Strategy, Rupture, Rights: Reflections on Law and Resistance in Immigration Detention

Abstract

On 22 October 1999 Ali Bakhtiyari arrived in Australia. He had fled from religious and ethnic persecution at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan to Pakistan with his wife Roqia and their five children. Ali then left his family in Pakistan while he went ahead to Germany, planning to seek asylum and then arrange for them to join him. However the boat he boarded ended up in Australia. On 3 August 2000, Ali was granted a protection visa on the basis of his Afghan nationality and his Hazara ethnicity and released from Port Hedland Immigration Detention Centre into the Australian community. At that time the Australian government had a policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers during assessment of their visa claims. The detention centres were often located in extremely remote locations in the middle of the desert. The conditions inside were extremely harsh and drew comparisons with Nazi concentration camps and Russian gulags from mainstream figures such as former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. Some detainees were held for as long as seven years. Amongst anti-detention activists and campaigners they became known simply as 'the camps'. Some time after his release, Ali Bakhtiyari discovered that Roqia and their five children had also fled Pakistan with Roqia's brother, Mahzer Ali. They had arrived in Australia on 1 January 2001 and were detained in Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre. On 21 February 2001 their applications for refugee status were rejected on the basis of language analysis and their failure to recognise Afghan currency or describe key features of Afghan geography. Immigration authorities claimed they had determined that Roqia was from Pakistan.