Personal tragedy in stories of asylum seekers
Updated
The news in Australia is again being dominated by stories of asylum seekers, leaky boats, and people smugglers, but behind the news headlines individual stories of personal tragedy abound. The experiences are varied but all share the desire to find a better life.
Presenter: James Carleton
Speaker: Hazan Baresi, a member of Afghanistan's Hazari ethnic minority and former asylum seeker; Naseer Naseer, Iraqi and former asylum seeker
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JAMES CARLETON, REPORTER: The political debate over increased asylum seeker arrivals centres on whether Australian Government policy is partly to blame. It's a question that can be asked of the asylum seekers who arrived in years gone by because their journey from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan through to Australia is along a well-trodden path.
HASSAN BARESI: I escaped by a truck through Pakistan. From Pakistan I came to Malaysia, and then from Malaysia to Indonesia, from Indonesia to Ashmore Reef. The same journey that these people came in one and a half weeks ago.
JAMES CARLETON: Hazan Baresi, a member of the Hazari ethnic minority, fled Afghanistan in 2001 after his father was taken by the Taliban. Apart from Australia, none of the countries he passed through are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention and it was the final leg of his journey, aboard a leaky people smuggler's boat from Indonesia to Australia's Ashmore Reef, that was by far the most perilous.
HASSAN BARESI: It's a three or four day journey, but it took us 21 days to get to Ashmore Reef. 21 days. We didn't have any water or any food or anything.
JAMES CARLETON: And how much did you know about the Australian Government's immigration policies when you came to Australia?
HASSAN BARESI: When I came to Australia I didn't know anything about policies, or even I didn't know who was the Prime Minister of Australia. A lot of people assume Australia is just a big province of England.
JAMES CARLETON: What about the people smugglers? Because it's been said that Australia's softening of its immigration laws has encouraged the people smugglers to take more people to Ashmore Reef.
HASSAN BARESI: Oh, you know, a lot of people in Afghanistan - they're desperate to escape to save their lives. The only thing people would know is that if they go to Western country, they've got a better human right, freedom of religion and so that's the general belief of people - that if they go to a Western country, their rights will protected. They can seek asylum and they can apply for refugee status. And the debate about the smugglers, you know, I think it's just irrelevant and simplistic thinking.
If people are so desperate - the majority of those people are tortured in Afghanistan and they're desperate to save their life. Many thousand goes to Europe and a few hundred comes to Australia, too.
JAMES CARLETON: It's a view also held by Naseer Naseer. Iraqi by birth, he lived in Iran for 10 years before fleeing to Australia via Malaysia and Indonesia. And Australia's immigration policy was not a part of his thinking.
NASEER NASEER: No, I didn't think about the immigration policies of that time. That was the last thing on my mind. I was looking for any country, just any country to seek refugee status in.
JAMES CARLETON: Why did you engage a people smuggler instead of using authorised processes?
NASEER NASEER: Our passports were forged and Iraqis were not allowed to enter even Indonesia, let alone other countries. The reason that we chose Indonesia in the first place was that we could only stay two weeks and not more in Malaysia and after that we were in dire situation. But Indonesians were more relaxed, so we could buy time. And in Indonesia I went searching for different routes to different country.
I would have liked to go to Sweden, because I've got a brother over there. But it was so difficult, I couldn't find any person who could arrange for me to go to any European country. Then I heard of a route, of a path, to Australia by boat and I found a person who could arrange that. He arranged for a boat. We agreed on a sum of money - $US2,000 at that time. But we were unfortunate because our journey was not successful. We had two failed journey before being successful finally on the third one.
JAMES CARLETON: What happened with the failed journeys?
NASEER NASEER: In the first journey, the boats were really small. As soon as we entered the ocean, the waves were so strong that the captain of one of the boats got really scared and he turned back. And the second time, when he arranged for a larger boat, when we were halfway through we were caught in a severe storm and the engine of the boat failed and we were stranded in the sea for three days until the waves sent us back towards Indonesian shore.
JAMES CARLETON: And the third time you made it?
NASEER NASEER: The third time we made it, that's right. This time he decided that we should go to Ashmore Reef and it took us about 7 or 8 days to arrive to Ashmore Reef. We saw Australian Navy vessel and we submitted ourselves to the Navy people, to the Australian Navy people and they took us to Darwin, basically.
JAMES CARLETON: And when you saw the Navy did you think, "at last, we're saved" or "oh no, we're going to be sent back to Indonesia"?
NASEER NASEER: No, no, we really were relieved and happy and we thought that it's all over, we've made it. But as soon as we got to Darwin, we were told that we have come to Australia illegally and therefore we were going to be detained. This was the first time that most of us heard about this.
JAMES CARLETON: And how long were you kept in detention?
NASEER NASEER: I was kept in detention for 10 months.
JAMES CARLETON: Do you think that the recent arrival of unauthorised boats in the last few months is related to the Rudd Government's new immigration policies?
NASEER NASEER: I don't think that, because these people, and I was in a situation like that, are so desperate for a safe haven that even with the previous tougher policies, they would have made it to Australia. They would have made the journey, nevertheless.
