Afghanistan's lost boys on Australia's doorstep

Updated September 29, 2010 12:10:50

A decade after the Sudanese Lost Boys have told their stories and have had their plight recognised, a new group of lost boys has emerged.

This time they are on Australia's doorstep.

While the Sudanese boys were sent running for survival when their villages were attacked and families killed, the Hazara boys' flight was precipitated by attacks on individual families as well as random killings for reasons of ethnicity.

Taliban killing and torturing of the male heads of Hazara households has seen desperate mothers hand over surviving sons to people smugglers as the only way to ensure their survival.

Melbourne lawyer Jessie Taylor and film-maker Dave Schmidt found 70 children and youths without parents or relatives locked up in detention prisons across the Indonesian archipelago. There are still others with whom we have not established contact.

These boys, under 18 and travelling without families, are classified as "unaccompanied minors" or UAMs in the parlance of immigration bureaucracy. Under the international laws and conventions they are entitled to special care - in reality they get none.

Three weeks ago a 14-year-old boy, who is living on the streets in Jakarta, told me that he went to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Jakarta to register but he could not get in the door. There were 60 people ahead of him and only five per day are being registered.

UNHCR opens its office on Mondays and Wednesdays for registration. Refugee applicants then wait up to six months for an interview and then up to 12 months for a decision on their status. UNHCR recognised refugees in Indonesia on current resettlement predictions are in a 40 year queue for a place to call home.

These boys are lost and vulnerable to the predations of adult exploitation.

The UNHCR is totally overwhelmed. They have classified a total of 640 cases of the 2504 people registered in Indonesia, finding them to be refugees requiring protection. However with no refugee intake countries offering resettlement, they are going slow on the others.

These boys are among this caseload. They are part of the 2504 people effectively warehoused in Indonesia at Australia's expense. Australia pays the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) to provide food and shelter at a basic level for refugees.

UNHCR are said to have a minors program for unaccompanied children but it can not be accessed without registration. Most unaccompanied children are locked up in the adult detention prisons because they arrive without family and are therefore classified as single males no matter how young they are.

A few escape imprisonment by hiding within another family whom they have met on the journey. This lie breaks down when they are interviewed and then they are on the streets alone.

Refugee advocates have waited for two years for the Australian government to reveal its policy on the future resettlement plans for the people piling up in Indonesia. Refugee advocates now have to face the fact that there is no policy, no plan for the future beyond using Indonesia as a giant human warehouse.

With the detention system becoming less acceptable in Australia, the Rudd government has outsourced an unpopular policy to our poorer Asian neighbours in the same way as the Howard government outsourced detention to Nauru and PNG.

Last year Australia settled 35 people from Indonesia. At this rate there is a 40-year queue for refugees hoping to settle in Australia.

Contracting out human rights obligations to a country which has not signed the refugee convention leaves these refugees in a dangerous and unprotected position.

The Howard government began the policy of paying Indonesia and IOM to warehouse asylum seekers quietly, even building detention centres to do so. Until now Indonesia was a comparatively benign environment for refugees. They were allowed to live in hostels in the community with local freedom of movement although no schools for the children or right to work and no future.

In the words of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl "we are fed and watered and housed just like cattle". The Rudd Government has increased funding to Indonesia and IOM with new rules. Now the system sees refugees locked up to prevent their departure.

However, with bribery endemic, many escape and find a way onto the boats. Some guards have a soft spot for the young ones and may turn a blind eye.

One 17-year-old boy arrived in Indonesia after his father was "slaughtered" by the Taliban for refusing to hand over his 15-year-old daughter to a 50-year-old Taliban leader. His five brothers are missing, his mother and two sisters travelled by donkey and on foot across the mountains to Quetta after the attack.

The village elders advised them to run and now the family is separated with the young boy locked up in an Indonesian prison having nightmares every night as he cannot block out the memories of what has been done to his family. He has a sister living in Australia who would sponsor him but her application like hundreds of others from family members sits in the bottom drawer of the immigration department destined to go into the 40-year queue.

Jakarta is the first UNHCR office open for applications between Afghanistan and Australia. The boys go to the office on arrival or wait in prison for UNHCR officers, wanting to enter a formal refugee process however they soon learn that this is a myth.

UNHCR is currently registering 10 Afghans per week out of hundreds on their doorstep every Monday and Wednesday morning. Some people even sleep outside the office on the footpath to try to get in the door.

The brute reality is that there is no lawful formal way for these boys to apply for refugee resettlement in Australia.

They are stuck with a risky boat the only escape.

If the Australian government really wanted to stop the boats they would put in place a lawful, formal process for people seeking asylum from Afghanistan or Sri Lankan, currently the highest refugee producing countries in our region.

While they refuse to provide a formal mechanism, the boats will continue to come and some will sink on the way.

According to current immigration and political reckoning, this lack of policy serves a useful political purpose in that it demonstrates that coming to Indonesia is hopeless. At an NGO gathering in Canberra it was pointed out that "an efficient, transparent refugee process in Indonesia is neither in Australia nor Indonesia's best interests."

However life in an Indonesian prison with the occasional bashing is still a better option than being beheaded in Afghanistan or being gunned down or knifed on the streets of Quetta.

Most are Hazaras, an ethnic minority despised by the brutal Taliban. Once they could hide in Quetta, Pakistan in the huge camp there. With the Taliban driven into Pakistan by western forces, Quetta is no longer safe.

The easily recognised Hazaras with their Asiatic faces are gunned down in the streets by Talibs. Ali, 62 years old said "they (Talibs) are professional killers, and they will kill my family as easily as they would kill a sheep. People who have seen my country will know what I mean. Even in Kabul, nobody is safe. Whoever has a gun is the king - weapons are the power."

Unaccompanied minors are supposed to get special treatment from UNHCR. Currently this involves being locked up with adults in Australian funded detention centres or Indonesian prisons. Neither is a safe or healthy option for traumatised teenagers. In many cases these boys have seen their fathers and brothers killed, their sisters kidnapped and more violence than we would want to imagine. They have been handed to people smugglers by distraught mothers and family members in an attempt to keep them alive.

It is hard to imagine a greater sacrifice than sending a boy out amongst strangers hoping that someone will care for him and keep him safe.

These boys armed only with their homesick, broken hearts and a mobile phone, are desperate for advice and guidance. They text desperate messages asking what they should do. They hear from the people waiting in Indonesia that they may wait years for resettlement to a country where they can be safe, find work and send money home.

Then they ask about the boats. These boys who come from a land-locked country with no experience of water face great fear when they get in a boat.

The question we face is how to unlock the hearts of the people and their politicians.

When we so proudly look at our own sons can we not see that these Afghan boys are also loved sons whose lives have been shattered by adult political violence not of their making.

Australia has demonstrated that it has a hard heart towards refugees in boats. However they are not the majority so why are our politicians shaping their responses to this brute minority when they could show moral leadership and lead Australians into accepting our responsibility to protect refugees, especially children.


First posted February 19, 2010 07:00:00