At 2.00am, Monday morning (8 April), 28 ASIO negative refugees (24 Sri
Lankan, 2 Iranian 2 Rohingyans) began a hunger strike at the Melbourne
Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) detention centre. They have
gathered on the playground inside the detention facility.
The hunger strike comes after a series of self-harm and attempted
suicides by ASIO negative refugees in Melbourne. These include: a
serious self harm incident by a Tamil refugee on 17 January, the third
since Christmas 2012); and an attempted suicide on 15 November 2012.
Most of the ASIO negative refugees have been in detention over three
years, some for over four years.
Their sense of frustration has grown since their adverse ASIO
assessment. Last year the High Court found that it was unlawful for
the government to deny them protection visas because of an adverse
ASIO assessment. Despite the court decision, successive Immigration
Ministers have refused to act and they remain in indefinite detention.
A review of the ASIO security assessments has been initiated by
retired judge Margaret Stone. Stone met with ASIO negative refugees in
Melbourne on Wednesday 3 April and with those in Sydney on Friday 5
April. But the meetings only confirmed that the process could still
takes months and that Stone can only make a recommendation. ASIO and
the Immigration Minister will still have the final say.
The ASIO negative refugees are denied the same appeal rights of an
Australian citizen. “They are meant to receive a summary of ASIO’s
reasons for the adverse finding, but the statement is a joke. It is
about seven lines long, simply asserting what ASIO ‘believes’. There
is no evidence provided for that ‘belief’. It is an absolute denial of
natural justice,” said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee
Action Coalition.
The Afghan and Rohingyan refugees have not yet received their
statement of reasons. “You can only imagine that ASIO officers are
creatively working overtime, trying to make something up that could
even vaguely justify its decisions. If there were substantial reasons
to believe anyone was a threat to security, we would have heard about
it long ago,” said Rintoul.
“The Minister has the power to end the torment and the travesty of the
indefinite detention of the ASIO negative refugees. The Minister must
use his discretionary power to immediately release the ASIO negative
refugees.”
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713, or Feiyi Zhang
0416 121 616
LETTER FROM ASIO REFUGEES 06 04 13
MESSAGE FROM THE ASIO REJECTED REFUGEES:
We are 29 people here at Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation
(25 Tamils, 2 Burmese and 2 Iranian) and 56 people all over the
Australian detention. We have been here for four years and more. We
cannot tolerate it any longer. We need to be released to save our
lives.
At 2 a.m. today (Monday, April 8, 2013) we began a hunger strike
together. All 30 of us plan to keep doing this until there is
solution, one way or the other.
We will gather together in the grounds of the detention centre and
stay there until we get a solution. If the Australian Government does
not release us, we ask that they kill us mercifully.
We have painted banners as part of our protest. There is one that
shows many people hanging. That is what we want to happen to us if we
are not released. for life here. People in here are jumping off roofs,
they are going on hunger strikes, they are taking tablets, they are
trying to hang themselves……It is a cruel and inhumane environment
for everyone.
We plead with you, the Australian people, to help us. We are on the
edge of life and don’t know how much longer we can stand it. We ask
Prime Minister Gillard, Immigration Minister O’Connor,
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Opposition leader Abbott and ASIO
director David Irvine to stop this torture of all of us……. of men,
women and children, who have done nothing to warrant this cruel
treatment that is destroying our minds.
We ask the authorities: You say we are a threat to this nation. So if
we are such people why have they now put women and children and
families in here with us? We are willing to be released into the
community under strict orders if they think we are threats, which we
aren’t. But whatever they want we will do.
But we can’t keep living like this. We are not in detention. We are in
a cemetery.
We don’t want to die. We left Sri Lanka, Burmese and Iran because we
fear to die. We came to Australia to live, not die. But death would be
better than the life we have.
SIGNED.
ALL ASIO REFUGEES-AUSTRALIA.