Remember the Tampa?

[mr friendly guy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tampa_affair

In August 2001, the Howard Government of Australia refused permission for the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa, carrying 438 rescued refugees, predominantly Hazaras of Afghanistan from a distressed fishing vessel in international waters, to enter Australian waters.[1] This triggered an Australian political controversy in the lead up to a federal election, and a diplomatic dispute between Australia and Norway.
When the Tampa entered Australian water, the Prime Minister ordered the ship be boarded by Australian special forces. This brought censure from the government of Norway who said the Australian Government failed to meet obligations to distressed mariners under international law at the United Nations.[2] Within a few days the government introduced the Border Protection Bill[3] into the House of Representatives saying it will confirm Australian sovereignty to "determine who will enter and reside in Australia". The government introduced the so-called "Pacific Solution", whereby the asylum seekers were taken to Nauru where their refugee status was considered, rather than in Australia.

More than a decade later, one of the Howard ministers confronts the refugees they sent back, just to see how safe it really was.

linky

Tampa survivor confronts former defence minister Peter Reith in new season of SBS series Go Back To Where You Came From


IT was the defining moment of the Howard Government's war on refugees.
In August 2001, then defence minister Peter Reith orders special forces aboard Norwegian freight ship, Tampa, turning back its human cargo of 438 Afghanis to processing facilities in Nauru.
More than a decade later, the former Liberal politician has come face-to-face with one of these asylum seekers, refused a visa and returned to Kabul on the grounds the country was deemed ''safe''.
In a tense meeting, filmed for the new season of award-winning SBS series, Go Back To Where You Came From, Reith is told by Resai, an Hazara man still in hiding from the Taliban, that up to 11 people who returned with him in 2003 have since been killed.
The Afghani, who spent 14 months in detention, claims authorities had threatened to move him to another refugee camp if he did not agree to give up his asylum bid and go home.

But so volatile are the scenes in Kabul, the program's security team declares the open air meeting too risky and force the party of Reith, rocker Angry Anderson and author Catherine Deveny to move on.
Clearly rocked by the encounter, Deveny is left in tears, while a visibly fearful Reith says to camera: ''when you have a lot of people going through the system, mistakes are made. It's not great but these things happen.''
Reith told The Daily Telegraph today he could not be held responsible for decisions made after he left office in 2001.
''I was not a minister at the time (of repatriation decision). I wasn't in the Government at the time and wasn't responsible for things that happened after I left.''
''At the time those decisions were made it was deemed to be reasonable to send those people back. What I say is . . . here in Kabul today, the situation is getting worse, but that doesn't retrospectively change a decision that was taken 10 years ago.''

He accused Cordell Jigsaw producers of failing to provide adequate briefings on the series' case studies and putting the group's personal safety at risk.
''I went on the basis of informed consent not on people keeping information like that from us just because we're pretending to be refugees. That's not the game to play.''
As in the first series, participants are initially stripped of their passports, wallets and mobile phones, a decision producer Rick McPhee defends as ''a taste of what it is like for a refugee, who must feel disconnected from their families.''
Anderson admits he ''no longer sees (refugees) as criminals, I see them as people driven by a desperation you and I simply can't understand. You've never been hunted because of your religion (like Hazaras), neither have I.''
Pin-up girl Imogen Bailey, axed shock jock Michael Smith and former Commonwealth ombudsman Allan Asher were also sent to Somalia and Yemen, before the group is reunited in Indonesia.
Asked if he had changed his views, Reith said: ''the only person who's changed her position on this is Julia Gillard.''
* Go Back To Where You Came From premieres next Tuesday, 8.30pm on SBSOne.

[Mr Bean]

This sounds bad but the details posted that 11 out of 483 passengers are dead gives us a 2% fatality rate over ten years which is... not that much than if they had gotten into Australia based on the general year to year mortality rate for the Australia population which is .5% percent year to year.

Unless Resai meant that 11 members of his group had died which might be anywhere from 5% to 95% depending on how big his group was.

[mr friendly guy]

He said have been killed, as opposed to just have died. Which puts a different dimension on things.

[Ziggy Stardust]

He said have been killed, as opposed to just have died. Which puts a different dimension on things.

Still, that's only 11 people over the course of almost a decade. It seems like a stretch to me.

[Thanas]

11 of those that are known to that person specifically.

[Mr Flibble]

Actually that is 11 of those that went back with that one person. Most of the 438 refugees on the Tampa were granted asylum in Australia or other countries (New Zealand took 150 straight away), in 2004 Australia gave at least 92 of them.

The refugees from the Tampa were loaded onto a Royal Australian Navy vessel, HMAS Manoora, which transported them to the small island country of Nauru, where most were held in two detention camps, State House and Topside.[20] They were eventually joined by hundreds of other asylum seekers, under Australia's "Pacific Solution". Approximately 150 people were diverted to New Zealand, where they were subsequently granted asylum and progress to citizenship. In 2004, following the war in Afghanistan and invasion of Iraq, the New Zealand government began to reunite their families.[21]
When those refugees not claimed by New Zealand arrived on Nauru, many of them refused to leave the boat after several additional weeks on board waiting for temporary shelters to be constructed, recognising they were to be held in detention camps pending the adjudication of their cases. Those eventually found to be genuine refugees were granted three-year temporary protection visas, by which they could be returned to their places of origin in Afghanistan and Iraq at a time of the government's choosing.
On 23 May 2004, it was reported that most Afghan asylum seekers on Nauru recently granted refugee status were likely to be resettled in Australia. The Federal Government decided to grant refugee status to 92 Afghans detained on the Pacific island nation, while 11 applications were refused.[22]
Holders of the Temporary Protection Visa are not allowed to return home (without losing their visa status) and do not have access to the same services as normally recognized refugees (for example, free English language lessons and help with job search). Another small group was later accepted by New Zealand. As of August 2005, 32 people still remained in camps on Nauru from the Tampa and other ships.
Australia made direct cash payments to New Zealand for accepting those refugees it did accept.

So it is actually 11 of the undisclosed number that were refused (or gave up trying to get) asylum were killed. It is commonly reported here that most of the people sent to Nauru were given asylum, that is why we closed it in the first place it was a gigantic waste of money that didn't even serve the racist goals it was built for.