Refugee groups say government advice on Hazara asylum-seekers is wrong

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Oct 1, 2010, 5:30:21 AM10/1/10
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Joe Kelly From: The Australian


October 01, 2010 2:47PM


REFUGEE groups fear a "flawed" government assessment of Afghanistan
will unfairly taint asylum-seekers' applications to stay in
Australia.

The assessment by the Australian embassy in Kabul, dated February 21,
says many ethnic Hazaras in Afghanistan are fleeing the country as
economic migrants, not genuine refugees, and that they are living in a
“golden age”.

However the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advice was today
condemned by refugee groups and greeted with scepticism by academic
experts.

The Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre's executive director and
principal solicitor, David Manne, said the document was “notorious”
and was one of the “key sources” used to reject Afghan asylum claims.

Processing of Afghan asylum-seekers is about to resume after a six-
month suspension lifted yesterday by the Gillard government.


Refugee groups are worried the DFAT assessment will continue to be
used to determine whether hundreds of Afghan asylum-seekers, most of
them from the Hazara ethnic minority, should be able to stay in
Australia or be ordered home.

Mr Manne said the document was at odds with the bulk of evidence which
pointed to a deteriorating situation in the war-torn country.

He said it cast “serious doubts” on how the government's decision-
making process would work following the lifting of the six-month
freeze on processing of Afghan asylum-seekers.

“The big question here is whether or not decision-making is going to
be consistently fair and evidence-based, or whether it's going to be
infected by the same serious flaws and dubious context we've seen in
recent months,” Mr Manne told The Australian Online.

The refugee lawyer said the Department of Immigration needed to
provide the “full and proper particulars” of the information in the
assessment of Afghan asylum-seekers, arguing its “consistent refusal”
to do so was a “clear-cut flagrant denial of natural justice”.

The proportion of Afghans who are having their claims for refugee
status accepted has fallen from 95 per cent at the start of the year
to about 30 per cent.

Refugee advocate Phil Glendenning, director of the Edmund Rice Centre,
said he was “staggered” by the DFAT assessment.

Mr Glendenning said Hazaras in Afghanistan sent back during the Howard
government years were telling him that the “situation on the ground is
less safe than it ever has been, particularly those in Ghazni
province”.

“A couple of days ago, the lieutenant governor of Ghazni province was
assassinated by a suicide bomb. Most of the Hazaras who are waiting in
Australian detention centres are from Ghazni province,” he said.

Associate Professor at the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural
Studies at the Australian National University, James Jupp, also said
he thought the assessment was “a bit over the top”.

“I don't think anybody's having a golden age at the present moment.
You'd have to have a strong imagination to believe that,” he said.

Professor Jupp wondered how well informed the Australian embassy was.

“How would they actually know?” he asked.

“Most of our embassies in small Asian countries have a small staff -
you can't travel very freely in Afghanistan.”

DFAT's assessment has also been questioned by the ANU's Afghan expert,
Professor William Maley, who says Hazaras have faced persecution in
Afghanistan since the 19th century.

“There is no reason to believe that the underlying factors (both
ethnic and sectarian) fuelling hostility towards Hazaras have
dissipated,” Professor Maley said in June.

News Source:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/refugee-groups-say-government-advice-on-hazara-asylum-seekers-is-wrong/story-fn59nm2j-1225932865695
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