You walk through a pair of caged steel doors that cast shadows on the cold pavement beneath your feet. X-ray, inventory of your pockets, questioning, numbered visitor tag, then you’re in. You are a visitor and maybe something more. You enter the central compound of Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre with no expectations—you have only your fears and your rapid heartbeat. Nothing can displace the fact that at the end of visiting hour, you will go home. For too many people stuck in between lives, this is home.
Jessie Taylor is no stranger to the feeling of helplessness. For years, she has fought to help refugees find their way to freedom. She has served as an intern to the Australian Delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva and currently sits on the Chair of the Law Institute of Victoria’s Refugee Law Reform Committee. Her overall goal is to change Australian refugee policy. If we want to understand why she believes that policy has to change, we should take a look at the current conditions asylum seekers undergo.
If anyone knows about Australian detention centers, it’s Jessie. By the time you have read this article she will have taken more than 150 visitors through Maribyrnong’s doors. She says most go once and don’t return. Heartbreak makes a bad first impression. Ignorance is Jessie’s second biggest enemy; people would rather be blissfully unaware than engage with this issue. To promote awareness, Jessie made a documentary called “We Will be Remembered for This”, which has appeared at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, the Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, and on countless screens across Australia and beyond.
However bad ignorance is, Jessie will be the first to tell you that her biggest hurdle is the years and years of complex and impenetrable refugee laws that greet people fleeing war zones with open arms and a jail cells. International law and the Australian Human Rights Commission say that people fleeing countries where their lives are in danger have a right not to be sent back and not to be subjected to non-criminal detention. Columbia, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan. Somalia. Uganda. These countries are listed as the highest source of international refugees by the United Nations refugee agency. These are places where life can be a luxury, not a standard. In an interview, Jessie said that some detainees have undergone ‘a level of suffering beyond comprehension; stoning, rape, torture, kidnapping, forced prostitution.’ Understandably, these are circumstances people want to escape. Jessie wants to make the process of entering Australia as easy as possible, which means changing policy.
Yet, when some people arrive in Australia, their dreams of joining the Australian workforce and raising a family are interrupted by coils of harsh law and barbed wire. When asked what she would change if given a magic wand, Jessie said that she would change the fact that people arriving without a visa MUST be kept in detention, without regard to their age, sickness, disability, trauma or the genuineness of their claims (even a court cannot order their release). She would also change the entire process of refugee determination from top to bottom. Refugee determination is the process of deciding which people deserve refugee status. Attaining this status means enhanced legal rights that ease your adjustment into Australian society.
“While it was still in operation a few years ago, the detention center at Nauru did not analyse people under Australia’s refugee status determination process, meaning they were sent back to dangerous places.” Nauru, the world’s smallest island nation, was formerly home to an Australian detention center that was implanted during Howard’s regime. Because it was technically not within Australian jurisdiction, the government could act under the radar. Since the destruction of Howard’s Pacific solution (to detain refugees and ship them to other countries before they arrive in Australia), the government announced the opening of a new $400 million facility on Christmas Island. Built 2000 miles north of Perth, the center is designed to catch and deter boat boarding people before they reach Australian shores. Though she isn’t thrilled with Australian policy, Jessie is glad that Christmas Island isn’t as lawless as Nauru was. Another serious problem is that children have been detained in Australia for long periods of time—a Cambodian boy was held for more than five years. (Even though there are no kids in detention on the mainland now, they are still being held in detention on Christmas Island). Put simply, the laws simply aren’t effective enough to ensure the basic human rights of people fleeing hellish conditions.
Take Mr. Al-Kateb for example. A Palestinian man beset by rocket bombardments, Mr. Al-Kateb arrived on Australian shores by boat. Unable to enter the Australian community because his claims were not believed, he attempted to return home after two years behind bars. To this day, it is not public knowledge why Mr. Al-Kateb’s claims were not believed during a time when Palestine faced constant conflagration. Palestine is not a recognized nation, and thus could not supply him with a valid passport. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Kuwait all refused to give him the right of residency. A high court ruling determined that Australian law says that even if a person is never accused of any offence, they can be kept in administrative detention for the rest of their life. Though Mr. Al-Kateb was eventually given a bridging visa and freed into Australia, the law that held him behind bars for years still stands today. Mr. Al-Kateb’s story is an example of why there needs to be failsafe procedures for asylum seekers who are not defined as conventional refugees, but still face threats back home.
Although Jessie thinks that the Rudd government’s approach to asylum seekers has a more humane flavor to it, she still believes there’s heaps of progress to be made. There is law and barbed wire to uncoil. Lives are stuck in limbo; their only hope lies in the hands of lawmakers and the voices of their constituents. Why not stop in at Villawood or Maribyrnong Detention Centre? There’s a chance you might get scared by what you see and never go back. There’s also a chance you might become something more than a visitor.
How do I know this?
Australian Human Rights Commission ‘Let’s Talk About Rights.’ National Human Rights Consultation Toolkit, February, 2009. www.hreoc.gov.au/letstalkaboutrights/downloads/HRA_asylum.doc
Jessie Taylor in Seeking Asylum in Australia: 1995-2005 Experiences and Policies: ‘Culture Shock: Australian Youth Responding to Refugees.’ http://www.safecom.org.au/monashconf05-taylor.htm
Phone interview with Jessie Taylor, April 29, 2009.
Monash University Profile: ‘Jessie Taylor: 2006 Castan Centre Intern.’ http://www.law.monash.edu.au/castancentre/internships/intern4.html
UNHCR Report: ‘Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Nations, 2008’ http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/STATISTICS/49c796572.pdf
