Asylum seekers speak out at Avondale
Bianca Reynaud
Public relations assistant
Avondale College of Higher Education
Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia
Three refugees shared stories of courage and hardship during a campaign by students at Avondale to protest the detention of children seeking asylum in Australia.
Iranian Kurd Omid and Avondale international poverty and development studies students protest the detention of children seeking asylum in Australia. Credit: Brenton Stacey.
The most visible of the three Behind Bars events hosted by international poverty and development studies students and their lecturer Brad Watson: a mock detention centre for visiting school groups, where two asylum seekers shared stories about the difficulties of their long journeys and their reasons for coming to Australia.
“I came to Australia for a better life,” says Omid, who almost died on Nauru after fasting for 50 days. “We Kurdish people are persecuted in Iran.”
Omid has been released from closed detention and now lives in an Australian community on a bridging visa. Despite being highly skilled and willing to work and learn English, it is illegal for him to earn an income or enrol in paid study. “Asylum seekers have been politicised as undeserving illegals,” says Brad. “But when we make time to hear their stories, it touches our humanity.”
Brad’s students collected 220 signed petitions requesting the government reconsider offshore detainment children asylum seekers in closed detention on the basis that it is harmful and costly. Australia is the only signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to detain child asylum seekers in jail-like conditions.
“It’s unjust to detain innocent children behind bars,” says one of the students, Ellyse Brooks. “It would be more ethical and cheaper to give them and their mothers bridging visas and community detention while their claims are considered.” Ellyse and her classmates estimate their campaign, which used legacy and new media, reached about 10,000 people.
Although opinions among staff members and students at Avondale about detainment of children in closed detention are mixed, one staff member wrote: “Thank you for bringing to my attention the plight of people coming to Australia to flee injustice. It makes me ashamed when I think about the way my government treats them.”
Eager to study English and to work, Omid describes looking to the sky for a change but despairing sometimes that “here we have no chance to change our life to better. . . . We live in limbo.”