Hazara Nation

GL he Australian Hazara community protested in Canberra on February 3 to strongly condemn the continued killing of Hazara people in Quetta City, Pakistan, by Taliban and al Qaida-backed religious extremists.

WHEN Maryam Hossein releases the handbrake and pulls away from the kerb for her first driving lesson, it will be more than just her maiden journey behind the wheel.

For the 23-year-old refugee it will be the latest step in a journey that began when her parents were forced to flee Afghanistan for Iran during the Russian occupation in the early 1980s.

By learning to drive, she is doing something once virtually impossible for women in her home country — and fast-tracking her integration into Australian society.

She is not alone; Ms Hossein is one of 28 Afghan women, including her 41-year-old mother and 19-year-old sister, attending a driving school in Dandenong designed to help recent refugee arrivals gain their licences.

"This is a very good opportunity for Afghani women," she said. "All of the things we need in life, like going to the doctors or school, mean that we have to drive."

Traditionally, very few women drove in Afghanistan's male-dominated society, a situation that worsened under Taliban rule when they were denied the right to drive and forced to remain at home.

This has caused problems for the Afghan community in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, which comprises around 3000 families.

Female-only families such as the Hosseins have been practically immobile and unable to get access to the services needed to integrate into society.

"It was causing a lot of stress as men were under pressure to handle the settlement process for their families and provide for them financially with houses and cars while the women were totally dependent," said Abbas Amiry, co-ordinator of the driving school.

"By running this course we want to give women the opportunity to drive and at the same time increase their self-confidence and self-worth so that they really feel part of the community here in Australia."

The driving school is run by the Association of Hazaras in Victoria, assisted by $19,700 in funding from the Transport Accident Commission and a car provided by Adult Multicultural Education Services.

It is already oversubscribed. The women, who range from 18-year-olds to mothers with five or more children, is halfway through a series of sessions run by senior community members, alongside Vic Roads, Victoria Police and Ambulance Victoria, in which they are taught road rules and driving theory. It is an essential precursor to taking control of a vehicle as not only do they come from a country without road rules but, according to Aisha Mahboob, a female Afghan driving instructor from Hampton Park, some women she has taught had never sat in a car before moving to Australia.

Ms Mahboob, who moved to Australia 11 years ago, has helped about 50 Afghan women learn to drive since becoming an instructor in 2006, often giving lessons for free.

She said: "The women can handle the car very well after just five lessons, but they don't know the rules of the road so this course is very important.

"Most have realised they need to drive to get their kids to school or to get to work and now they have the chance to get up and do it."

Once the women have finished learning the theory, the driving school will fund their first five lessons with Ms Mahboob. After that, they hope members of the local community will come forward to act as volunteer trainers.

Mr Amiry says plans are in place to bring in professional instructors who will train people to act as mentors who can guide the women through extra hours of driving practice as they work towards qualification.

"We need the support of the mainstream community," he said. "I came to Australia on a boat and entered society as a TPV holder, which meant I couldn't go to school without paying, but I received amazing support from volunteers.

"They made a huge difference to my life and I hope people will be willing to help us again."

Ms Hossein, from Dandenong, who supports her mother and younger sister, said: "I'm very happy to have this chance.

"It would have been very expensive for us to learn to drive with another company, but now we are able to learn a lot."

The age

PSYCHIATRISTS say they have identified a new mental illness that afflicts asylum seekers in Australia — a combination of major depression, anxiety and psychosis.

One former oncology nurse, who now works with asylum seekers, said her new patients were often more traumatised than people diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The condition was discussed at yesterday's Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists' Congress in Melbourne.

Melbourne University associate professor Suresh Sundram said the clinical features of the unnamed syndrome were similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression and anxiety disorders.

It was caused by the chronic and prolonged stress, occasional acute distress and repeated "rejections and humiliations" attached to their situation, he said.

"The effect on memory and concentration is very significant — especially short-term memory, which seems to ebb away completely," he said. "There is a pervasive dejection."

At any one time the illness affected about 40 of the 180 to 200 people at Melbourne's Asylum Seekers Resource Centre, and was more prevalent as they got closer to the end of the process, he said.

It can persist for months even after a protection visa is granted. He said it demanded a "social cure": the end of mandatory detention and expedited visa processes.

Dr Fiona Hawker, formerly in charge of psychiatry at South Australia's Glenside Hospital, which housed psychiatric patients from the Woomera and Baxter detention centres, has identified what she called "Baxter syndrome" — an even more acute version of the malady.

She told the symposium it was common to all but one of the 70-plus asylum seekers who came to the hospital from Baxter, suffering episodes of agitation and violence, reduced appetite, nightmares and disturbed sleep, anger, anxiety, auditory and visual hallucinations and severely damaged short-term memory.

It was caused by their mistreatment, stress and alienation in detention and the trauma associated with an "unpredictable and arbitrary" visa application process, she said.

"I don't think I have ever worked in a situation where my individual humanity was challenged at such a level," she said.

Mary Harvey, a trained oncology nurse who now runs counselling at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said that before asylum seekers' applications were rejected they were like people who had been diagnosed with cancer.

"Once they have a negative ministerial decision, it's like working with clients who have exhausted all available cancer treatments," she said. Read the full story

Writers often write about atrocities, persecution and other acts of human degradation to provide an historical record for the future, so that in the act of remembering we might avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. In the area of Australian refugee policy, an inhumane and unworkable system of granting temporary protection visas to vulnerable refugees has continued to re-emerge over recent years and it is now time we buried it forever.

In 1999 the Howard government introduced Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) for all refugees arriving by boat. Refugees who received these visas were denied family reunion, denied the right to re-enter the country if they left temporarily, denied resettlement assistance, and left to an uncertain future without the guarantee of ongoing protection. The visas were mostly granted for three years with some on Nauru receiving five-year temporary status.

Recently, the ALP Government reversed the policy, abolishing both TPVs and Temporary Humanitarian Visas (THVs). Immigration Minister Evans stated that, “the Temporary Protection visa was one of the worst aspects of the Howard government’s punitive treatment of refugees” and that it was, “a cruel and ineffective policy”.

But in 1999 the ALP in opposition did support the introduction of TPVs and back in the early 90s a domestic four-year temporary visa was part of Labor Party policy in government. Like the recent temporary visa, the Labor Party’s four-year visa was also condemned for the damage it could cause to the human beings involved.

In 1992 the clear and well documented message coming from anyone working with refugees was the same as it has been in recent years: granting only temporary protection status to refugees means re-traumatising vulnerable people.

Some of the submissions to a Joint Standing Committee inquiry in 1992 included comments from the Human Rights Commission that, “Refugees who have suffered serious trauma as a result of severe persecution have a particular need for assured continuity of protection.”

The Victorian Immigration Advice Centre said that, “four-year temporary permits wreak havoc on the lives of genuine refugees who want to put the past behind them and get on with their lives”, and the Australian Migration Couselling Service warned that, “many will confront employers who will choose not to recruit or promote them in the knowledge that their permanent stay is not guaranteed”.

If only the major political parties had listened.

In 1999 the Howard government ignored the inevitability of human damage that would lie ahead and introduced the temporary visas. Part of Immigration Minister Ruddock’s reasoning at the time was that a visa with no family reunion rights would act as a deterrent to married male refugees, as they would no longer be able to sponsor wives and children to join them in Australia. The Temporary Visa policy was designed to make life difficult for people arriving by boat and it was deliberately and unapologetically punitive.

But what soon became disastrously clear was that the TPVs created an incentive for vulnerable women and children to travel to Australia by fishing boat as the only means of reuniting with their husbands and fathers. The SIEVX tragedy in 2001, when 353 mostly women and children drowned trying to reach Australia, was the obvious worst case example of how this policy went horribly wrong.

The introduction of the visas had absolutely no impact on reducing the number of boat arrivals. During the 1999-2000 financial year 4,175 people arrived by boat, followed by another 4,137 arrivals in 2000-01. The large numbers continued in the 2001-02 period with a further 3,649 arrivals recorded. But still the policy continued.

Thousands of refugees became trapped in the web of uncertainty created by their temporary status. Refugees who had spent years in detention centres were given no resettlement assistance on release into the community. The burden of their care was shifted to individual community members who volunteered their time and money and to organised charities and refugee support groups who rescued people from sometimes disastrous circumstances. But many refugees fell through the cracks and ended up without any assistance to endure an uncertain future in a new country.

Employment opportunities were limited, including for those who wanted to apply for apprenticeships involving a longer time frame than the term of their visa. Many refugees wanted to study and improve their education level in Australia, but although this was possible for some though the assistance of generous community members and scholarships from universities, colleges and schools, the full fee costs kept further education out of reach for many TPV holders.

Refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan in particular watched the scenes of horror unfold in their homelands on TV each day. Many sunk further into depression as their fears for the future took hold, knowing that they could be killed if they were forced to return to their places of persecution. Their lives were lived on hold, without any guarantee that they would not be sent back when their temporary visas expired. Each day they waited for a change of policy or a change of government that would allow them to move forward.

Enforced family separation has, without doubt, been the most damaging and cruel condition of temporary visas. The Howard government designed the conditions of the visa so that people would be hurt where they were most vulnerable, and for many refugees the separation from family has indeed caused them and their family deep and long lasting pain and suffering.

Fathers were forced to remain separated from children and wives for many long years and some are now approaching a decade without seeing their children. Even when a permanent visa is granted, the wait for family reunion can be long, and under current policy there is little opportunity to ever sponsor relatives other than a wife or child.

In 1999 one commentator noted that Philip Ruddock, in his goading of the ALP to support the introduction of TPVs, had turned the temporary refugee visa issue into, “a smelly little litmus test of whether the ALP is willing to take tough decisions to keep boatpeople away from our shores”.

The sad consequence of years of political manoeuvering between the coalition and the ALP, competing to see who could be the toughest on boat arrivals, has been that thousands of traumatised and vulnerable refugees have been made to suffer greatly and unnecessarily. It must stop now.

It will never be clearer than now that temporary protection visas destroy human beings and they should never again be reinvented as part of Australian policy. I hope both parties are listening now. Read the full story

MOHAMMAD DAWLAT HUSSAIN is among 1000 refugees who can apply for family members to join them in Australia after the Federal Government scrapped temporary protection visas in Tuesday night's budget.

Previously, asylum seekers found to be in genuine need of protection under Australia's international obligations were confined to temporary protection visas, or TPVs, which restricted their rights.
The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Evans, yesterday said these people would gain permanent residency.

"The previous government just left people in detention to rot," Mr Evans said.

Of the 11,000 people issued temporary visas by the Coalition, 9800 were eventually granted permanent protection.

"The only impact of the policy was to hurt these people in the meantime," Mr Evans said.

Refugees on TPVs had no guarantee of staying in Australia and were banned from travelling to their home country. They could not bring spouses and children to Australia and had limited access to settlement services such as English lessons, employment advice and income help.

Mr Hussain, 28, said the abolition was a relief to himself and his sister, who had not seen her husband, the father of her three children, for seven years.

"It's just lifting a lot of weight for me because it used to be very time-consuming and stressful to apply for permanent residency," Mr Hussain said.

The darkest aspect of his three-year detention on the Pacific island of Nauru was not knowing when or if his term would end.

Mr Hussain fled the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1999 and stayed in Iran for two years before travelling by boat to Ashmore Reef, off the northwest coast of Australia.

"We are finally welcome within Australian society," he said.

The advocacy group, Refugee Council of Australia, also applauded the decision.

But Opposition immigration spokesman Chris Ellison said dropping the TPVs sent a "clear message to people smugglers that Australia's borders are open for business". Read the full story

Bruce Elder, reviewer

The human face to the hardships endured by refugees.
_____________________________
Author Najaf Mazari and Robert Hillman
Genre Society/Politics, Biography
Publisher Insight Publications
Pages 259
RRP $24.95
____________________________

Robert Hillman is a writer who deserves to be as well known as Winton or Grenville. He is a superb stylist and his unusual book, The Boy In The Green Suit, deserved to win the Australian National Biography Award in 2005.

Now, quietly furious about the Howard government's treatment of refugees and determined to put a human face to the hardships endured by refugees, he has found an Afghani rug-maker, Najaf Mazari, and crafted his personal story into a moving tale of courage and tenacity.

This is the story of how Mazari, when confronted with persecution and possible death at the hands of the Taliban, decided to leave his wife and young child, flee across the border to Pakistan, make his way across the Indonesian archipelago, catch a leaky boat, reach Darwin and then be buffeted by the overtly political and less-than-happy experiences of being transported to Adelaide and the refugee camp at Woomera before being recognised as a legitimate refugee, settling in Melbourne, establishing an Afghan carpet and rug shop and finally bringing his wife and child to Australia.

Hillman never strays from Mazari's voice. Thus the story sounds like a monologue, written down verbatim. But there are subtleties.

It is carefully and artistically structured. And it contains lots of criticisms of the war in Afghanistan and the treatment of refugees.

Here, for example, is a careful critique of both Russia and the US in Afghanistan, heavy with understated sarcasm: "We Afghans had the undesired honour of being among the first human beings on earth to be blown to pieces by this state-of-the-art Russian weaponry."

Here, too, is a sense of the overpowering boredom of waiting in the middle of the Australian desert for some bureaucrat in Canberra to make a decision; of the stupidity of the government. It deserves to be read by everyone who was ashamed at the way Australia treated refugees through the Howard years. Read the full story

The Age

So this guy is walking down the street when another guy riding a bike shouts at him: "What are you looking at, you black f---wit?" The object of his attention stops, turns around and shouts back: "Hey … I'm brown!"The offender is so surprised by the witty comeback that he falls off his bike. "It serves him right for being colour blind," quips comedian Nazeem Hussain.

It might sound like the stuff of stand-up comedy, but it's a true story. It happened to Hussain just last month, as he was walking beside the River Torrens in South Australia. And, let's just say Hussain wasn't exactly forthcoming in helping the man get to his feet. "I basically laughed and ran," he says. "I didn't feel the need to help someone who called me a black f---wit."

Hussain, 22, recounts the story in good humour, and he includes the anecdote in his show, Fear of a Brown Planet, in which he co-stars with Aamer Rahman, and which is on at the Comedy Festival (The Age is a sponsor of the festival).

Here's another true story. When Hussain's sister started to wear the hijab, she noticed that some people began speaking to her five times more slowly. "Maybe they thought that the hijab blocks out understanding of English," he muses.

But all this poking fun at Muslims — and poking fun at people who poke fun at Muslims — has a point. "Laughter is universal," Hussain says. "You can talk to all audiences with humour. If you can laugh together, you can live together."

The first week of the show sold out, so clearly there are plenty of people who want to hear the message. But is this message simply preaching to the converted?

Research for VicHealth last year exposed the contradictions in Australian society over attitudes to race.

On the one hand, most people rejected the "socio-biological" arguments for racial superiority that prevailed in previous centuries. But more than one-third of the 4000 surveyed believed there were certain ethnic groups that did not "fit" into Australian society. The most commonly named groups were Muslims, Middle Easterners and Asians.

Those who are the most "visible" in their difference are most likely to be discriminated against, says Hass Dellal, executive director of the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

"Either you're Asian or indigenous or a Muslim wearing a hijab, or so-called Middle Eastern in appearance or African," he says. "Some people blatantly discriminate because they see these people as something different."
What's more difficult to nail, though, is whether the incidence of racism — or racial discrimination — is growing. The numbers paint a mixed picture. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission received 140 race discrimination complaints between July and December last year, and expects the number for 2007-08 to surpass the 250 of the previous financial year.

Its state counterpart, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, had 155 complaints on the basis of race in 2006-07, a fall from the 196 reported the previous year.

A 2006 Victoria University study of 500 refugees who came to Australia through the humanitarian entry program found a quarter had experienced racism and discrimination regularly. But, says one of the senior researchers, Associate Professor Michele Grossman, 90% felt positive about living in Australia.

They believed government policy had been favourable in terms of welcoming refugees. The discrimination was felt in their everyday interactions in areas such as housing, transport and education.

There seems to be agreement among the experts that Australia generally is one of the least racist countries in the world. Instead, they point to "pockets of racism" across the country.

"We are seeing more complaints," says federal Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma. "Does that mean there is more racism or does it mean people are now realising they have an avenue to complain?" Even Calma can't answer the question, but he says the strong support for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's recent apology to the Aboriginal stolen generations suggests the vast majority of Australians are not racist.

Monash University politics lecturer Waleed Aly, a former board member of the Islamic Council of Victoria, confirms the complexity: "Australian society tends to proceed on assumptions that are fundamentally fair. That said, you'd be hard pressed to find a migrant group that hasn't suffered discrimination in Australia."

A version of this paradox was articulated this week for the Guardian newspaper by black British TV presenter Trisha Goddard, now living back in Britain after working in Australia in the 1980s and '90s.

"When I first went out to Australia, I thought it was the most racist place in the world. Every day was a struggle. It was blatant 'send her back where she came from' stuff. But I started rating, and the thing about the Australians is once you've battled through and made it, they don't care. It's like class: there is no class, you can be as rough as guts, but you make your money and you can sit next to the Queen. In England, you'll always be on the outside."

Racism has long had a place in Australian culture. The White Australia policy, which from the 1850s favoured European immigration, was finally buried in the 1970s by the Whitlam government.

But still, the issue has reared its head through different waves of migration. In generations past it has targeted migrants from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Witness the ugliness of the 2005 Cronulla riots, in which young Anglo and Lebanese men clashed. Or reports of Muslim schoolgirls being harassed after the September 11 attacks. Or the unforgettable image 15 years ago of Aboriginal footballer Nicky Winmar holding up his football jumper and proudly pointing to the colour of his skin in response to racist jibes from spectators. (The AFL has since taken a strong stand against racism.)

Most recently, a hostel in Alice Springs was accused of racism after refusing accommodation to some Aboriginal women.

There were 119 anti-Semitic incidents in Victoria reported to the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission last year. "I've heard of situations where parents have told their kids 'don't wear the skullcap'," says chairman John Searle. "That is very distressing that here in Victoria in 2008 there can be concern and a fear of displaying your identity."

Last year, former prime minister John Howard, who regularly spoke of "integration", was accused of snubbing multiculturalism when he dropped "Multicultural Affairs" from the Immigration Department's title.

In the months before last year's election, then immigration minister Kevin Andrews — the minister who introduced the citizenship test featuring questions about Australian "values" — fuelled the flames when he expressed doubts about the ability of the Sudanese to integrate in Australia. He was quickly howled down.

Laurie Ferguson, the current parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs, became the latest politician to bring race to the spotlight with his recent comments that refugees should be spread across a wider range of suburbs to avoid "white flight" from state schools — where Anglo-European parents apparently avoid government schools with large numbers of students from other racial backgrounds.

The words have been condemned by ethnic groups — Peter van Vliet of the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria says they are "inflammatory, provocative, simplistic".

Ferguson last week said he did not believe there was any more evidence of racism in Australia "than any other country on this earth".

But the Government is reviewing the effectiveness of gestures such as Harmony Day, set up by the Howard government, and Ferguson wonders whether more attention should be directed to the issues that are "more hard-edged and intense".

Words, perhaps, that could be used to describe the tensions that flared in Dandenong and Noble Park last year. Senior Constable Joey Herrech was among those whose job it was to put out the flames. A police multicultural liaison officer, he watched the media storm brew after the bashing death of Sudanese teenager Liep Gony near Noble Park train station in October. Gony's death, allegedly at the hands of Anglo-Australian attackers, and the subsequent comments made by Kevin Andrews, sparked broad debate about the "settlement" issues of African refugees, and community outcry on both sides of the ideological divide.

The tension prompted police to install a brawler van and temporary police unit at the train station and step up patrols. The police have since reported a drop in crime around Dandenong and Noble Park.

"It's a really unfortunate way to summarise it, but (Gony's death) was the pinnacle. Something had to change," Herrech says. "The really unfortunate part was that someone died, but what it has done is clean the slate."

But in 20-year-old Angok Leuth's eyes, the events of last year did little to improve relations between police and Sudanese youth. The environmental science student and his cousin arrived on their own as refugees from Sudan's civil war in 2005, winding up in Dandenong, where many of the country's 23,000 Sudanese-born residents live. He was nearing the end of his VCE studies at Dandenong High School last year when the death of classmate Gony turned the public spotlight on him and other tall, dark young men like him.

"They put the blame on us when we were the victims," he says. "Even at the shopping centre or at the local station people were giving us looks like we were bad people or we were trying to bring things to Australia that weren't Australian, like we brought gangs to Australia."

Racial discrimination had been heaped on Leuth well before Gony's death. So when a young girl threw a tennis ball at him one day because "you're so dark I can't see you", Leuth simply notched it up as one of many negative encounters. Most hurtful, he says, is continually being defined as a refugee. "I feel like this is a home to me, but I don't understand why I'm called a refugee when I've got my Australian citizenship," he says.

Also feeling disconnected are the mostly Lebanese-Australian Muslims Fadi Rahman works with in Sydney's western suburbs. For these young men and women, being called a "wog" is commonplace. So is being called a terrorist. It all adds up to an insidious type of "ignorant racism" that Rahman says is evident across Australia. "There is a new scapegoat now for people and it just happens to be in the form of the Arab Muslim community," he says.

EACH area has its own unique issues, and there is no one way to combat racism, researchers say. The University of NSW is mapping racism across Australia, led by chief investigator Professor Kevin Dunn. Dandenong, for example, has to grapple with the multitude of ethnic groups living side by side and the impact that the rapid growth of emerging communities such as the Sudanese and Afghans has on the area's more ethnically homogenous neighbours.

In the case of Camden, on the outskirts of south-western Sydney, community outrage recently blocked proposals for an Islamic school in the area. Dunn pinpoints the discriminatory attitudes among some Camden residents as due to a lack of exposure to diversity. "There's nothing in their everyday lives, or not much, to confront their stereotypical image of Muslims."

Dr Helen Szoke, chief executive of the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, says racial discrimination in the workplace is a big issue, too. She has heard of Muslim people Anglicising their names on their resumes to improve their chances of getting a job interview.

A study of 38 migrants from Bangladesh and India tells of migrants' frustration at their skills or overseas qualifications not being fully recognised. One man who had been a senior mechanical engineer in Bangladesh could get work in Australia only as a mechanic. Some told stories of less experienced people getting promotions ahead of them. But, says study author Dr Ahmed Munib, an honorary research fellow at the Barwon Psychiatric Research Unit at Melbourne University, "Some people actually succeeded after lots of struggle and hardship … once they got their qualifications in Australia they had been able to proceed in careers quite quickly."

Amid the persisting debate about new migrants and their settlement needs and abilities there has been one enduring race-based concern — Aboriginal Australia. At various times dispossesed, dispersed and denied the right to vote and, in some cases, rear their own children, Aboriginal Australians have, since European settlement, experienced racism at its rawest.

"You only have to look at the conditions Aboriginal people live in in regional, remote and metropolitan Australia. No other Australians endure those conditions," says National Indigenous Times editor Chris Graham.

That discrimination also takes more subtle forms. In one case reported to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, an indigenous woman with an above-average income was looking for private rental accommodation in a country town and had applied for several properties managed by one real estate agent. Each time she applied, she was told it was no longer available, although she later discovered the properties were still vacant.

But Kevin Rudd's apology might be the stimulus for changing attitudes towards indigenous Australians. Waleed Aly says it tapped into a sense of unease that perhaps Australians weren't doing all they could on race. That, he says, suggests that we are aware of the criticism that Australia has problems with racism and that we want to shed that image.

"I would argue that Australia is among the least racist societies on earth," he says. But he has no doubt that Australia is perceived poorly by other countries on matters of race. He believes past policies on refugees, Tampa, the stolen generations, the White Australia policy, Hansonism and Cronulla have damaged Australia's reputation — somewhat unfairly.

"The reality of Australian society is complex, but the international vision of Australian society is usually simple." And superficial.

One leading multiculturalism researcher, the Australian National University's James Jupp, argues it is the outdated images — of Anzac, of battlers and of the outback — that should be a starting point for change. "Lots of countries have myths that are out of date, in fact most countries do, but it makes people who weren't born here feel that the country doesn't belong to them," he says.

Meanwhile, Nazeem Hussain will continue to use humour to educate people. His comedy show includes "workshops for whities". For instance: "Just because I'm at the petrol station, doesn't mean I work here. So don't look at me sideways like I'm supposed to jump over the counter and start serving you."

Carol Nader is social affairs editor. Dewi Cooke is social affairs reporter.

■ Top-level public service jobs four times more likely to be held by a person from an English speaking background.

■ A 2004 study comparing job outcomes for migrants three years after arrival found that 47% of those from Britain and the US were using their qualifications, compared with 3% of migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds.

■ 92.5% of Victorian Government appointments to boards and authorities are of people who do not identify as being from a culturally or linguistically diverse background.

■ 9% of Victorian local government councillors born in non-English speaking background countries.

■ A 1999 study found that only 3% of roles in Australian television drama are filled by actors born in non-English speaking countries. Read the full story

(Documentary Australia Foundation)

Molly And Mobarak
Molly and Mobarak is the story of Mobarak Tahiri, a young Hazara refugee, who is living in the town of Young, in rural NSW. Categorized as an illegal immigrant by the Australian government, Mobarak was initially detained in the Curtin Detention Centre near Derby, WA, before being granted a Temporary Protection Visa
(TPV) that allowed him to live and work in the general Australian community and then return home once the visa expiresMobarak and a small group of other Hazaras are working at the Burrangong abattoirs. They are paid slightly above award wages and their English skills are improving rapidly—largely due to the efforts of volunteer English teachers organized by Ann Bell, an instructor at the local TAFE. Despite several racist incidents, Mobarak has begun to feel a part of the local community and has become especially close to Lyn Rule and her daughter Molly. Like a number of other local people, they have befriended the Hazara refugees and offered them support.

Mobarak’s life becomes even more complicated when he falls in love with Molly, a teacher at the local high school. However Molly insists that she has a boyfriend in another town and Lyn tells Mobarak that he and Molly cannot be together. The documentary creates a delicate tension as the hopes and uncertainty of the relationship between Molly and Mobarak run parallel to the hopes and uncertainties Mobarak feels as he waits to know whether he will be allowed to stay permanently in Australia.

When the film starts there are ninety Hazara refugees in Young. However by the conclusion of the documentary their number has dropped to about thirty-three of a population of 9000 residents in the town. The publicity they generated has made them visible in the community. In cities they just meld in with multicultural Australia and no-one notices them, whereas in Young they stand out. People know who they are. They are conspicuous in the community Mobarak is one of the Hazaras who leaves the town after the Bali Bombing causes more racial incidents in the town.

However, in Mobarak’s case the main motivating factor is the realisation that his relationship with Molly is not going to produce the results he wanted. On top of that his Temporary Protection Visa is running out. Mobarak goes to see his lawyer in Sydney to prepare his case to why he should remain in Australia. The film ends with the case unresolved and Mobarak only having 6 months left on his visa.
Impact
The Director's Statement

I set out to begin making this film in 2002 with the aim of putting ‘a human face on the refugee situation in Australia’. I wanted to pursue the themes of human rights, refugees, racism and rural communities in a compassionate and thought-provoking way. The Government at the time had a tendency to vilify the asylum seekers, calling them “illegals, boat people, queue jumpers” and other derogatory terms, I felt the film I was going to make would play a significant role in humanising refugees and asylum seekers.

The film deals with what it means to be a refugee and confront loss and separation, but in particular with the confronting issue of racism in Australia. Racism exists in all country towns and cities in Australia, but so do generous, out-going and compassionate Australians who supply a psychological shelter for strangers in their midst’. The film projects ‘the possibility of a “future Australia” that’s built on the idea of hope and caring, rather than fear’.

There are many towns across Australia where Afghans are employed – in Abattoirs, as fruit and vegetable pickers, farm labourers etc. Temporary Protection Visa holders provide a cheap and reliable labour pool for towns and country areas railing against population drift to the city. Initial hostility and suspicion has largely given way to respect and genuine affection for the newcomers. Small towns would like to keep their temporary refugees. Strong representations have been made to the Federal Government by Coalition MP’s and local government bodies.

The film has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people in Australia and overseas, in the US, Canada and Europe. Most people saw it on television, but others would have seen it at film festivals, in cinemas or in small group discussion screenings. The film had it’s premiere at the Sydney Film Festival in 2003. and was then distributed to refugee support networks throughout the country. These groups, in particular Amnesty and Rural Australians for Refugees, organised screenings in country halls and cinemas across Australia. I attended many of these screenings - from Glebe in Sydney, to Perth Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne, to big towns like Mildura and small towns like Gerringong on the NSW South Coast. At all screenings the film resonated powerfully with audiences, especially in evoking strong sympathy for the plight of refugees. The film had a cinema season in Sydney and Melbourne and generated a lot of publicity in the media, especially in the national press. Articles were written about the film and also about the general plight of Afghani Hazaras on Temporary Protection Visas.

I believe the publicity surrounding the film fuelled a general concern already present within the community about the government’s unsympathetic and heavy-handed treatment of the refugees. Criticism was coming from both sides of the political spectrum. It ranged from political activists on the left of the Labor Party including Democrats like Andrew Bartlett, to National Party MP’s concerned about what would happen to rural industries like meat processing and fruit-picking that were so heavily reliant on refugee labour for their on-going viability.

The fact that the film had a critical part to play in this debate was confirmed for me when a request that it be screened by Tanya Plibersek, a Labor back-bencher, in Parliament House, Canberra was initially turned down. The screening was refused on the grounds that the film was “critical of the Government’s policy, selectively quotes the Prime Minister and promotes the theme of widespread resistance to government policy,” according to Joint House Department executive leader Bob Wedgwood w on the advice of Speaker Neil Andrew. After the letter of refusal was leaked to the press, the ban was immediately overturned “Molly & Mobarak” is not a shrill political advocacy film, but by being a love story, it allows for the issues to emerge in a much more subtle way. The honesty, directness and intimacy produces an emotional affect on audiences which effects change in small and personal ways Read the full story

Racial and religous tensions rife in Afghan community
(The Age)

Religious and racial hatred dividing Afghans has been transferred to Melbourne, with one group of refugees saying they are being persecuted by other ethnic Afghans.

Some Hazara Afghans living in Melbourne on temporary protection visas fear that other members of the Afghan community will tell immigration authorities they are not genuine refugees.

Fahim Fayazi, a Hazara refugee, said he had heard of people who feared talking with non-Hazara Afghans in case they tried to detect a suspect accent that could be taped and reported to the Immigration Department
"The discrimination (against us) from the non-Hazara community happens because we are different," Mr Fayazi said. "We are Shia (Muslims). They are Sunni (Muslims). We look more like south-east Asians. They look more like Indian people."

Hazara refugee Mohammed Arif Fayazi, who has lived in Melbourne on a temporary protection visa for two years, discussed the issue with caution for fear of creating further tensions, but agreed that Afghan tribal frictions based on religion and race had surfaced here.

"There are good people and bad people in both communities," he said.

The Hazaras, the third-largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, are the only Shia Muslims in a country of Sunnis and have historically been subjected to massacres, most recently by the Pashtun-controlled Taliban.

Afghanistan expert William Maley, from the University of New South Wales, talks of a traditional hatred of the Hazara by other Afghans that has had "all the ferocity (with which) Hitler despised the Jews".

One Afghan community leader admitted to The Age that he had dobbed in Hazaras to the Immigration Department, telling authorities the newcomers did not speak the local dialect, did not know anything about Afghan culture, and urging that they be expelled to free up more places for "real" Afghans.

While many in the wider Afghan community are said to help new arrivals, regardless of their ethnic background, some see the Hazaras as illegals taking visas at the expense of their own relatives and friends.

One non-Hazara Afghan leader told The Age this did not go down well in the non-Hazara community, particularly as they believe many of the Hazaras now being released from detention centres on temporary protection visas were really Pakistanis.

But community leader Wadir Fafi, a Pashtun, who is also a director of the South East Migrant Centre in Dandenong, denied there was discrimination against Hazaras.

He said he knew of nobody who had dobbed in suspect Hazaras. However, he described those who had arrived in Australia by boat in the past two years as illegals and believed the majority were from Pakistan.

"I, as a Pashtun, am proud to offer my service to the Hazara Afghani," Mr Fafi said. "It is the same with other Pashtuns in Melbourne."

The hand of friendship, however, does not extend to those found to be Pakistani. Mr Fafi said perceptions of friction within the wider Afghan community arose from a general tendency among Afghans to disagree.

He said there were 14 Afghan associations in Melbourne, five of them for Pashtuns.

There are estimated to be 800 Hazara Afghans living in Victoria, out of a total Afghan population of almost 3500. They live largely around Dandenong and work in factories, and on building sites and farms.

But the Immigration Department, which believes many could be Pakistani, is now investigating to determine how many may have fraudulently gained visas. Read the full story

Sarah Stephen
Green Left Weekly

Malyar and Sayar Dehsabzi are migration agents and interpreters, a lucrative business which attracts many money-hungry carpet-baggers who want to make an easy buck out of people's desperation and their ignorance of the law.

In a article in the September 25 Australian Financial Review, Julie Macken revealed some damning information about these Afghan-Australian brothers, who are from Afghanistan's Pashtun majority. Members of Australia's Afghan community told Macken that in New Delhi in the mid-1980s the brothers worked for Afghan warlord and Osama bin Laden supporter Ghulbuddin Hekmatyar. The AFR was told of the brothers' expressed hostility to Hazaras.Despite his background, Malyar Dehsabzi was employed by the immigration department as an interpreter at Australia's refugee detention centre on Nauru, handling appeals for asylum by Afghan Hazaras. An International Organisation for Migration officer who worked on Nauru at the time told the AFR: “Interpreters were assigned 15 or so cases at a time. Malyar would regularly declare 10 out of his 15 to be Pakistani. Other interpreters found either none or one at most.”

Macken pointed out: “The consequences of a declaration of ethnicity could prove fatal to an asylum seeker's chances of finding protection in Australia, because these remarks would become part of the application process.”

The Dehsabzi brothers did far more than just interpret. In the second half of 2002, with the government's launch of its plan to voluntarily repatriate Afghan asylum seekers with the lure of $2000, “Malyar began sending emails from Afghanistan to various people on Nauru telling them how peaceful and safe the country was”.

Green Left Weekly spoke to Hazara refugee Riz Wakil, who had Malyar as his interpreter when he was detained in Curtin detention centre in 1999. “Malyar was very helpful for me, but later on he contacted one of my friends and told him: `Any Afghan from Afghanistan is okay, but any who have lived in Pakistan, I would never help them'.”

In Wakil's view, when the government cranked up its propaganda that refugees were not genuine or were not from Afghanistan, the Dehsabzi brothers started trying to convince the government that many refugees weren't from Afghanistan.

“They did their best to try to create hurdles and make it as hard as possible for Hazaras to get refugee status”, said Wakil. “Now they see that we're getting visas, that they can't stop it, they're trying to cash in on it.”

Starting in February this year, when the government began reviewing temporary protection visas, Wakil thinks the Dehsabzi brothers realised it was a good time to make money. They began offering their services to the Hazara community again, charging $3500 to help submit a new application. Wakil recalled that some of his friends came to him and said they had handed over $1000 or $2000, only to realise that “this guy doesn't know anything”.

The Dehsabzi brothers rate as perhaps the most outrageous example of making money out of the suffering of migrants and refugees, but they are not alone. Wakil recounted an example of a Hazara translator who charges asylum seekers $200-$350 for each typed page. Read the full story