The full story behind the death of Fazel Chegeni, a Kurdish-Iranian refugee who died on Christmas Island last month, has today been revealed by The Guardian. It’s a gut-wrenching read, and a stark reality check on the torture being meted out within Australia’s Kafkaesque immigration regime.
Chegeni’s death was entirely predictable to the case workers and doctors who reviewed him and witnessed the steep decline in his mental health throughout his four years in immigration detention. Many of them pleaded with the then-immigration minister to intervene in his case — but Scott Morrison refused:
“His bulging departmental file shows that on at least a dozen occasions, immigration department officers suggested, requested, and finally pleaded, for senior management to intervene in the case of a man clearly headed for catastrophe.”
Chegeni’s body was found in bushland, two days after he escaped from the Christmas Island detention centre last month.
It’s clear the Turnbull government’s immigration system — deliberately — has no room for discretion. This is a system that to function actually relies on desperate people losing all hope and languishing for years in island prisons, subjecting them to the kind of mental torture and uncertainty that drove Chegeni — a man whose case for asylum had been accepted by the government, who had even been previously released into the community — to his death.
Many within the government argue that it’s exactly this hardline approach that has effectively “stopped the boats”. But how many are prepared to tell the truth: that the death of Chegeni, along with the murder of Reza Barati and the rape and abuse of women and children on Nauru, the limbo of those in permanent detention, are a price they are willing to pay to make that claim? And how many Australians are prepared to accept that?
I, for one, am completely unwilling to accept this. The government’s argument for saving lives completely ignores why these refugees resort to such high risk journeys. In Sri Lanka, for example, thousands of Tamils were slaughtered in the civil war and undoubtably continue to be subject to persecution even though the war’s supposedly ended.
This government, and Labor too, are criminal in the policies they pursue with refugees. Criminal!
Are ‘stop the boats’ and humane treatment of those who are here mutually exclusive? As a society, we are measured by our humanity. Yes, I think we should stop the boats, but I also think we should significantly increase our intake of refugees – and welcome them and look after them when they arrive. And yes, I think those who come by boat and by other illegal means should be subject to mandatory detention, but they should still be treated humanely. Detention and no prospect of settlement in Australia are the deterrents, not mistreatment in detention.
There are three other young men- all recognised refugees facing their fifth Christmas in Detention.
They were convicted with Fazal for the i minute fight in Curtin Camp where 1400 men had 6 phones with resulting tension.
At the Court a Serco Officer told me that they were told to “get” the Iranians. They did and 5 men were charged. The Minister hired an expensive QC for the Magistrates Court Hearing to ensure that they “got” the Iranians.
There is no justice in Detention.
Bowen set up the system where people in detention were charged for minor matters.
Morrison made sure that everyone was punished by Indefinite Detention
and Dutton continues the game.
We can only hope that no one this Christmas follows Fazal’s example and gets a freedom visa from God as the only way out of hell.
Morrison a good Christian man of no morals or principles or compassion in respect to detention centre inmates.
“And how many Australians are prepared to accept that?” If the polls are any guide, rather too many Australians accept our government’s continued disregard for its international obligations under various agreements to which it is a party, including the Refugee Convention and later Protocol, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The numbers coming to Australia, or trying to, are a tiny fraction of the number accepted by, for example, Iran, Lebanon, Russia, France and Germany in the past 15 years.
We also tend to ignore the fact that the millions fleeing war zones are fleeing areas that Australia has done more than a small part to destroy, either directly though illegal invasions such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and by unquestioning support for the murderous policies of our closest “ally”.