A Mock Refugee Camp In A Sydney Suburb Is Showing People The Reality Of Seeking Asylum

Ignorance proliferates in a society that closes its eyes, and when government policy demonstrates a clear lack of compassion, ignorance is further exacerbated. While a large section of the population is passionate about the welfare of refugees and asylum seekers, there is a growing ignorance in the mainstream.

For the past two weeks Auburn City Council’s social project ‘Refugee Camp in my Neighbourhood’ has been educating the community through a simulated tour that takes people through the experience of a refugee or asylum seeker.  The project has enabled people to put a face on an issue that has been dehumanised and stripped of compassion. A journey through this project highlights not just the dire situation faced by asylum seekers and refugees worldwide, but the uncaring way by which the Australian government deals with issues of human rights.

Led by our guides Hassan, an Afghan Hazara man who made the perilous boat journey, and Saada, a 48-year-old Somali woman who made her way to Australia via the UNHCR camps of Kenya, we fled our homes, lived in UNHCR camps, experienced the administrative clusterfuck that is UN processing and lived life as an alien in a foreign city with no rights. All the while being stateless, hungry and hopeless.

“Now you are going to get on a boat and you are on your way to Christmas Island,” Hassan, our tour guide tells us as we descend the stairs below the Auburn community centre and onto our simulated boat in an attempt to envision the desperation that pushes someone to such lengths. “They aren’t going to Christmas Island!” laughs Saada, our other guide. “They are going to Australia! They [smugglers] promise you high hopes. You are going to be accepted and everything will be great!”

The typical asylum seeker spent several days on open ocean before being detained by the Australian government for anywhere from a couple of months to several years. Upon being released into the community, the vast majority are on bridging visas with no work rights – however, this is beginning to change in recent months as more are granted the right to work. Any asylum seeker who arrived after the 19th of July, 2013 is subject to a mandatory regional processing clause, where they are detained in Nauru or Manus Island.

The walls are projected with streaks of luminescent blue and we sit on wooden benches either side of the small room. Hassan tells us of his own experience. “I took the chance because I thought that if I make it through there is a chance of a life,” he says. “When I was on the sea I had never seen the ocean before, but I already made up my mind that I was dead either way”. After five days and five nights on the ocean in a leaky boat, Hassan was eventually detained and processed on Christmas Island. His story is just one of many, we soon learn, as a sound collage plays to the group. “It looked like a bad dream. People were sick and scared,” an Iranian asylum seeker says. “Our boat broke and sunk. We called for help and burned our life jackets hoping that maybe someone in the islands would see us and come and help us,” another man states.

Without seeing it is hard to know the truth, as headlines and news bulletins form the basis of our opinions. “One key aim of the project is to increase understanding by putting a face to a name,” Auburn City Council’s development officer Adama Kamara says. “People only know what they know, and unless you have met someone who has lived that experience and really understand what they have gone through you are not really going to get it.” Stories and faces connect us to the experience and artefacts of refugee life put context to their plight.

“This journey took many lives, but it also gave many lives,” Hassan tells us as we move from our boat to a regional processing centre. A close up of a Hazara man’s face is projected onto the brick wall, telling us of the mental anguish of detention. “In detention we die every day,” he says. “At least the Taliban just kill you once… Being locked up like an animal in a zoo, you die every day”.  The mental torture and hopelessness faced by detainees is exemplified in the tale of the man’s friend. Ridden with guilt and hopelessness for his family back home, he developed a mental disorder and could not eat – seeing the faces of his loved ones in the plate of food. “The only thing that could help him was his freedom to support his family,” the man states.

While the stories of hardship are horrific and frightening, one of the more unknown and disturbing  pieces of knowledge is the psychological havoc the experience plays on asylum seekers as a result of detention.

Sharara Attai, Solicitor and Migration Agent with the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS) briefs tour groups on the complex and differing status of asylum seekers in the eyes of the law. New laws mean that any asylum seeker that is in Australia now who arrived by boat will, if successfully found to be a refugee, only be eligible for a temporary protection visa – a three- year visa that gives work rights but does not allow familial reunification, or a safe haven enterprise visa – a 5 year visa that also gives work rights but no family reunification. Access to education is offered at the rate of an international student and travel outside Australia is limited, with ministerial permission granting movement in exceptional circumstances. An asylum seeker’s home country is off limits, meaning a visit to their family must take place in a third country. It’s unlikely that missing them would qualify as an exceptional circumstance.

Sharara believes that new laws are not created out of the common good, but rather to punish. “These policies are retrospective in nature and they don’t actually have any deterrent value. I think it is purely punitive unfortunately,” Sharara says. “I think psychologically it would be devastating not to be able to work, especially for such a long period of time” regarding the long-held policy whereby asylum seekers were not allowed to work. This policy recently changed, however, work rights are being meted out very slowly leaving most asylum seekers still waiting to be granted work rights. With most boats now actually being turned back and any new arrivals that do make it to Australia subject to mandatory regional processing, current policies only affect those who have already arrived.

Denying asylum seekers work rights, limiting movement, access to education and familial reunification is not just psychologically damaging and a denial of human rights – it makes little economic sense. “These people could be paying taxes rather than relying on Centrelink, but they aren’t allowed to work,” Sharara says regarding the long-held policy of not allowing asylum seekers work rights and the very slow processing of granting work rights. Laws are doing little but to breed social disadvantage, isolate people and ghettoise asylum seekers as the Australian government keeps them in a perpetual state of not knowing.

Human rights aside, if the true test of a law is how it serves the citizens of Australia, one must question a government that commits acts which the vast majority of our population would be against, having the proper knowledge. Projects like the ‘Refugee Camp in my Neighbourhood’  build awareness and put a human face to an issue that is so often swept under the rug and represented statistically. As I made my way through the tour and I looked around at my peers, it wasn’t the hardships of the journey that shocked the most, but rather the fate faced by asylum seekers and refugees under our own government. Acknowledging the wrong we are doing as a country is the first step to making a change.

–

Refugee Camp in my Neighbourhood runs at the Auburn Community Centre until Friday June 26. Book a tour here.

–

Baz Ruddick is a Sydney based freelance journalist, sweater enthusiast and avid swearer who moonlights as an English Teacher. He doesn’t normally tweet, but if he did you could follow him @BazRuddick.