GOVERNMENT NEWS     |     home
Detainees reject Afghan visit offer
By Rebecca DiGirolamo and Benjamin Haslem
The Australian
08feb02
AFGHAN detainees are expected to refuse to meet the Afghan government officials planning to visit the Woomera Detention Centre, saying the delegation would be nothing more than a political stunt.

"The invitation of talks by the interim Afghan government is no more than a political propaganda," Woomera Afghan detainee delegate Hassan Varasi told The Australian.
"It's a blood trade to get money from Australia.
"This invitation is only for show for the rest of the world," Mr Varasi said.
Afghanistan's interim government last week offered to send a delegation to Woomera within weeks to negotiate with Afghan detainees over the federal Government's cash offer to return them home.
A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said the Australian High Commissioner in Islamabad, Howard Brown, met with interim government officials in Kabul earlier this week to follow up the offer.
It is understood discussions over the Woomera visit were continuing yesterday.
Mr Varasi said at least 200 of Woomera's Afghan detainees were Hazaras -- a minority ethnic group persecuted for decades by various ruling Afghanistan regimes
Mr Varasi, a 27-year-old Afghan detained for the past six months, said the Hazara could not safely return to Afghanistan, irrespective of the downfall of the Taliban.
"We cannot trust this type of government ... which has no capacity to control the warlords in Afghanistan," he said.
Mr Varasi said most of the detainees would prefer a visa to a ticket home: "We don't come to Australia to find money to go back as beggars to Afghanistan."
he said the visit could trigger renewed protests from the hundreds of Afghans who staged a 16-day hunger strike last month.
Immigration Detention Advisory Group acting chairman Ray Funnell and member Paris Aristotle returned to Woomera yesterday to continue talks with Afghan, Iranian and Iraqi detainees.
Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock yesterday claimed Australia would be flooded by illegal immigrants if the view of the human rights watchdog prevailed.
The minister was responding to a scathing report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission into the treatment of children at Woomera.
"There is a view in the minds of some that people should be able to arrive in Australia without authority and obtain entry," Mr Ruddock told the Seven network.
"Essentially, if you adopted the view of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission on these matters, that would occur."

 home