Update #2 February 2002

Dear SpareRoomers

We have been really affected by the letters and emails we’ve received, no-one could be unmoved by the range, the content and the sincerity of registrations and the expressions you use.

In Melbourne, through the Hotham Mission, the Ecumenical Migration Centre, the Asylum Seekers Resources Centre we’ve built some essential relationships.  They are aware of us, and want to help.  We will be offered asylum seekers on release from detention but we must supply police checks and undergo some training from their social worker/s psychologists.  They are hesitant about putting often fragile people into Australian homes – it’s understandable.

We are hosting the training in our house over a weekend workshop conducted by the Asylum Seekers Resources Centre.  Many training groups exist – you may find one locally.  Send these groups money if you feel able to; they need our support.

Victorian resources:

The Hotham Mission                                                                                            9326 8343

Asylum Seeker Welcome Centre                                                                    9687 2134

Red Cross Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme                                         Freecall 1800 131 701

Wesley Mission                                                                                                      9662 2355

Asylum Seeker Assistance Project                                                                 9547 1129

Ecumenical Movement                                                                                        9416 0044

New South Wales:

Refugee Council of Australia                                                                            02.9660 5300

Sister Margaret Moore, Mercy Refugee Service                                      02.9564 1911

NCCA Program for Refugees and Displaced People                              02.9299 2215

Islamic Council (no number)

Canberra:

Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office                                      6201 9848

Brisbane:

James Haire, Head of Uniting Church                                                           07.337 9950    (?)

Refugee Applicants Support Centre                                                               07.3357 9013

South Australia:

The Anglican Archbishop of South Australia – Ian George                  

Any State:

Jesuit Refugee Service                                                                                        9356 3888/www.jrsau.org

Whilst the churches, missions, NGO’s are doing hard work at the coalface, they are not advocates and may not involve themselves in activism.  Without a functional opposition (the Labour Party) we are on our own in terms of supplying the facts and the counter arguments.

This means that news editors, radio commentators etc. are startlingly light on for information and are barely more informed than the general public.  Peter Mares, ABC and the Financial Review run more than opinion pieces.  They have genuine information, watch out for them.  On the website I have a number of ‘barbeque’ facts.  We’re adding to them but carefully.  These facts are verifiable and short.  In other words, they are usable for you in your activism, write a letter, ring a radio station please.  If you use the ethnic press, send letters there.  Many immigrants swallow the Government’s misinformation because they believe so much in their own ‘legal’ status and migrants and refugees, and have been urged to disown ‘illegals’.  If you have any friends in the Labour Party lean on them.

As I mentioned (on the website) Steve Bracks is an ally.  Now Carmen Lawrence (Age 25 January) has broken ranks and written a great piece about women in detention, and the psychological effects of detention.

Please write to Carmen.Lawrence.mp@APH.gov.au and support her if you can.

On Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) the subsidiary of Wackehut Corp. U.S.A. has eluded the notice of any journalists.  In America, any private company with this level of crisis, would be closely questioned by media.  Naomi Edwards (actuary) volunteered to check out ACM’s financial arrangements, profits and payments – details on the website.  Her statistics make our case against detention centres.  Is no journalist interested in ACM’s responsibility to their detainees?

Many doctors and psychiatrists have deplored the conditions in detention centres, why no definitive statement from the A.M.A.?  If you know a doctor – do some badgering.

Spare Rooms for Refugees has been offered pro bono web-design help from … we gladly accept.

Can you tell us how we can get a pro bono public relations firm to assist us?  Do you know anyone who can help?

In Melbourne, we think all detainees have now got pro bono lawyers.  We’ve even got a group of pro bono translators organized.

Here’s the last thing I’m asking you to do –

Just ask four friends to offer verbal support or a spare room to our web address – we will ask them to find four people to do the same and so on.

If your friends aren’t web-savvy, offer to do it for them.  It saves us answering phones and replying by letter.  Our list has many hundreds of people on it, with very little publicity.  We hope we can cope.

And now here are some more barbeque facts.  Check the website for the last batch.  (We got the idea from the banks.  The banks produced a small card for their staff extolling the virtues of the banking industry especially for uncomfortable social situations or for dealing with the media.)

Over 80% of the refugees that make it to Australia are found to be refugees – genuinely.  Over 90% of Afghans and Iranians are found to be genuine refugees.

Tanzania hosts one refugee for every 76 Tanzanian (1:76)

Britain hosts one refugee for every 530 British people (1:530)

Australia hosts one refugee for every 1583 Australian people (1:1583).

America receives 1,000 illegal migrants a week from Mexico.  In some periods 1,000 a day into Miami from Columbia.  A VCLA study shows that unauthorized migration boosts the US economy by 800 billion per year.

In 2000, Iran and Pakistan hosted over a million refugees.  Currently Pakistan has 2.5 million refugees.

Sweden receives similar numbers of asylum seekers to Australia.  Sweden has less than half our population.  Detention can only take a couple of weeks.  Children no more than six days.

71 countries accept refugees and asylum seekers.  Australia is ranked 32nd most generous.  On a per capita basis we are 38th.

Of the 29 developed countries ranked we are 14th.  Per capita the United States takes twice as many as Australia, as does Britain.

The cost of detention within Australia is $117.00 per day or $104 per day if you believe the Senate Estimates Committee.  The cost of parole is $5.39 per day, probation $3.94 per day and home detention $58.83 per day.

Not one refugee has been accepted from Indonesia in the last three years even though the UNHCR has declared them refugees and has called for Australia to help.

Many of the people and families who died in the water and those who were rescued and sent back to Indonesia were fully processed and declared refugees.  Many were on their way to join their husbands who had achieved refugee status but are denied family reunion.  Some are in detention.  We are separating children from parents and wives from husbands.  What gives us the right to rip up families.

People destroy documentation, if they have any, because Governments request information at the asylum seeker’s home country, putting in jeopardy other family members, political groups and so on.  A refugee does not know what countries he/she will have to pass through.  Documents can be positively dangerous when on the move, or pretending to be native of that country.

The German Government recently condemned detention centres.  Compared them to concentration camps – they should know.

Mr Ruddock in 1985 criticized the Labor Government for reducing its intake of refugees from Vietnam.  Indonesia, unlike us, is not signatory to the 1951 Refugees Convention and yet Australia expects Indonesia to accommodate people who are entitled to seek our support.

Most of these facts are condensed from the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education (email erc@erc.org.au) distributed by the Refugee Action Coalition NSW (0417 275 713, email RACNSW@yahoogroups.com).

Finally, Spare Rooms for Refugees is unlikely to get a refugee for every kind offer.  We’re not naïve.  It’s an irony that I think slowly we could gain more offers than there are refugees from detention centres on and off-shore.  But your offer will not be wasted.  We will treat it respectfully and submit it to Mr Ruddock in as public a way as I can arrange.  We have some hundreds now.  We’ll get more, so that we won’t be dismissed as easily as I was by DIMA in this instance.

Here’s my story –

Before we started this campaign, I saw on the 7.30 Report a young Afghan man being interviewed through the fence at Nauru.  He was intelligent, smiling, very respectful and very sure that Australia would understand his situation.  I engaged a good migration solicitor, Erskine Roden, to apply for his removal from Nauru.  I stated that I would be happy to be completely responsible for his welfare and upkeep.  That was in October, nothing moved, no response.

I’ve made myself known to him by letter.  (I was refused a visa to Nauru though I applied twice.)  He’s written to me.  His first letters were so impressive, optimistic, unconcerned for his comforts, diplomatically requesting that I consider finding friends in Australia for others in the camp.  He needed nothing but literature on human rights, he was brave.  His letters have changed.  Right now, he sounds sad and repetitive, he’s begun to obsess.  Some of his letters, some with stories by his detainee friends, have not arrived.

DIMA will not tell me if my letters are being censored or read.  It’s dreadful.  I’ve had nothing but obfuscation from them.  Phone calls unreturned, etc.  My plan was to be one I would recommend, a bit like adoption, applying to sponsor a refugee through a model I’d nutted out with Erskine Roden, my solicitor.  It’s not to be.  My Nauruan Afghan would have been an eloquent advocate for “Spare Rooms”, far better than me.

Today, four months after my application was sent to Canberra, I got my first letter and it’s a brush off.  It’s a dry impersonal waffle about Nauru’s processing not being complete, and the uncertainty about when Afghans will be sent back.  They didn’t address my proposal.

My Nauruan refugee is Afghan and Hazara.  I will not be dismissed by the Department.  I will make him my responsibility and we will try other avenues.

This is an expensive, hurtful and time-consuming exercise so I would not recommend it to Spare Rooms supporters.  But at a later stage I might ask you for help through a petition.

Wish me luck with Nauru.  I’m told that it’s full of good people, they read and write all day, anxious about news of their country and how to keep up their skills and education.  But they’ve only been there for months.  We know of many cases of four, five and six years of detention.

That’s all for now.  Do all you can to make life tough for this "Prime Miniscule and Monster for Immigration" as I heard a caller on radio describe them.

Kate Durham.

Spare Rooms for Refugees