IMMIGRATION staff plotted to distract a seven-year-old girl with toys so they could take her away while her father languished in solitary confinement.
The father was duped by a former manager of the Baxter Detention Centre, which closed in 2007, when the manager asked if he and his wife could take the child shopping.
"No problem, yes, go and enjoy yourself," the father replied.
In the meantime, another staffer made sure the father would never see his child, dubbed Y, again, and clandestinely spirited her back to Iran.
"If Y requests to say goodbye to her father I will advise her that it is not possible as it could stop her from being returned to her mother in Tehran. We will have several toys for distraction purposes," a file note said.
The "disturbing" case from 2003 was highlighted in a report by the Commonwealth Immigration Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, which was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. It has prompted the minister, Chris Evans, to seek ways to compensate the family.
Sickening, no?
So why, on the rare occasion that John Howard pops his slimy little head out of whatever hole he's been hiding in since he was booted out in the 2007 federal election, don't journalists confront him, hound him, and demand to know how he could have created and defended a system where such a disturbing act of cruelty could be carried out?
But if you think it couldn't be worse than the scenario described above, read on. All these acts- and if none of this is a crime then it should be- were carried out on the same man.
The plot to distract the girl - who had arrived on a boat with her father in 2001 - was revealed among a string of other callous acts against the asylum seeker.
The girl was probed by child protection services after they received a tip-off from the government-contracted detention company at the time, Australasian Correctional Management, that she was being sexually abused by her father.
Checks by youth services and child protection officers found no such thing.
By contrast South Australian Family and Youth Services recommended the girl be returned to her father's care and the pair be moved to another detention centre immediately.
Again the Immigration Department ignored the advice, even though the father went on a hunger strike to support his wish to move.
By August 2003, two months after his daughter was taken away, the man was diagnosed as severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and prone to anxiety attacks. In October that year he slashed his wrists with a razor blade.
The department also ordered a psychiatrist not to tell the man his daughter had been taken from Baxter.
Stomach-churning, yeah? Utterly indefensible, you'd think. Anyone who took part in this shit needs to be named, and if they are still working for the department they ought to be deprived of their jobs with immediate effect. God knows there are enough psychopaths active in that particular section of the bureaucracy, and the opportunity to remove them should not be passed up if we never want such an incident to happen again. Anyone with any credibility and even an ounce of humanity would have refused to take part in the abuse of this man and his daughter by the Australian government. They would have blown the whistle.
To top it all off, the Howard government applied its famous 'pay for your own indefinite mandatory jailing' to the guy, who has not seen his daughter since she was stolen.
The man was later charged with a detention debt of $288,000, including the cost of his daughter's removal from Australia. The debt has since been written off.
He was given a temporary protection visa in 2005, thereby owed Australian protection - and he now lives in Melbourne.
The department has since apologised to the man and will soon issue an apology to his daughter.
Oh, all better now! Thankfully, current immigration minister Chris Evans is looking at ways to compensate the guy for his mistreatment at the hands of the Howard government. He has also instructed them to assist the daughter and the mother if they wish to apply for visas to join the man. However much they fork over in compensation, it's unlikely to be enough.
What's most galling about all of this is that we paid for it. We paid to have this guy and his young daughter thrown into a prison, we paid the sons-of-bitches who carried out the kidnapping and deportation of his daughter. We paid the people who posted out letters to the man, informing he owed the Australian government a quarter of a million dollars in spite of all they did to him- or because of it. We paid the salary of possibly the most inhuman sicko to become prime minister in at least the last 50 years, and we are paying compensation for the despicable acts carried out under this man's orders.
I won't ever forget the things that were carried out in our name, and I will never vote for someone who supports or attempts to justify treating a person like that.
1 comment:
I've been working on a post that details the various Howard crimes, but I don't think I can stomach trawling through the sewer.
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