Australia in the dock

Refugee advocates rail against government's handling of Berati case


After the death of Manus Island detainee Reza Berati, refugee advocates across Australia have expressed dismay and outrage over the Abbott government’s handling of the affair.

“We have that simplistic ‘ah they haven’t died here in our waters – lives have been saved.’ But that’s a fiction. Kon Karapanagiotidis

Last weekend candlelit vigils attended by thousands of people took place across the country to remember Berati and calling for Australia’s asylum seeker policies to be scrapped.

The emotional atmosphere around the young Iranian’s death was ratcheted up further by a Labor senator who accused Immigration Minister Scott Morrison of having “blood on his hands”, though she was less forthcoming about Labor’s crucial role in re-establishing offshore processing on Manus in 2012.
Meanwhile, Mr Morrison said this week that a report into the riot and the circumstances of Berati’s death will examine the performance of the service contractors that were put in place under Labor’s watch.

“It will go into all of those and it’ll go into the conduct of myself and those on this side and our handling of these issues since we took over responsibility for these centres,” said Mr Morrison.

For many, Morrison’s promise of a review has been treated with contempt.

While the Abbott government sticks to shrouding its ‘stop the boats’ policy in secrecy, its critics are convinced the inquiry into Berati’s death will be nothing more than a whitewash, absolving the government of any kind of responsibility.

Kon Karapanagiotidis – director of the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre (ASRC) and one of the most vocal critics of Australia’s reliance on offshore processing, told Neos Kosmos that he’s not surprised by Berati’s death.

“Part of me is shocked that we’ve had a refugee murdered in the care of our government, but another part of me knew that this would happen eventually.
“This was predictable. What’s going to happen next? You have thousands of men with no [refugee assessment] process, in countries that don’t want them. It’s only the beginning,” said the ASRC’s director.

As for the inquiry into the tragedy, Karapanagiotidis is convinced that little of any consequence will come from a report actioned by a government lacking any sense of purpose over the affair, and keen for the ‘PNG solution’ – perhaps the most effective deterrent yet for those considering making their way to Australia illegally by sea – to remain.
“It’s a scam,” says Karapanagiotidis. “This report will have no integrity to it. No one is going to be held responsible.”

While the government makes much of the fact that not one asylum seeker has died at sea – or made it to Australia – since the ‘stop the boats’ policy was introduced 64 days ago, Karapanagiotidis says that such an observation misses the point, and illustrates the parochial nature of Australia’s relationship to the global asylum seeker debate.

“Where are they dying?” says Kon. “This is the beauty of being in a country like Australia. We can just trouble ourselves with what’s happening in our little waters.

“What we’re not asking is what happens when there are 6,250 less refugee places under this government? We have that simplistic ‘ah, they haven’t died here in our waters – lives have been saved’. But that’s a fiction. No one’s looking at the flip side – from a regional and global perspective.”
With the federal Opposition compromised by its historical position on offshore refugee processing, one of the most articulate dissenting voices has been that of Anna Burke, Labor Member for Chisholm.

This week she took to Facebook and The Guardian to air her long-held belief that offshore processing should be consigned to history, and that Labor should carry that torch.

“Reza Berati … risked his life on the perilous seas to secure a better, safer life for himself in Australia. Instead of receiving understanding, compassion and succour from a signatory to the refugee convention, he was sent to a hell-hole as a deterrent against the trip he had already made,” wrote the former Parliamentary Speaker.
While accepting that an answer to people risking their lives at sea must be found – to halt any increase to the 1,100 lives lost making the voyage in the last six years – Burke is sceptical that the ‘stop the boats’ policy is working – in the sense that it will not stop people from trying to reach Australia.
“Both sides of politics still see this as an answer to lives lost at sea,” says Burke, and moving away from that position, she believes, is key to a new and sustainable asylum seeker policy.
“Let’s be absolutely clear about this: Australia does not have, nor have we ever had, a crisis on our borders. We are not being swamped by asylum seekers and we never have been.
“We need the debate about asylum seekers to be based on fact and not hysteria. Now is the time to put politics aside and work together to prevent more deaths.”

Asylum Seekers: The facts
– The United Nations Refugee Agency UNHCR 2012 annual trend report confirms that the vast majority of people seeking refugee status from conflict choose to remain in their region of origin.
– Most asylum claims are lodged in Europe, the US and Canada, with the majority of these in Europe. Last year, Australia received 3 per cent of the world’s asylum seekers.
– The total number of refugees accepted by Australia makes up less than 7 per cent of all migrants accepted.
– The last Labor government increased Australia’s refugee intake to 20,000 places a year, the largest increase to Australia’s humanitarian intake in 30 years. Labor said that if it was returned to government at the last election, it would have increased Australia’s humanitarian intake to 27,000.
– The Abbott government has reduced humanitarian places to 13,750 a year.