegation, outlined in an official incident report sighted by Fairfax Media, a group of children were hit with a wooden ruler for being late to an exam.

The Nauru detention centre, as pictured in 2012. Photo: Angela Wylie

It has been six months since the Australian government closed the detention centre school and forced child asylum seekers into Nauruan schools, where classes are taught in the Nauruan language and teachers are frequently absent.

A former teacher contracted by the Australian government to teach at the detention centre said that since the change, bullying by students and teachers had become rife, teacher training was poor and the special education needs of asylum seeker and refugee children were not being met.

It meant school attendance among about 70 children languishing at Nauru was low, and not expected to improve this year.

The Badawi family, including eldest sons Ahmed (left) and Mohammad (second from right). Photo: Supplied

"A lot of the Rohingyan girls stopped going because they were constantly being sexually harassed. These are girls that wear hijabs," said the teacher, who remains in close contact with asylum seekers and refugees on the island.

"One little five-year-old boy was surrounded by Nauruan kids and they all urinated on him. There were no consequences, that kind of behaviour was tacitly condoned – that's why [parents] pulled their kids out. Because they felt their kids weren't protected or safe."

Iranian Mohammad Badawi, 14, who has been in detention for more than two years, said he wanted an education but did not attend school because it was "dangerous".

Ahmed and Ali Altabarawi. Their mother did not wish to be identified. Photo: Supplied

"I will not go to school because … the education is really bad, the teachers swear at us and the students hate us," he said in a recording made this week, obtained by Fairfax Media.

In a separate recording made in October last year, Mohammad said he stopped going to school after female students offered him sex.

"One day the Nauruan girls come and told me bad things, like one-dollar-one-hour [for sex]. When I told [a teacher] the [teacher] say 'why didn't you go with them?'," he said.

Other students "bring knives … and they scare us".

Mohammad said security guards at the detention centre had also threatened to hurt him outside the facility, and he was reluctant to leave to attend school.

A young asylum seeker from Iraq, Ahmed Altabarawi, said he did not feel safe outside the detention centre and did not attend school.

"Outside the camp is not good, people are not good guys, they fight … and many dogs bite people," he said in a recording also made in October.

"I don't go to school – school is bad. All the guys fight the Arabic people."

An incident report dated April 2014, sighted by Fairfax Media, details how four asylum seeker children at Nauru College were attacked by a teacher for being late to a maths test.

The report was made to Transfield Services, the Australian government contractor that runs the detention centre that has since changed its name to Broadspectrum.

The students apologised for being late and said they had been getting water. A teacher "proceeded to hit them with a wooden ruler on the shoulders", the report said, adding two of the children began crying and the beating left red marks.

A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said school governance arrangements were a matter for the Nauruan government and it did not have enough information to comment on the alleged incidents.

The Nauruan government did not respond to request for comment.

A Broadspectrum spokesman said it was not responsible for education services in the Nauruan community.

10.1.16

Australia refuses to accept invitation to send Nauru Asylum seekers to New Zealand January 2016

The New Zealand government has since reallocated this year’s places to Syrian refugees but says the offer remains part of its official immigration policy and open to the Australian government.

Last week 28 refugees on Nauru wrote to the New Zealand prime minister, John Key, asking to be resettled in that country under the Australia-New Zealand agreement.

The refugees have been found to have a well-founded fear of persecution in their homelands but have been offered only temporary residence in Nauru.

“Australia will not accept us despite us asking them for safety,” the handwritten letter, signed and affixed with the refugees’ boat numbers, says.

“They gave us to the Nauru government and told us we were now their responsibility. Nauru has not given us, and does not have the means to give us, permanent protection and safety.

“After 30 months in mouldy tents and now in the community where we are not accepted, some of us now have travel papers which give us the freedom to leave.”

A letter from refugees on Nauru asking for the New Zealand government to consider them for resettlement. — A letter signed by refugees on Nauru asking for the New Zealand government to consider them for resettlement. Names have been blurred to protect identities.

In response to the letter, New Zealand’s immigration minister, Michael Woodhouse, said it was up to Australia to resettle people from its offshore detention camps and that New Zealand remained willing to assist.

“It is for Australia to take up the offer to utilise the up to 150 places and to date they have not done so,” he said. “As such, the places are reallocated to the annual quota and most recently the places were given to Syrian refugees.”

In a deal brokered between prime ministers Key and Julia Gillard in 2013, New Zealand agreed to accept 150 refugees from Australia’s offshore processing centres each year from 2014-15.

The quota remains in New Zealand’s forward planning for humanitarian resettlement.

But when the former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, was elected he effectively scrapped the deal at the Australian end, saying it would be called upon only “if and when it becomes necessary”.

“Our determination is to stop the boats and one of the ways that we stop the boats is by making it absolutely crystal clear that if you come to Australia illegally by boat you go not to New Zealand but to Nauru or Manus and you never ever come to Australia,” he said.

The Coalition government is loath to have refugees resettled in New Zealand as it is seen as undermining a fundamental tenet of the policy: that boat-borne asylum seekers will never be settled in Australia.

Refugees resettled in New Zealand can apply to become citizens after five years. New Zealand citizenship would give those people the right to travel and work in Australia.

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said he believed resettlement in New Zealand would be an incentive for asylum seekers to board boats.

“I think an outcome like that could ... result in creating incentives for people smugglers to get back into business,” he said.

Some refugees on Nauru have recently been granted travel documents, which would allow them to travel to another country that was willing to admit them. The visa to live in Nauru expires in five years.

Nauruan officials maintain that all refugees must ultimately be resettled in another country.

So far, 815 people have been granted refugee status on the island, including, it is understood, about 80 children. They are living in the detention centre or in the Nauruan community.

A further 543 people, including 70 children, remain in the detention centre awaiting a refugee status determination.

After Nauru and Manus Island’s first iterations as Australian immigration detention facilities – under the “Pacific Solution” between 2001 and 2008 – 705 people from those centres were resettled in Australia and 401 in New Zealand. Far smaller numbers were resettled in Sweden, Canada, Denmark and Norway.