Bulletin

Issue: June 2005

News

Broken people, broken lives

The story of Australia's repatriated asylum seekers.

Dr Corlett

In Kabul, Afghanistan, an Afghan asylum-seeker sent home from Australia's offshore detention centres on Nauru lives with four other men in one room with a hole-in-the-floor toilet, no running water and a camping stove.

In Quetta, Pakistan, another repatriated Afghan asylum-seeker makes his 'home' in exile with other Afghan returnees, after 'transit' experiences in Turkey and Iran while attempting to flee to Europe. He had been caught and beaten in Turkey, then sent across the border to Iran where he was beaten again.

In Iran, a returned asylum seeker lives under daily surveillance after his release from months of interrogation in an Iranian gaol - his fate on arrival, despite his family's bribes to ensure his safety.

Other returned asylum-seekers in Iran face court proceedings and potentially the death penalty if they are found to have contravened Islamic religious law, for allegedly converting to Christianity during their Australian detention.

In Thailand, at least two Palestinians repatriated to Syria, and reportedly others, live safer but equally desperate lives on short-term tourist visas. They 'jumped ship' in Thailand, and now cross the Thai border to Cambodia or Malaysia every few months to renew their visas, rather than risk life in Syria.

These are some of the stories returned asylum-seekers told La Trobe Research Associate and author Dr David Corlett of life 'back home' after years in Australian detention on Nauru, Manus Island, and/or in Australia's mainland detention facilities.

Dr Corlett heard their stories when he visited Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Thailand between June and August last year to find out how they had fared post-detention.

He says they have not fared well, living in varying degrees of fear, poverty, depression, psychological alienation, homelessness, and worse, in their countries of origin or third countries to which they have again escaped. Many are broken people, and they are all psychologically damaged.

Repatriated Afghans had typically returned to Afghanistan to find their families gone and the security situation so terrible they had again fled, to Pakistan or Iran.

In Pakistan, without identity papers, they live as illegals, in fear of religious extremism and terrorism. In Iran they live in fear of being robbed, interrogated, or imprisoned, under constant State surveillance.

None of the Afghans Dr Corlett spoke to in Afghanistan or Pakistan accepted that they had been returned voluntarily - they had all felt compelled to leave - and almost every returnee he had spoken to in Iran intended leaving again.

'Every person I spoke to carried the scars of their detention in Australia. The implications of detention on people's mental health and their ability to rebuild their lives is profound,' Dr Corlett says.

'The significant aspect of all this is what it did to them as people. They complain of sleep difficulties, ongoing problems concentrating, depression. They felt they had been humiliated and dehumanised in detention, both in Australia, and on Nauru or Manus Island. They talked about being different people.'

Some had been so institutionalised they could no longer make decisions for themselves or engage socially with others.

Many of the Afghans he met had been repatriated at the end of 2003, when the Australian Government considered Afghanistan safe enough for them to return. By early 2004, the Government had changed its position, and most Afghan asylum seekers still in detention gained protection.

'That was good news for them, but it does nothing for the people who've been returned,' Dr Corlett says. 'The only difference in their circumstances was the time it took for the Government to recognise what everyone else was saying - that it was unsafe to go there - and the inability of the returnees to sustain their life in detention any longer.'

Dr Corlett is documenting the returned asylum-seekers' experiences in a book titled Following Them Home, to be published in Melbourne by Black Inc. in July. The book succeeds the 2004 Quarterly Essay Sending Them Home - a critique of the conditions of Australian asylum seekers in detention and on temporary protection visas - which Dr Corlett researched and jointly wrote with La Trobe academic and author, Professor Robert Manne.

The field-work and impending publication of Following Them Home are the second tranche of a three-year research project on asylum-seekers funded by an ARC linkage grant, the Myer Foundatiuon, the Don Chipp Foundation and the Reichstein Foundation.

Dr Corlett has worked with asylum seekers and ref ugees as a case-worker and researcher and completed a doctoral thesis on Australia's response to asylum seekers in 2003.

He believes Australia has moral obligations towards asylum-seekers who have been sent home psychologically damaged by their experiences in detention, or to circumstances in which they are in danger.

The aim of Following Them Home however is to introduce the circumstances of returned asylum seekers at a personal level to other Australians so they can make an informed contribution to public debate.