A Family Apart in Australia

WOOMERA, Australia —  Roqia Bakhtiari tells her story this way. Before she left Afghanistan, she had never set foot outside her village, never left her home without covering herself in a burka, never handled money, never learned to read and write.

But after her husband, Ali Asqar Bakhtiari, escaped from a Taliban army chain gang and fled the country, Roqia packed up their five children and followed in hopes of finding freedom.

She landed in Australia, where she and the children, now ages 5 to 14, have been locked up in the country’s most notorious detention center for 15 months.

They came seeking sanctuary from persecution they feared in their homeland. But here they encountered a tough policy unique among Western-style democracies: All asylum seekers who arrive without proper papers are incarcerated until their cases are resolved.

The Australian government has held thousands of refugees in recent years, but cases like that of the Bakhtiari family stand out. Contradictory rulings by government authorities have kept the family apart, allowing Ali to live freely in Sydney, for months unaware that his wife and children were being kept here in the Woomera detention center.

Australia usually grants asylum to an entire family if one member is in jeopardy, but authorities say the Bakhtiaris received different treatment because they arrived at different times. The case officer who handled Ali’s claim concluded that he is an Afghan refugee and granted him asylum. The official who processed Roqia’s application more than a year later did not believe that she was Afghan and ordered her and the children held for eventual deportation.

Attorneys representing the family say the case is one of about 30 in which wives and children are being held while the husbands and fathers have received asylum.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said the government has no intention of reuniting the families because they did not obtain permission in advance to come to Australia. “You don’t get a family-reunion outcome if you come without authority,” he said in an interview. “That’s the bottom line.” On Tuesday, an attorney for the Bakhtiaris said Ruddock had rejected a request that he release the family on humanitarian grounds.

Today, the Bakhtiari family bears the scars of its detention--and its growing desperation. To protest their treatment, Roqia, 31, and her sons, Alamdar, 14, and Montazar, 12, sewed their lips shut and went on a hunger strike in January. Her brother, Mahzer Ali, who arrived with her and also is detained, threw himself into a coil of razor wire at Woomera to call attention to the family’s plight. The gashes required 100 stitches.

Roqia has come a long way from the sheltered life she says she once led. She has shed her burka and any illusions she had about the West.

“When I arrived, I felt I had finally reached a country that accepted refugee people and I felt I had escaped from Taliban persecution and atrocities,” she said during a telephone interview from the detention center, aided by a translator. “I didn’t know that this country and these people were worse than the Taliban.”

Roqia said she grew up in the central Afghan village of Charkh in Oruzgan province. When she was about 15, she married Ali Bakhtiari, a cousin 11 years her senior.

As she describes it, life in Charkh was simple. The villagers raised livestock and grew alfalfa and vegetables. Barter was common; money was not. Few followed the calendar, and birth dates went unrecorded. Women were illiterate.

Her world was dominated by men--her husband, father and father-in-law--who managed all family affairs. After marriage, she began covering herself in the head-to-toe burka whenever she went into the village.

The land was fertile and the family prosperous enough for Ali’s brother, Ghazanfar, to buy a truck. That was the Bakhtiaris’ undoing.

Because the Bakhtiaris are Shiite Muslims and members of the Hazara ethnic minority, they have long been subject to discrimination at the hands of Afghanistan’s other ethnic groups and, most recently, persecution by the ruling Taliban.

In 1997, Ali said, Taliban members arrested Ghazanfar and forced him to drive his truck for them. After eight months, he escaped and took his family to Iran.

Taliban soldiers came looking for him. When they couldn’t find Ghazanfar, they took Ali. After beating and interrogating him over two days, Ali said during a recent interview in the town of Woomera, they put him in a labor camp, where he was forced to build houses for the Taliban.

Now Ali, his face lined with worry, looks older than his 42 years. He is quiet and seldom smiles. Despite his time in Australia, his English is limited.

Ali said he escaped from the camp after three months, returned home briefly and fled to Pakistan. Three months later, Roqia said, the family sold its possessions and, with other relatives, joined him in exile in the neighboring country.

Still fearful in a nation that was then sympathetic to the Taliban, Ali made arrangements with a smuggler to leave Pakistan. He had only enough money for himself.

Using false documents, he boarded a plane thinking that he was going to Germany. He arrived instead in Jakarta, Indonesia.

After days of traveling by bus and ferry and waiting in hotels and homes, he and 140 other refugees reached southern Indonesia and boarded a boat for Australia. They landed in December 1999, and Ali was sent to the Port Hedland detention center in remote northwestern Australia.

The camp is one of six set up to handle the flow of asylum seekers, mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, who have arrived by the thousands in the last three years. Most fled to escape ethnic or religious persecution and came to Australia in the hope of starting new lives in a peaceful and prosperous country. Passage typically costs about $4,000 a person.

Ruddock, the immigration minister, said Australia must incarcerate all refugees who arrive without permission to ensure that those denied asylum are available for deportation.

Some asylum seekers, including children, have been held more than two years, unable to win asylum or go home. Even if ordered deported, they can remain in custody indefinitely if their own country has no agreement with Australia to take refugees back.

The government of Prime Minister John Howard says stern measures are necessary to prevent a flood of Central Asian and Middle Eastern refugees from taking advantage of Australia’s generous social system. His stance helped him win reelection in November.

About 1,700 asylum seekers are in custody, about 400 of them in Woomera. Nearly all have been held since at least August, and some much longer.

In recent months, monsoons have kept many refugees from attempting the risky crossing from Indonesia. Australian warships patrol the region to force back any refugee boats. Meanwhile, the government is planning two new detention centers.

Officials hope that the lengthy detention and harsh conditions of the camps will send the message that refugees are not welcome. The policy has drawn criticism from human rights activists.

“Punishing one person to deter another is immoral,” said attorney Paul Boylan, who is helping the Bakhtiari family and other Woomera detainees. “To deter families by punishing children is even more heinous.”

Ali was held eight months before authorities verified his story and granted him a three-year visa in August 2000, with the possibility of an extension. Before he left Port Hedland, he said, he filled out a document giving authorities the names of his wife and children.

She Thought They Were Sailing for Germany

At the time, Roqia and the children were in Pakistan. They had not heard from Ali and thought he was in Germany. Her father raised enough money for their passage and asked the same smuggler to take Roqia, her brother and the children to join Ali.

They were flown to Indonesia and eventually boarded a boat with 240 others. Roqia thought she was sailing to Europe.

As they headed toward Australia, their overcrowded boat began to leak. The captain ordered passengers to throw extra clothing overboard to lighten the load.

Roqia reluctantly surrendered her burka, which she had worn throughout the journey. It was not a moment of liberation. Even today she misses the comfort of its anonymity.

“Ever since I grew up, all the time I wore a burka,” she recalled. “I didn’t meet strangers; I didn’t meet men in other countries.”

She reached land on New Year’s Day 2001, and an immigration officer welcomed her to Australia--the first clue, she said, of where she was. Convinced that Ali was in Germany, she feared that she would never see him again.

The refugees were flown to Woomera, the largest of the detention centers, located on a former nuclear weapons and rocket test site in the outback about 300 miles northwest of Adelaide. Double rows of razor wire glisten in the desert sun. Summer temperatures reach 115 degrees. There are no trees. Detainees call Woomera “a hellhole.”

They live in prefabricated housing, sleeping four to a small room or in dormitories that can hold 18. Guards enter at any time.

The housing compounds are known by names such as Oscar and Mike, but the detainees are identified by the numbers they receive the day they arrive. Roqia is No. 366. Her children are 367 through 371.

The center is 100 miles from the nearest city, and visitors are few. Since November, Ruddock’s office has turned down repeated requests by The Times to tour Woomera.

Human rights groups have called for the center’s closure. Detainees complain of the harsh climate, inadequate schooling, and the quality of food and medical care. But even worse, they say, is not knowing their fate.

Some become so depressed that they try to harm themselves by drinking shampoo or detergent. Others attempt to hang themselves, set themselves on fire or slash their wrists or necks. So far, no one has committed suicide.

In August 2000, hundreds of detainees broke through the fence, walked into the town of Woomera and staged a peaceful protest. Subsequent demonstrations turned violent as refugees set fire to buildings and threw rocks at guards. Authorities used tear gas and water cannons to quell the disturbances.

Ruddock defends the pace for processing asylum applications. Refugees often arrive without documents, making it difficult to verify their stories. Many cases are decided by how credible the refugee seems during the interview process.

Soon after Roqia arrived, she had her initial asylum interview. She made a poor first impression.

She didn’t know the name of the currency used in Afghanistan or the months of the Afghan calendar. She could not name the towns she passed through on her route out of the country. She didn’t recognize the sound of the Pashto language, spoken in many parts of Afghanistan. Her accent in her own Dari language struck officials as not quite right.

She gave authorities her husband’s name, but if they looked it up in their records, they never let on.

Last May, immigration officials concluded that she and the children were not Afghans and rejected her claim for asylum. Officials suspected that she was from Pakistan and deemed her ineligible for asylum because there is no evidence she faces persecution there.

Roqia appealed and did a better job of answering questions the second time. That only made matters worse. Officials concluded that she had been coached by other refugees.

Genevieve Hamilton, who reviewed Roqia’s case on appeal, could not believe that she was so sheltered that she knew nothing of the world.

“It is barely plausible that she had never handled money, and it is not at all plausible that she had never seen it,” Hamilton wrote in her report. “Furthermore, even if she rarely went out of the house and did not do the shopping herself, she could not have failed to be aware, by the age of 31, what money was used in her claimed country of origin.”

Tribunal Unaware of Decision for Husband

Hamilton rejected the appeal in July. Apparently unaware that Ali had been granted asylum a year earlier, and without meeting him, she wrote: “The tribunal does not accept that the applicant’s husband is an Afghan national as there is no evidence supporting this claim.”

Nicholas Poynder, a Sydney attorney who recently began helping the family, said Hamilton erred by measuring Afghan village life against Australian standards.

“It’s imposing Western middle-class values to think that a woman would know about money because all women go shopping,” Poynder said. “The tribunal has been proven 100% wrong, because her husband has been shown to be Afghani.”

Roqia’s brother, Mahzer, was evaluated by another case officer, who determined that he was Afghan but concluded that he had lived in Pakistan for at least two years and rejected his request.

“I don’t know why they decided that I am from Afghanistan and my sister is not,” he said.

Roqia, Mahzer and the children, held for deportation, became angry and depressed. Roqia lost her timidity and became outspoken in criticizing the Australian government.

“Under the Taliban government, the Taliban would probably kill us once,” Roqia said. “But in this camp, they systematically torture us by rejecting our case. They are systematically killing us.”

Tom Mann spent eight months teaching at Woomera and recalls that the two Bakhtiari boys, Alamdar and Montazar, were good students at first. But their interest in school deteriorated the longer they lived in detention, he said, and they began running wild. The two older daughters, Negineh, 11, and Samineh, 9, usually played in the dirt instead of coming to class.

“They would do well in any environment except Woomera, where they went to pieces,” said Mann, who is writing a book, “Behind the Razor Wire,” on his experience there. “The children don’t deserve the punishment they have had in these centers. Emotional abuse, that’s what these children are suffering.”

In August, an Afghan detainee who knew Roqia was released and arrived in Sydney. He met Ali in the close-knit refugee community, recognized his name and sent word to Roqia.

“When I found out that my husband was living in Australia, I straightaway told the authorities,” Roqia said. “I told them that I found my husband, but nobody was listening.”

Ali, who had found work in a slaughterhouse, could not afford to visit his family, but he and Roqia began talking once a month by phone.

In October, a legal aid attorney filed the appeal to Ruddock seeking the family’s release on humanitarian grounds.

By January, the processing of asylum applications had slowed even more as the government contemplated whether the fall of the Taliban meant that Afghan refugees could go home. Most of the refugees, especially members of the Hazara minority, feared that they would still face persecution.

More than 200 Afghan detainees at Woomera went on a hunger strike. Roqia and the boys stitched their lips shut with thread. Alamdar said he put three stitches in his lips, which soon became infected. Guards took him to the medical center and forcibly removed the thread, but he later sewed his lips shut again.

“It’s exactly like a prison,” the 14-year-old said in a telephone interview. “It’s impossible to live in this camp. I invite you to come and have a look for yourself.”

Mahzer took the hunger strike a step further. On Australia Day, a holiday similar to the Fourth of July, he climbed atop a building where other detainees were protesting their treatment. Two held a sign that read, “Freedom or Death.”

Mahzer, who had not eaten for 12 days, leaped into a coil of razor wire. One blade nearly sliced his jugular.

In Sydney, Poynder and his wife, Sharmini, read about the family in the Sun-Herald newspaper. The next day, they raised enough money to send Ali for a visit.

On March 9, Ali saw his family for the first time in more than two years. Roqia and the older children wept with joy, though 5-year-old Ameneh didn’t recognize him.

“When I saw my husband, I was so happy I thought I was reborn in this world again,” Roqia said.

In an interview the day after the reunion, Ali said he did not see why the government was detaining his wife and children.

“If a baby bird falls from the nest and someone sees it, they would put it back in the nest,” he said. “I don’t understand why they are not doing this.”

Authorities allowed the family extended afternoon visits for the week but assigned the couple to a room where they could easily be observed.

Ali has since returned to Sydney, where he awaits a decision on his family’s future and hopes for another chance to visit.

Ruddock spokesman Steve Ingram suggested that the department’s mistake was accepting Ali as an Afghan, not denying asylum to his family. Now that the Bakhtiaris have come to the department’s attention, he said, it may reconsider Ali’s visa.

“He came some time ago prior to the detailed level of checking that we are now capable of doing,” Ingram said. “We are looking at a number of decisions that were taken in the past where people were granted visas.”

On March 28, a Geneva-based United Nations human rights panel agreed to examine the family’s case. The committee’s findings will not be binding, but it recommended that Australia not deport Roqia and the children until the panel has weighed in.

On Good Friday, Woomera detainees aided by hundreds of protesters outside knocked down a fence and 50 refugees escaped. Most were quickly arrested, but more than a dozen remain at large. At least two of the Bakhtiari children left the center during the chaos but returned on their own.

The brief taste of liberty was hardly enough. The Bakhtiaris face months more waiting at Woomera. On Tuesday, Poynder said Ruddock notified Roqia that he had denied her humanitarian appeal.

“I have personally considered your case, and I have decided that it would not be in the public interest to intervene,” he wrote.

For now, Australia cannot logically deport them to Afghanistan, since it denies that they are Afghans. And Pakistan is unlikely to take them if their nationality is in doubt.

“Day and night, my children think about freedom,” Roqia said. “Their father was freed from detention, and they also want their freedom.”