No charge. No trial. No appeal.

i feel very strongly that this case, along with too many others involving indefinite detention, must become the focus of all those good people of sound and moral mind.

so many questions must be asked of the federal government and their secret police who are somehow exempted from the laws of this country we are told is a democracy. but it is only a democracy for those the governments of the stolen aboriginal lands/nations say it is for. to suspend laws for a secret police organisation is but the first step to fascism and totalitarianism and must be stopped.

it must be stressed that asylum seekers have broken no international or australian law and the government has signed the un declaration on the rights of those seeking asylum.

i and others were at the villawood detention camp today to present aboriginal passports to two tamil brothers who are taking their incarceration over the last 3 years of indefinite detention to the un to seek relief from their plight. again an unknown asio decision has allowed the brothers to be psychologically abused by them not being told the charges against them, except that asio believes them to be an unspecified security risk. this decision is not appealable in any court, as it must be, and no release date can be given of extradition to sri lanka.

this is australia and this is being done in your name!

the passports were/are a humane gesture to the brothers specifically but also to all those who are suffering the same fate as the tamil brothers and the young tamil mother and her two young children that they are not alone.

the passports would tell them all that not all australians are xenophobic misfits and that robbie thorpe who issued the passports and i who attempted to present them today say as loudly as we can - we welcome the asylum seekers to the stolen lands of the aboriginal nations and equally as loudly inform the federal governmen that they do not speak for us. always was, always will be, aboriginal land.

i was stopped by serco, the private incarceration company, from entering villawood as i did not have photo id and the other 3 visitors were also rejected and ordered out because we had held a news conference outside of the centre! like asio it seems that serco can make up its own rules as it goes along.

the brothers and others had prepared a meal for us such was their pleasure of our coming to see them but we were not allowed in. they then asked if they could package the meal and give it to us but this was refused also as was their next request to have a visitor inside to bring it out to us. such an act of petty thuggery makes us concerned as to any possible repercussions against them.

please join me in signing the petition and let the gillard government become very well aware of our total displeasure at their vile and inhumane actions towards asylum seekers.

fkj

ray jackson
president
indigenous social justice association

isja01@internode.on.net
(m) 0450 651 063
(p) 02 9318 0947
address 1303/200 pitt street waterloo 2017

www.isja.org.au

we live and work on the stolen lands of the gadigal people.

sovereignty treaty social justice

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/detainees-deserve-natural-jus...

The Canberra Times
Bruce Haigh
May 14, 2012

Opinion

Ali Al Jenabi is a survivor; he is resourceful and compassionate. He takes his responsibilities to others seriously, particularly towards his family, which is central to his existence. These responsibilities have cost him dearly. He has lost his wife and child and the only woman he loved.

I have met Ali on several occasions, once in Villawood with my wife. He is a good person.

In 1991, aged 20, Ali, his father and 18-year-old brother Ahmed were picked up by Saddam Hussein's secret police, thrown into the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and tortured. Put before his bleeding brother whose hands are nailed to a table, they say each time he does not answer a question that they will take another finger off. It is then he notices that his brother's little finger has already been chopped off. Ali is asked what political group he belongs to. Saying he knows nothing of political groups, Saddam's thugs chop another finger off the hand of his brother.

Ali never sees Ahmed again. He and his father are eventually released, but his father is a broken man, so much so, that Ali must assume responsibility for the family, his mother and six brothers and sisters. His need to provide for the family has him working long hours. When a younger brother falls down a well and drowns, it is Ali who must retrieve the body. Two other brothers are detained in prison.

Eventually it becomes apparent that the family will have to leave Iraq and it is Ali who must put himself in the hands of people smugglers, first to get into semi-autonomous Kurdistan, then Iran, later Turkey, in an attempt to get to Europe, and then Malaysia and Indonesia to try to get them to Australia. Lack of money and dishonest operatives in the informal transport network push Ali into the so-called people smuggling business, where he manages to get 10 members of his immediate family to Australia plus another 500 persecuted and deserving souls.

All this and a lot more is contained in a tight, powerful and extraordinarily well written book, The People Smuggler, by author and film maker Robin De Crespigny. This is a book which highlights the provincialism, the meanness, fear and navel gazing of the Australian ruling class. It is a book which glories in the strength, courage and compassion of the human spirit. It is a book which says as much about Australia as it does about Iraq. It is being launched at the writers' festival in Sydney on May 17.

Ali is eventually ''captured'' by an AFP entrapment scheme in Thailand, in April 2002, which sees their Iraqi informer, residing in Indonesia, eventually given $250,000 and permanent residency in Australia. The informer was involved in the departure of SIEVX, which again raises questions about the knowledge and involvement of the AFP with the ill-fated voyage of that vessel. We also get an insight into the murky world of corrupt police, navy, customs and other officials, in which the AFP and people smugglers operate in Indonesia.

From the time of his apprehension and detention in Australia Ali's story is one of unspeakable cruelty. He is not physically tortured but he is, psychologically and emotionally, all in the name of making an example of a people smuggler.

Taken through the court system in Darwin, for a ''crime'' that does not exist in Indonesia, where it was ''committed'', Ali was sentenced by a sympathetic judge, which could have been 10 years, but when boiled down amounted to one year and nine months. The judge, Dean Mildren said, ''As to the prospects of rehabilitation, I doubt if he will offend again when he is released. I accept that he has a remarkably stoic and positive outlook on life and will probably pursue his trade as a tailor.''
During the course of this trial it is determined and accepted by the prosecution that there is no such thing as a queue of, or for, asylum seekers.

Upon release from prison at the end of his sentence, Department of Immigration officials are waiting for him. One tries to get him to sign a form which will see him immediately deported to Iraq, the other takes him aside, spelling out his right to request asylum, which he does. His case is heard and nothing is done for nearly a year, although under Australian law a decision must be given within 90 days. The matter is brought before the Federal Court and a judge orders the Department of Immigration to hand over relevant documents, among which is a recommendation,
by the case officer Kate Watson, that Ali be granted refugee status. The department, presumably at government direction, has sought to pervert the course of justice with respect to Ali's legitimate claim. They also made life hell for Kate. Nice.

The matter went to the Minister, Chris Evans, for a decision, who instead of issuing a permanent visa issued a Removal Pending Bridging Visa. Later the new minister, Chris Bowen, endorsed this decision, which is still in force. It meant that he could not be joined by his Indonesian wife and child, who has since divorced him, and subsequent to that by a childhood sweetheart from Iraq, who, in the absence of his being able to travel to see her, was pushed into a loveless marriage by her family. It has also meant that Ali cannot work.

The threat to Australia is not from terrorism but from the fear of it, an irrational fear, which has led to the demonisation of so-called people smugglers and boat people. On this issue both sides of politics play to the lowest common political denominator.

Why? Is it xenophobia, racism or both? The number of people coming by boat is insignificant; they do not have the money to come by plane and as the book shows, the majority have made exemplary citizens, in most cases better than their irrational critics.

Kevin Rudd infamously and immaturely said, ''People smugglers are the vilest form of human life, they trade on the tragedy of others, and that is why they should rot in jail and, in my own view, rot in hell.'' It didn't work to keep Rudd and nor will it work for Gillard.

Some people smugglers, like some politicians, are bad and some are good. They exist because of need. The source of the problem lies in the home countries of refugees. People do not leave home on a whim; they do not put themselves in danger for a better job.

Ali will get there sooner than later with friends like Robin De Crespigny, Ngareta Rossell, Steven Blanks, John and Trish Highfield, Sister Aileen Crow and the thousands of others who will now join with him as a result of the book, the likes of which I have not read for a long time.

Bruce Haigh is a political commentator and former diplomat who has been involved with refugees since his first posting to Pakistan in 1972, until his last in Sri Lanka in 1994. From 1995 to 2000 he was a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal.