V. EXPERIENCES AND CHOICES DURING FLIGHT
Even those refugees who were most exploited by smugglers, regarded them mainly as unscrupulous opportunists. Refugees described their smugglers as:
The traumatizing experiences of being smuggled compound the vulnerability of the refugees, especially women and children. One unaccompanied thirteen-year-old boy had spent over a month locked in rooms in Pakistan, Jakarta and Bali, held by smugglers with whom he shared no common language, before being loaded onto an overcrowded boat where he received little share of the food during the nine-day voyage. Seasick the whole way, he arrived at Christmas Island so dehydrated that an Australian doctor immediately put him on an intravenous drip. Despite the trauma of these experiences, this young boy was screened and then given his first asylum interview within forty-eight hours of arrival, during which he told Human Rights Watch that he did not feel he was treated any differently from an adult.116 Fatima, an Iraqi mother intercepted in Indonesia as she traveled to find her husband in Australia, was held hostage by "police or pirates" between Malaysia and Indonesia, then dumped on a remote island where she wandered through the jungle at night with her children, cutting through vines using her shoe heel, pursued by the smuggler whom she feared would rape her and who, at one point, held a knife to her child's neck. Fatima was separated from two of her four children, who were taken off in different boats to unknown locations. It was only by the kindness of other Indonesian and Malay fishermen that the family found one another again.117 Smuggled refugees were, above all, terrified of drowning. Human Rights Watch interviewed one of the forty-four survivors from SIEV X, the boat that sank. The survivor, an Iraqi mother calling herself Ama, remembers counting over 400 people on board a vessel that she had been told was only going to hold 175. Among the smugglers were Indonesian policemen in uniforms and with guns, "just like that man out there," she told Human Rights Watch, pointing out the window at a Jakarta policeman. Ama's son was the last one on board, and she tried to yell at him not to come because of the over-crowding, but he was too far away to hear her.
After the Indonesian fishermen rescued Ama, she talked them into going back to search for her son and they found him and a woman alive, clinging to a plank of wood. In her interview with Human Rights Watch Ama showed clear signs of trauma from this incident.118 Another survivor of SIEV X, a young Iraqi woman who lost her husband and two daughters in the sinking, independently confirms Ama's statements that Indonesian police were present when the boat was being loaded, adding that these officers later threatened the survivors not to say anything to journalists about their presence. Her own daughters, aged five and six, were trampled in the crush to escape from the boat's sinking hull and she let go of first one child's hand and then the other's once she realized they were dead. After the boat sank, she briefly spotted her husband in the sea before he was washed away. She was five months pregnant at the time. In April 2002, when Human Rights Watch interviewed her, she was alone in Jakarta with her newborn baby, anxiously awaiting resettlement.119 Choice of route and destination
Asked why they had hoped to reach Australia, refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch gave various responses:
The smuggler's decision
A surprising number of asylum seekers interviewed by Human Rights Watch were never told where they were being taken. One young man with little knowledge of geography thought he was going to London until he learned otherwise when he found himself on an Indonesian boat. One seventeen year old Pashtun boy named Akif was sent away by his mother after his father, who worked for a British agricultural development agency, was assassinated in Kabul. Smugglers promised him they would get him to Australia by legal means, but Akif realized this was a lie when he was forced to overstay his tourist visa in Malaysia. At this point, however, it was too late to go home.122 Seeking a legal status
At least 80 percent of all Middle Eastern asylum seekers to Australia pass through Malaysia,128 because that country grants visa-free entry to all nationals of Islamic countries (though after September 11, 2001, some are required to have a letter of introduction). They are automatically granted a short-term visitor's visa upon arrival at Kuala Lumpur airport. Refugees interviewed in Indonesia and Australia said that, if they wanted to get out of the Middle East, Malaysia was the cheapest destination with such a visa policy that could be reached by air. From there, the low-cost, high-risk options for the final legs of the journey to Australia are small, rickety boats. Any other route - to Europe or North America, for example - requires more forged documentation to pass through central Europe or Central America. That is not only much more expensive but also more time-consuming while these documents are prepared or obtained.129 One Afghan woman told Human Rights Watch that she had a sister in San Francisco and a brother in Germany, but that she, her husband, mother, and four-year-old daughter had headed for Australia, where they had no relations, because it was several thousand dollars cheaper, allowing them to keep the family group together. Now she and her family are waiting for refugee determination in Indonesia and if recognized would be willing to go "anywhere in the world that would give us documents to work and to travel. Then we could visit our relatives, even if we could not live in the same country."130 Australia's reputation for respect of human rights
Family Reunification
Human Rights Watch met one Iraqi refugee in Indonesia who had already spent two and half years in Australia, where he had been recognized as a refugee, but was so frustrated at delays in reuniting with his wife that he traveled back to Jakarta in order to help her enter Australia illegally. The couple were on board a boat that was intercepted and returned to Indonesia, so they now have to start from scratch and file a new asylum application under the wife's name and hope for resettlement to another country such as New Zealand or the United States.135 111 "People-smuggling" is properly defined as the procurement, in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into a state of which the person is not a national or permanent resident. UN Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, Supplementing the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2000) [G.A. res. 55/25, annex III, 55 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No.49) at 65, U.N. Doc A/55/49 (Vol.I) (2001)], Article 3 - not yet in force. Under Australian law, however, no financial or other material benefit needs to be involved for "people-smuggling" to take place. Migration Act 1958, Section 233a. 112 In one case, an Iranian refugee who was stranded in Indonesia without money to complete his trip was exploited by criminals threatening to hand him in as an illegal migrant if he did not cooperate with their operations. Eventually he found his own way to Australia after twenty-six days on foot through the jungle and then eighteen hours in a small boat to the Torres Strait, but he also took two fellow refugees with him in order to pay for the voyage, which makes him a "smuggler" under Australian law. Human Rights Watch interview, No. 37, Sydney, April 6, 2002. 113 There is a long tradition of trading between the Arab world and Indonesians living in Batam and the north coast of Java, of which people-smuggling is only the modern manifestation. 114 Several refugees interviewed by Human Rights Watch testified to the involvement of Indonesian police in smuggling activities. One Afghan man who repeatedly attempted to take boats to Australia, said that the Indonesian police were present many times, often taking bribes to overlook the fact that the refugees were being kept in hotel rooms. More actively, a police officer was sometimes paid to provide protection from arrest by others: "I myself saw that every time we wanted to go to the beach [to board a boat for Australia], in each car there was an Indonesian police officer. Once I sat next to one in the car and he fell asleep with his head on my shoulder. He joked that I should take his hat and be the policeman because he was tired of it - he said he would rather be me." Human Rights Watch interview, No. 26, Mataram, Indonesia, April 17, 2002. 115 There is evidence that Indonesian traditional fishermen were forced into the people-smuggling business as insurance against the risk of having their boats burned for being caught unwittingly beyond their own fishing grounds, which have regulated and cut back more and more by Australian laws. New penalties have made even this a poor insurance strategy, however: in February 2002, an Indonesian fisherman was sentenced to eight years in prison for people-smuggling after being paid a mere A$285 for the voyage. See Australian Council for Overseas Aid (ACFOA) report on Indonesian "Fishers of Men," 2002. 116 "It was very intense because I had to prove my identity and nationality. They asked me about food and customs in my region, including marriage and economics - things I couldn't know or had never seen because of my age." Human Rights Watch interview No.41, Sydney, April 21, 2002. 117 For a full transcript of this interview, see www.hrw.org/refugees. Human Rights Watch interview, No. 6, Cisawa, Indonesia, April 11, 2002. 118 Human Rights Watch Interview No.11, Jakarta, Indonesia, April 12, 2002. 119 Human Rights Watch Interview No.12, Jakarta, Indonesia, April 12, 2002. 120 During January-April 2001, Iraq and then Afghanistan generated the highest numbers of asylum seekers in industrialized countries. In the E.U., for example, Iraqi applications increased to 40,577 in 2001 from 14,806 in 1995 and Afghan applications to 38,620 in 2001 from 11,166 in 1995. These were the only major countries of origin to show such sizable increases since the early 1990s. In the third quarter of 2001, Europe as a whole had a 20 percent increase in asylum seekers, with the largest single group from Afghanistan. It had a 34 percent increase in the number of Iraqi asylum seekers in the same quarter, many of whom were secondary movers who had previously sought asylum in Iran, Turkey or central Asia. UNHCR, "Refugees by Numbers," 2001. 121 One Afghan man with five children had had to pay US$22,000 to smuggle his family as far as Jakarta in 2001. Human Rights Watch interview No.33, Mataram, Indonesia, April 20, 2002. 122 Human Rights Watch interview, No. 23, Mataram, Indonesia, April 18, 2002. 123 See, for e.g., Human Rights Watch interviews, Nos. 1, 5, 17, 18 and 19. 124 One Hazara man who fled to Pakistan in 1998 and who had personally experienced too much refoulement and other failures of local protection to stay in the region, first decided to go to England via Turkey, Greece and Italy because he had heard that many Afghans were granted asylum there. While making plans, however, he heard that some Afghan friends were mistaken for Kurds and killed while trying to transit Turkey, so he paid a smuggler US$5000 to fly him to Jakarta and take him from there to a country where, as the smuggler put it, "you will never have to feel unsafe or fear return to Afghanistan." Human Rights Watch interview, No. 40, Melbourne, Australia, April 3, 2002. 125 See, for e.g., Human Rights Watch interview No. 39, Melbourne, Australia, April 3, 2002. 126 See also Statement from Woomera detainees to the media in July 2002 that they would rather be sent to "any third world country which would accept us" rather than stay in detention in Australia. 127 Human Rights Watch interview, No. 33, Mataram, Indonesia, April 20, 2002. 128 See Alan Dupont, Refugee and illegal migrants in the Asia-Pacific region (Canberra ANU, 2002), p.13. 129 See, for e.g., Human Rights Watch interviews Nos. 4, 5, 20, 22 and 29. 130 Human Rights Watch interview, No. 15, Mataram, Indonesia, April 15, 2002. 131 Women-at-Risk Programs are resettlement programs for refugee women without the protection of a male relative and at risk of victimization, harassment or serious (often sexual) abuse because of their gender. Australia has one such Program. 132 Human Rights Watch interview, No. 13, Mataram, Indonesia, April 15, 2002. 133 Human Rights Watch interview, No. 33, Mataram, Indonesia, April 20, 2002. 134 In Australian law, "immediate family" means a husband, wife, dependent child or dependent parent. See DIMIA Form 842. 135 Human Rights Watch interview, No. 10, Cisawa, Indonesia, April 11, 2002. |