Abdi Aden just couldn’t take it anymore. The Somali-born refugee had agreed to welcome three celebrities into his home for four nights, feed them and tell them his story for the second series of SBS’ Go Back to Where You Came From. His story is a traumatic and touching one: of fleeing death squads and famine as a 13-year-old to travel to Australia via Kenya, Romania and Germany.
But former 2UE shock jock Michael Smith only seemed interested in whether he had breached Australian law by using false documents to travel here by plane.
Aden, now a 35-year-old youth worker based in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, told him to get out and go stay in a hotel. “I told him exactly what I felt,” Aden told Crikey. “I wanted him to know he was disrespecting me; he wasn’t listening to me and he was my guest. He was calling me a criminal rather than a refugee.”
Aden and Smith’s altercation was one of the most captivating moment’s in last night’s debut episode — easily SBS’ most watched show of the year, with an average national audience of over one million. Last year’s series, which coincided with a heated public debate about the government’s proposed “Malaysia Solution”, was a ratings smash for SBS.
It will be intriguing to see if the public broadcaster can keep up the momentum this year given the bunkered-down ideological positions held by this year’s celebrity participants including former defence minister Peter Reith and left-wing comedienne Catherine Deveny. Reith has already announced that his experience on the show hasn’t changed his views on asylum seeker policy.
In many ways, it’s the refugees who participated in Go Back, rather than the celebs, who have the most fascinating stories. Twenty-eight year old Hazara refugee Hamid Sultani signed up to help educate the Australian population about the plight his people face in Afghanistan.
“I’ve made a lot of Aussie friends and when I tell them about my journey they are totally unaware of the situation back home — they are shocked,” Sultani said. “When people call me a queue jumper I don’t blame them. They don’t know the reasons we leave our country and loved ones. A person like Peter — an ex-defence minister — I found him totally unaware of the situation in a country where Australian troops are fighting.”
“Communication,” Sultani says, “can take us to undiscovered places.”
Sultani fled to Pakistan in 2007 after receiving messages from the Taliban that they were out to kill him because of his work as a translator for US and New Zealand combat troops. When it became clear Hazaras weren’t safe there either — and that it was almost impossible for him to make a living — he travelled, via Dubai and Malaysia, to Indonesia. There he paid a people smuggler to bring him to Australia by boat. He now lives in Dandenong in Victoria.
He asks that Crikey not identify where his wife and daughter are living in Pakistan for fear they could face retribution for his past work as a translator and participation in Go Back. Since production of the show finished, Sultani has maintained a friendship with Catherine Deveny, and watched last night’s show with her.
Sultani isn’t convinced that the government’s new asylum seeker policy — including a return to processing on Nauru and Manus Island — will deter Hazaras from getting on leaky boats.
“People know it’s a risk but the risk they’re fleeing in their homelands is worse, ” he said. “On the boat, I thought it would be better to die here than be cut into pieces by the Taliban. At least I had hope of a better life. Hazara people in Afghanistan and Pakistan are getting shot going to the bazaar. They are facing death every day and there is no safety every time they step outside their home.”
The perception that asylum seekers arriving by boat get unfair treatment particularly riles him.
“When people say they [asylum seekers arriving by boat] are queue jumpers I say, ‘There is no queue. My name was on no list. When I got to Christmas Island I got into the queue.’ The queue in Afghanistan — where I was on a Taliban blacklist — was a queue to be killed. When you are trying to save lives there should be no queue. Safety comes first for everyone.”
20 thoughts on “Forget Deveny and Reith, Go Back’s refugees have the real story”
Aaron F
August 29, 2012 at 7:26 pmThe new refugee policy is the right one if you genuinely care for
the lives of the people on the boats. Even if every single one of the
people on the boats are genuine refugees Australia needs a policy
the doesn’t encourage them to risk their lives at sea. This
(discouraging the refugees to get on boats) will not happen if their
applications are processed quicker than those refugees in camps around
the world – hence why there is the “no advantage” policy. The
genuinely good intentions of the ‘advocates’ of refugees that arrive by
boat who are against the new policy will only encourage more people
to take the risk of travelling by boat – and thus result in more deaths
at sea.
Warren Joffe
August 29, 2012 at 9:49 pmI didn’t see any of the SBS programs (or was the one with Minchin and some young
female activist on SBS? Saw a bit of it) but wonder when someone who matters
can get us out of the ruts we are all stuck in.
What about starting with two big questions (not including what our obligations
are said to be under a now elderly treaty much impressed with the emotions
legitimately raised by Nazi and Stalinist atrocities)
What is the best way of contributing to solving the world’s refugee problem(s)?
and
What’s best for Australia?
On the second those of us who are in occupations protected by union muscle
or by the need for formal qualifications and local experience, and virtually all
retired people should benefit from virtually all immigration by people who can
be employed or go to school and soon be employable. Indeed there are not too
many people who will be losers if we let in a whole lot of people who, at something
pretty close to the effective minimum wage, can be employed within 12 months.
It is sad if someone has an alcoholic single mother and/or such low IQ that only
legal protections and compulsions of all sorts can give them a wage they can’t
justify on sheer utility instead of allowing in smarter more energetic immigrants
(not too difficult to tell if they have it in them to be speaking English well enough to work, say, in aged care within 12 months of arrival, as well has having the rudiments of living skills for
an Australian environment). But it shouldn’t be too difficult to ensure that we
are letting in on average, people who will add to the national wealth and welfare.
And there should be no more of the once enthusiastic encouraging and facilitating
immigrants to become citizens with voting rights and full entitlements to generous
transfer payments (though they should certainly be able to get credit in their
tax returns for supporting themselves fully). Let’s not forget that the average
Crikey reader’s right to vote is only about his/her twentieth most important
guarantee of his/her welfare. If you are thick and poor you don’t have much
else though how you use your vote in your supposed self-interest might be
problematic.
As for the first question about the refugees interests, let’s forget our 13750, to
be raised to 20,000 intake and discard it as the mere pretence of a caring, intelligent
refugee policy that it is. There are about 30 million refugees and internally
displaced persons in the world. How can we possibly believe that the hundreds
of millions we spend annually on supporting them in Australia and paying high
wages to Australian public servants who deal with them is good value for money
from any point of view when there are such obviously better alternatives?
In countries like Kenya and Uganda where building works for schools and hospitals
could be paid for using labour glad to do the job for $3 a day hundreds of thousands could be
helped to live healthily, become educated and acquire skills useful either in their
country of first refuge or in their home lands to which most would prefer to return to
(absent a gurarantee of an Australian pension for no work while living in public
housing). Contrast our great social experiment of bringing tribal Africans
to Australia so we can see whether our social engineers and all round nice people
can do a better job with them than the brilliant achievements of the bien pensants
of Aboriginal policy over the last 40 years. We know so much about handling
alcohol problems amongst people who haven’t had the benefit of several
thousand years practice don’t we? And wouldn’t it be interesting to see if “sit
down money” had different effects in families from different non-modern
cultures? There would be lots of PhDs in all that and a nice retirement to an
and Adjunct Professorship (at least) at “The University of the Last Pretence”
for a sincere senior bureaucrat.
It might be flattering to former Immigration Minister Vanstone to say, as I have
heard refugee advocates say, that she introduced a large African quota “to bore
it up” them. I am not sure she really new what she was doing. Surely, given her
gutsy style she could, with a little really hard thinking, gone Japanese (as a recent letter
in The Australian suggested) and cut the refugee quota to 1000 and a few discretionaries
while enormously increasing what was done for and spent on the refugees whom
we don’t submit to Australianisaton (again cp. Aboriginal policy) and homesickeness but leave in countries nearer home. One big plus….
Forget Malaysian, East Timor, Nauru, Manus Island solutions. If a quota of
1000 sends, as it would, the clear message that Australian citizenship is simply
not an option worth getting on a boat for, let alone paying people smugglers’ for,,
it would solve the governments biggest problem outside handling money.
Inhumane? No, let’s say that every Hazara who can demonstrate the equivalent
in IQ, educability, proven skills or entrepreneurship to make it reasonably
predictable that he/she would me more employable or likely to be self-funding
than the average Australian is accepted for a ten year visa at least – subject to a
few strict criteria such as absence of serous criminality. (Let’s be realistic, it’s not
too difficult to sort out the relatively smart and energetic, and able to learn
English quickly – and fill in tax returns – from those who are going to add to
the approx. 50 per cent of Australians who will never be net contributors to
taxation unless they win a lottery and pay lots of GST on the expenditure. How may
people does the average Crikey reader talk to regularly who has an IQ under 100?)
Not just Hazars; alsoe Iraqis whose chances of living peaceably in Iraq we
have contributed to diminishing by supporting US folly. And lots of other
educated dissidents in illiberal regimes. Those of us who will retire in the
next 25 years might look back and congratulate ourselves
on providing an energetic productive workforce of younger people able to
support us in the style we wished we deserved and China may have ceased to
provide from the off cuts of its present boom.
Far more people given far better help for no more money. And the “boat people”
problem so reduced that we can be sensible about the few people who may
still come by boat. No longer will Lord Lucan be able to slip in amongst all the
other 6ft 5in refugees with dodgy histories…. In fact I doubt if we would go on spending
$1 billion a year to protect our borders from the occasional Lord Lucan or
John Stonehouse or Ronnie Biggs who might take a liking to our beaches.
Ken Lambert
August 29, 2012 at 11:10 pmLiz45’s position is a simple one and typical of the moral confusion of those who would accept self-select smugglees no matter what.
Millions of people on the planet have similar horrible stories to tell and are desperate to get out of the hellholes created by their countrymen.
Australia can accept 20000 as part of its expanded refugee intake. There are queues in the region where the UNHCR processes claims to refugee status. The Burmese in Malaysia are good examples of refugees who have rotted in camps for years and don’t have a razoo to buy a passage with a people smuggler to Australia.
Those who don’t have a razoo and have been in camps the longest time are morally entitled to be resettled ahead of any smugglee who had $10000 for people smugglers to pay off corrupt Indonesian officials, buy a boat and dial OOO Australia as soon as they leave shore.
The $10000 self-select smugglees number over 8000 this year. They have taken the places of 8000 other desperate people in our region without a razoo who are in a queue and have a moral right to be resettled ahead of those who have got money to pay criminal smugglers and corrupt officials.
What we have here is a racket run by smugglers and Indonesian officials to take advantage of our weakened laws and gutless morally bankrupt politicians, who have abdicated their power to protect the refugee who has no means to buy a passage.
Liz45
August 30, 2012 at 12:01 am@KEN LAMBERT – And your comments are typical of those who use the vast numbers around the world who are in dire straits as an excuse to not do anything much – and this includes not ensuring that we aren’t the reason why they’re leaving their homelands? Take Iraq and Afghanistan for instance. Don’t you think we have a bloody cheek to invade their countries, kill thousands/a million and a half; destroy infrastructure; leave land mines, cluster bombs, DU all over the place, and then lock up the poor little buggars who end up here in leaky boats?
They should stay home and get shot, bombed, executed, maimed or ????
We only care about those who die on the high seas – because we can see them! We don’t give a fig about the ones we helped kill in their homes, on the street, at the mosque, church, hospital, school (those that are still standing of course – thanks to us)?
Some families pool their resources to sell, so that a young man can leave the country, and so escape death! They’re not wealthy by any means, in fact, some end up homeless to help the younger members leave! But, like many, why would you let the truth get in the way of your hateful attitudes?
Perhaps we could advocate, that the monies spent on ammunition for our military for one year would probably help bring water or basic health needs to some in real trouble! This country spends $85 per day on Defence, and yet we cry poor re the few asylum seekers we process? Priorities! It’s not that the world doesn’t have the money, it’s just that human beings aren’t high enough on the priority list!
Liz45
August 30, 2012 at 12:10 am@KEN – I have 2 posts awaiting the moderator. Your response to me is typical, and most depressing. The same old, same old! You’re like Michael and Angry Anderson, and it makes me feel sad and angry. Too often in the past, it’s been the West who’ve been responsible for people’s anguish and anguished desire to leave their home country. You victimize the victims, instead of the oppressors – too often it’s been us!
I’ve been on this merry go round too often. I’m weary now!
Semaan lena
August 30, 2012 at 1:19 pmIt’s funny, I’ve lived in London for twenty years and have been back in Melbourne (only on trial) for 3 weeks. I cannot believe the racism and ignorance I’m hearing and seeing. The opinion overseas of Australians used to be “they’re friendly’ but invariably now it’s “they’re racist aren’t they?” The likes of Michael Smith would not be allowed to say what they say on radio in the UK. I am finding it very disturbing…the country appears to have gone backwards and I don’t want to be part of this.
Ken Lambert
August 30, 2012 at 11:42 pmLiz45, weary will not solve the problem of criminal people smuggling, Indonesian corruption and how the 20000 refugees are chosen.
You would hug anyone who arrives on a boat which means open borders and no control – a clearly ridiculous position for any country to allow.
If the quota is 20000 then we must select on some rational criteria and control the flow of refugees. We need to know the identity of the refuge seeker, some proper check on criminal or terrorist history.
This is impossible when smugglees destroy ID papers and know that the default position for Australian authorities is to eventually accept what they say and grant asylum.
Control means breaking the people smugglers criminal and corrupt operations wih Indonesian officials.
We need not turn back boats – which is risky and easily countered by the smugglers sinking the boat in sight of an Australian vessel.
The Indonsian Govt has to be persuaded to co-operate and take back by plane several boat loads of intercepted smugglees immediately on arrival into Australia. This is the job of our PM and her foreign minister.
Once the asylum seeker knows that paying $10000 to a smuggler will land them back in Jakarta airport and detention in Indonesia – then the demand will vanish.
We can then take some of those poor Burmese rotting in camps for 10 years who are standing in a queue without a razoo.
I will hug them when they arrive.
Liz45
August 31, 2012 at 1:43 am@KEN -Tell me this? When people know damned well, via articles, documentaries, news items etc that the police and military in Indonesia are involved in so-called people smuggling; so much so that they accompany the asylum seekers on their way to the boats, why isn’t the AFP doing something? Why won’t either the Govt or Opposition even mentioning this reality? Here’s nasty Scott Morrison with his ugly mouth and he almost spits out his bile towards the PM/Govt, and yet neither he nor Abbott utter a sound! EVEN when they’ve been on the news/7.30/Lateline etc? It just astounds me? Am I the only one who raises this aspect?
I’m not saying that I hug everyone at the boarder. And you’re being a smart arse by saying so. Of course people have to be checked medically and for security checks. I raised the question; if we’re taking 190,000 immigrants next year, why can’t a large number be persecuted people, many of whom have skills, many are professional people? Why can’t they be re-housed here? It’s just dumb and stupid! Where are the 190,000 coming from? Ireland? Spain? Greece? England? China? Europe? What type of skills? Do you know the answers to these questions? I still can NOT see why a quarter or a third etc can’t be asylum seekers? Because they’re poor and will cost us? Are we only allowing well heeled people in? White skinned people with English as their first language or at least a proficient use of the language?
Why aren’t people asking these questions? Why are we still going round and round and round? It’s boring!
Australia gave and probably still gives money to Burma? We helped the military dictatorship oppress and kill their own people there. We did the same with Sri Lanka, even when we knew people were being executed etc. We give money to Indonesia, and yet we’re too damned scared to challenge them re the corruption of their police and military? Indonesia has already said, that they will NOT take people back! And I agree with them! They still have a huge number of people living below the poverty line! Why should they take them back?
Indonesia is NOT responsible for our lack of adherence to our responsibilities. Italy has had 25,000 asylum seekers in a weekend; Iran, Egypt and others have taken in hundreds of thousands of people from Iraq, Afghanistan and now Syria – Syria alone has thousands going over the boarder in one weekend? And we whinge, whine and thrash about over 7-8,000 in a year? WHAT? Absolute bs! Total crap!
As for the nonsense about our borders? We’re a bloody island for god’s sake! As I’ve said before, the biggest threat to the people here via border control, is the illegal guns and drugs that come into the country. Thanks to Howard, he cut back on customs etc at airports and maritime ports!
We made the commitments years ago. As I’ve said before, if we don’t want to abide by these, then have the guts to say so! Make a public statement; release to the media around the world, AFTER we inform the UN, and then take the action we’re doing. Please, let’s not swan around, pretending to be good world citizens, caring, boasting of “traditional values” blah blah ad nauseum, when too many are hateful and bigoted!
Tell me? If we were invaded, if half your family was blown to bits; if your kids were hungry and sick from faeces in the water etc, what would you do? I’d sadly plan to leave, and take my kids to safey!
McGregor Annamaria
August 31, 2012 at 8:57 amI was only able to watch the part of the first episode of the show.
I was compelled to switch off given the constant bullying of Ms.
C. Deveney.
People don’t change their minds overnight. And I felt sorry for the
three outsiders. Their body language and their words spoke
volumes.
I can still see the searching, anguished look on Peter
Reith’s face as he tried to reconcile his awareness of the situation
with some sort of workable solution.
I come from a family of migrants and I have experienced the
racist name-calling and vilification but I was nurtured and sup-
ported by the good will and friendship of our Australian friends.
The part that I saw seemed to highlight division rather than
present a sincere and healing search for a better way forward for
all concerned.
Ken Lambert
September 1, 2012 at 12:38 amLIZ45
I have been telling the story of Indonesian corruption and complicity in the smuggling rackets for years – Crikey won’t print my pieces.
Do you wonder why Indo rescue services are so conspicuously useless when a boat gets into trouble near their shores? They have no humanitarian tradition and adherence to the law of the sea. They have been paid off to get seekers on boats – seeing them back will damage the trade and they know that good old Australia will do its utmost to be a good citizen and rush to the rescue and complete the journey.
If you are being paid off to facilitate the smuggling trade – then there is a big incentive to keep it going and expanding. Taking seekers back will damage the trade and lower the price.
Gutless politicians on both sides will not condemn Indonesia because they fear Indo displeasure. That is our diplomatic task. Out intelligence service if it is doing its job would know some of the officials on the take, village chiefs, police, harbormasters etc who have to be involved in the pipeline. Buying the boat, moving 150 highly visible ethnic Afghans through airports, feeding and housing them, transporting and assembling them at the waterside; all cannot be done without many local people being involved in the corrupt pipeline – and than is just one boatload. We are now talking several boats a week.
If we quietly offered this intelligence information to Mr Bang Bang and his dapper little foreign minister with the suggestion that they help us or we get louder, that might be an offer they can’t refuse. Maybe our great and powerful American friends could exert some influence in supporting our case, since they support Indonesia as an ally too.
Don’t you think that the Indos are smart enough to know that if they take back a couple of boatloads by plane and detain them (at our expense if necessary) that the trade will cease? If the seekers and their friends and relatives get the strong message that they will waste $10000 and end up on a Jakarta tarmac – the trade will collapse overnight.
Would you not rather see 20000 refugees arrive in Australia safely by plane having been processed by the UNHCR and Australian officials in camps around the region, selected on need and the length of time they have been detained?