Sarah Stephen – The 168 East Timorese asylum seekers whose claims were rejected by the immigration department on September 25 are the first of almost 1700 asylum seekers who face the prospect of being forcibly returned to East Timor, despite many having lived in Australia for up to 10 years.
The Australian government's refusal to allow these asylum seekers to stay in Australia on humanitarian grounds will force the separation of families. Edit Horta has three daughters who are now Australian citizens. If the Australian government rejects her claim, she may be separated from her daughters and forced to return to East Timor with her two youngest children. Horta's youngest daughter, eight-year-old Sarah, was born in Australia. She speaks English, not Tetum, and has never been to East Timor. One of the counsellors working with the East Timorese asylum seekers in Sydney, who asked not to be named in case it jeopardised the cases of people she was working with, told Green Left Weekly: "Many have married here, had children here – they are Australian. We cannot expect them, especially young people, to go back to a culture that is foreign to them. Families that have gone back to find the land that they left [often find] someone else has taken over and considers it theirs now. What they left behind is no longer theirs. Going back to East Timor, many will be rejected. There is resentment, even violence, against those returning.
"They are traumatised people who haven't recovered from their experiences of massacres and violence in East Timor, but also by their wait in Australia, not knowing what's going to happen to them. As many are now realising they may be forced back to East Timor, they have had to seek more trauma counselling. Because they've had to add information to their statements, they've had to relive all their experiences again." Fivo Freitas, an East Timorese asylum seeker who works with community radio in Melbourne and is active in the refugee-rights campaign, told GLW: "People have the right to decide whether to stay in Australia or go back to East Timor. Australia is like a second home for them. I feel that the Australian government is so cruel, they muck around people's lives. It's like being in prison. Young people have no access to university. Even to get Medicare they have to renew their card every three months!" Freitas is one of the 1700 East Timorese waiting for asylum claims to be processed. Two of his sisters are Australian citizens, and the rest of his family is still in East Timor. He has made a decision to speak out about the issue, and campaign for support from other Australians.
Freitas explained that when immigration minister Philip Ruddock announced in March that East Timorese asylum seekers' claims would be reassessed, many panicked. "East Timorese people have made a new life in Australia, but the government clicks its fingers and expects people to go back", he said.
Freitas pointed out that life is still a struggle in East Timor, with very limited access to education and an unemployment rate of 85%. Sending people back, he argued, would create more problems for the East Timorese government.
Sister Susan Connelly in her new book, Questions from the Asylum, notes: "The aim seems to be to squeeze them out regardless of the roots they have laid down in Australian society. In most cases return to Timor would find them jobless, homeless and landless, with little in the way of education and training after their years in Australia, having been denied higher education here." Arguing that East Timorese people should now go home "fails to see the whole human picture", Connelly argues. "It fails to take into account the fact that a devastated country may just not be ready to receive back into its fold people who have been culturally changed by their experiences in the West.
"It fails to see that these people carry a huge burden of guilt in that they escaped while others had to bear the brunt of the Indonesian occupation. Now they are able to go home, but with what? A thorough education to put at the service of their new nation? I think not. That has been one of Australia's abject failures."