More from the Sydney Morning Herald on the treatment of Afghani refugees in detention by Australia -
The Australian Democrats dispute Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone’s claim that no Afghani asylum-seekers detained on Nauru returned home involuntarily.The issue flared after a report into the treatment of 40 asylum-seekers whose claims were rejected by Australia found that nine men had met their death since being sent back to Afghanistan.
“We had no involuntary returns from Nauru. None at all. We had a $2,000 voluntary repatriation with a limit of $10,000 per family. Hundreds of people chose to take that up,” Senator Vanstone said today.
“If they now say that they were forcibly returned, well I think that’s an unfortunate situation.
“We have the International Organisation for Migration doing the returns and they will not participate in involuntary returns.”
She said millions of people had voluntarily returned to Afghanistan since the end of the Taliban reign.
But Australian Democrats senator Andrew Bartlett, who visited the Nauru immigration detention centre when a large number of asylum-seekers were being held there, said Senator Vanstone was wrong.
“I can attest from personal experience, as well as from the testimony of many refugees who were detained there, that the pressure on the Afghanis to return was constant and relentless,” he said.
“Neither the minister, nor any other senator, went to Nauru to inspect what the conditions were like or to see for themselves how asylum-seekers were treated.
“They are in no position to comment accurately on what the situation is actually like there.”
Senator Bartlett said many of the asylum seekers were basically presented with a choice of indefinite detention followed by forced removal, or accepting the Australian government’s offer of $2,000 repatriation assistance and taking their chances.
“To call such a choice voluntary is simply dishonest,” he said.
Regarding the conditions on Nauru that Andrew Bartlett alludes to, the earlier article that I referenced a few days ago also included the following comment, which I did not previously quote -
“Common were accounts of poor conditions on Nauru – no power for months, insufficient water to wash, and outbreaks of skin disease, depression and worms.”