Kazem

[Ed. Note: In the last issue of Human Rights SOLIDARITY, we shared the story of Stephen Khan, a detainee at the Perth Immigration Detention Centre from Iraq. We continue our concern for the detention of asylum-seekers in Australia with the story below about another Iraqi that was provided by the Refugee Rights Action Network in Western Australia. The author, a university-educated Iraqi, left his wife and children behind in his home country, planning for them to join him after he had safely arrived in Australia.]

I escaped from Iraq to Syria by road using a false passport. This is the only way to get out of the country. From Syria, I flew to Indonesia and then came on a boat with 110 other people. They were mostly from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. We were on that boat for a week, and it was a frightening experience. The waves were enormous, and we were worried that the captain didn't know which way we were going. Two boats before us had sunk, and another had lost its way, and food had run out. Two Iraqis from this boat had jumped into the sea to recover some food thrown from a passing Japanese ship, but they were so weak from hunger that they drowned. It was a long and exhausting journey.

One night we heard a helicopter overhead. The next day we saw land and a small plane. We started shouting and waving to make sure we'd been seen. Two people came and asked us who we were, where we were from and what we wanted. They confirmed we had arrived in Australia and told us to sleep the night on the boat. The next morning a navy ship sent six soldiers to again take our names and information. Our boat was towed to the coast where detention centre officials were waiting for us with buses. We were all confused. We were happy because we were alive and on dry land, but we didn't understand what was happening. We asked the woman driving the bus where we were going, whether she was driving us to the nearest city. She told us it was just desert, that we wouldn't see any people. As we drove along, we were shocked to see no people at all. We thought perhaps we weren't in Australia yet after all.

As our bus drove through the gates of the Curtin detention centre, guards lined the drive. We arrived at the detention centre on Oct. 11, 1999. There were 100 people already there. All new arrivals were lined up like sheep and over three days individually questioned by the Dept. of Immigration, which asked us questions about why we had come. We were then spoken to as a group, assisted by an interpreter. The Immigration Dept. representative used very harsh language. He told us that Australian people didn't welcome us, that we weren't civilised people. After half an hour of this, we started to feel scared. They told us that they could arrange for anyone to return immediately if we wanted to. We asked for lawyers, but they didn't let us talk to anyone before Oct. 23, which we later found out was when a new law was passed by Parliament restricting the rights of refugees who arrive unauthorised to a three-year temporary visa. There was deliberate collusion between the government and the detention centre to deny us our rights in the two weeks before that decision was made by Parliament, and the refusal to give us access to legal advice meant that we couldn't exercise our right as political refugees to permanent residence.

When we arrived, four of us were put in a two-by-two-metre room-two slept in beds and two slept on the floor. The mosquitoes were unbelievable. There was nothing to stop their stings-no repellent. We had bites all over us, and many got infected. The children suffered most, crying all the time. There were also snakes on the detention centre grounds-lots of them. They bit people, but the guards told us it would be wrong to kill them. We just had to look out for them and put up with it. While I was there, 600 of us went on a hunger strike. We were desperate. We wanted to do everything we could to push the application process forward. Some people injured themselves; others sewed their lips together. We were left for seven days until people started to faint. Then they started to force-feed us and remove the stitches. Later on, after I had been released, I heard there was a mass breakout from the detention centre. Many refugees were beaten during and afterwards people told me, and some had to be taken to the hospital.

The hunger strike won us some new privileges though. For the first time, we could contact our families. This was four months after we had been detained, and even then we had to buy phone cards. For four months, our families didn't know whether we were alive or dead. We also got some access to newspapers, although certain articles were cut out before we could read them. We couldn't watch TV or listen to the radio. We had to do work inside the centre to get money, like cleaning the showers and clearing rubbish. For an hour's work, we would earn A (US$.51).

The private security guards would find a pretext to search our things, saying, "We hear you have a syringe. We need to search." They sometimes stole things from us. A friend of mine discovered his ring was missing. We blamed each other because we didn't realise it was the guards. I once found a fashion magazine in the rubbish while I was looking for cardboard to keep me warm, and I took it to look at. During a search of my things, the guard found it and accused me of stealing. Over time, we started to get sadder, more depressed and demoralised. They deliberately tried to make this process worse.

At one time, there were 1,250 people in this centre that was designed to house 300. The detention centre staff tried to break down social contact and solidarity as the centre got more and more crowded. They separated each small building from the others by erecting barriers between them. They intimidated us if we tried to communicate with friends in another block. People attempted suicide; others slowly lost their minds, developed nervous conditions, started shouting.

We had the same routine every day- shower, eat breakfast, go back and sit in our rooms, come out for lunch. We were told what time to go to sleep and when we could and couldn't leave our blocks. It was very cold and wet, and we had no clothes except what we came in. I spent eight months in a T-shirt. We had no progress reports on our applications throughout the months we were there. Only 45 days before our release did a number of us finally get confirmation that we would be granted three-year temporary visas. I was to be released with a group of 60, but 12 of us were held back for a further two weeks. Perhaps we were identified as troublemakers. We were told by immigration officials not to tell anyone what we'd seen, how we'd been treated. They told us it would be bad for us in the future if we spoke about the detention centre. Before we left, they searched our bags. They took back all sheets, blankets and towels and then put us on a bus to Perth. We were taken to a A-a-night hotel (US per night), but we'd been given only A4 (US4). We were left with very little information about how to survive.

My options over the next three years are not very happy ones. I can go back to Syria but never back to Iraq, or I will be killed. I can't bring my family to Australia because we couldn't survive on the money I'm eligible for.