Posted on 10/05/2005 5:46:44 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
THE teenage sons of Australia's highest-profile asylum-seekers, the Bakhtiyari family, have apologised to the Howard Government for the "lies" they now say prompted their deportation.
Alamdar, 16, and Montazar, 14, claim to have been "used" by refugee advocates and lawyers, who they say ruined their chances of remaining in Australia and forced their deportation to Pakistan in December last year.
The boys came to national prominence in 2002 when refugee activists deposited them at the British consulate in Melbourne and demanded they be given asylum after facilitating their escape from the now-defunct Woomera detention centre.
In an interview with the ABC's Lateline aired last night, Alamdar and Montazar apologised to the Federal Government, appealing to be allowed to return to Australia to complete their education.
"I would like to say sorry to the Government," Alamdar said, speaking in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
"I don't blame the Australian Government for all this ... I blame those who said they were helping us but they were not."
He blamed "lawyers" and other supporters, saying "they have nothing to do with our family any more". "It was all the advocates, all the lawyers who were forcing us to fight against the Government.
"The lawyers wanted all the asylum-seekers to be free at once ... the Government didn't want it, so they were always blaming the Government for not doing the right thing and they used our family for all that."
He said some of those who claimed to be helping the family had just wanted to "become famous", adding that the same people had not called them once since their deportation 10 months ago.
Montazar said he could now understand what had happened to them, saying it was "not the Australian Government who caused us to be deported".
"It was all caused by our lies," he said.
In the interview, the boys reiterated their claim that they had never lived in the Pakistani city of Quetta, where the Australian Government was convinced their father Ali had worked as a plumber.
But Alamdar acknowledged that the family had endured a peripatetic existence, living and working both in Iran and the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, where they remained for "two to three years" before coming to Australia.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone yesterday emphasised there was a three-year ban preventing the return of people removed from Australia. "There is a risk that if they were allowed to return, they may yet again be unwilling to leave and it would simply re-open the same sorry saga," she said.
Melbourne lawyer Eric Vadarlis, who represented the boys in their failed appeal for refugee status to the British consulate, said it was disgraceful to blame the family's lawyers for their deportation. "If that is what they're saying, it's disgraceful because we went out of our way to help them on a pro bono basis," he said. "We did it for no personal gain ... If they want to kick us in the face, that should be a reflection on them, rather than us."
Father Greg O'Kelly, the boys' principal at St Ignatius College, Adelaide, said he could understand Alamdar's frustrations but felt he was being unfair.
"Alamdar is the one who has been the most bitter about his treatment ... I think he's being very unfair to those lawyers who went to considerable sacrifices on their behalf."
Alamdar's comments were also perceived as an attack on the Refugee Action Coalition, which co-ordinated the British consulate episode.
"They made a plan for us. I wasn't going to go to the British consulate, but the plan was made. We were taken and used," Alamdar said.
Father O'Kelly said he felt it was "a rash mistake" that "gave a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old - who wouldn't even have known where Melbourne was, let alone the British consulate - a national notoriety that wouldn't have done them any good".
Marilyn Shepherd, a para-legal researcher and Bakhtiyari family advocate, said she believed "the consulate catastrophe hurt them the most ... I've never worked out what possessed those people to take them there".
But Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said the consulate invasion "highlighted the hypocrisy of both the Australian and British governments ... I don't think it was a blow to their cause at all".
"I think the Australian public and refugee campaign owes a lot to the Bakhtiyaris for what their suffering revealed about how the Government treated refugees," he said.
Dale West, director of Catholic welfare agency Centacare and a long-time advocate and friend of the Bakhtiyari family, said he hoped to talk to the boys about "where they're coming from".
The family's lawyer, Jeremy Moore, said he acted on behalf of the boys' mother Roqia Bakhtiyari to successfully remove her children - including young daughters Nagina, Samina and Amina - from Woomera.
"They needed the support of the legal profession and they got an outstanding acknowledgment of that need," he said.
Ali Bakhtiyari's solicitor, Paul Boylan, said he did not know to what Alamdar was referring, but "if he had a specific criticism, he hasn't said what it is".
He said that "to make a lot out of what Alamdar says in his current situation ... would take the heat off the Government".
My cursory read is that only the Refugee Action Coalition were acting very badly.
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