Fleeing War, Refugees Met New Strife

By RAYMOND BONNER
New York Times
4 April 2004

HAMILTON, New Zealand - Sakina was not yet 3 when she landed with her mother on the tiny island of Nauru in the remote Pacific, joining more than a thousand other war refugees in a strange outpost.

When they left Afghanistan for what became a journey of more than 8,000 miles, Nauru was not the desired destination. The Australian Navy, acting to keep them from entering the country, forcibly put them there. For going along, Nauru got $10 million.

"We should not call it a camp," Sajjad Sarwari, Sakina's uncle, said of the place where he spent two years behind a chain-link fence. "We should call it a big prison. It is fenced like a zoo."

Like Mr. Sarwari, some of the refugees have finally found a welcome in New Zealand. Their tales have begun to come out, of the smugglers they relied on and, on Nauru, of isolation and hopelessness, along with brutal heat, mosquitoes and little water.

Nauru, an area of 8 square miles and 12,000 people, saw its population explode with refugees as a consequence of Australia's policy.

In August 2001, Prime Minister John Howard of Australia, determined to halt what had become a flood of boat people trying to reach his country's shores, turned away a leaking refugee boat called the Tampa.

A few weeks later, he said Iraqi refugees on another ship were throwing their children overboard. The statement proved to be untrue, but Mr. Howard's tough stance on refugees was popular and helped him win re-election. He called on other nations to take the refugees, and Nauru obliged.

From one perspective, the Howard policy has worked: the flood of illegal refugees into Australia has abated. But many Australians say the price has been too high and the damage to Australia's image incalculable.

Nauru "is indistinguishable from the detention of people in Guantánamo Bay but for this difference: the people being held in Guantánamo Bay are suspected of serious offenses," a prominent Sydney lawyer, Julian Burnside, said recently in a speech. These refugees, he went on, are not suspected of any offense, "unless it could be an offense to try to save your own life when fleeing Saddam Hussein or the Taliban."

Andrew Bartlett, a member of the Australian Senate, said, "The despair and the depression, that's really the core of the problem." He has visited the Nauru camp twice, most recently in January. The physical conditions for the refugees are probably not much worse than for the average Nauruan, but that is not saying much because Nauru is a "bankrupt nation," he said. "The real problem is the isolation and the fact that they've got no idea when they will get out."

Mr. Bartlett said that he was the only Australian political leader to have visited the refugees, and that even Australian lawyers who wanted to volunteer their services had not been allowed into Nauru.

International refugee officials agreed generally with Mr. Bartlett's assessment. the Australian government has repeatedly said that the refugees are being treated humanely. The Nauru government declined to comment, saying only that it would not issue a visa to a journalist. Nauru has refused to allow journalists on the island, and has even limited lawyers from having access to the refugees.

For Sakina, the journey to Nauru began in June 2001, when she left her village with her uncle and her mother, Sediqa. Her father had fled a year earlier. Mr. Sarwari, who was 18 or 19 - he is not sure of his birth date - paid a smuggler $10,500 for the three of them.

Mr. Sarwari wanted to go to Iran. The smuggler told him Australia was better. Mr. Sarwari had no idea where Australia was.

When they reached Pakistan, the smuggling ring provided them with false passports. From Karachi, they flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The next day, they were put on a boat with more than 40 other Iraqi and Afghan refugees and sailed across the Straits of Malacca.

"I was 100 percent sure it was going to sink," Mr. Sarwari said.

They arrived in Medan, Indonesia, the next morning. A day later, they flew to Jakarta.

They landed without instructions and did not speak the language. "I just followed the people," he said. "I was really confused." A young woman approached and handed him a mobile phone. On the other end, a man speaking Dari, his native language, told Mr. Sarwari to go with the woman.

From Jakarta, they rode for 15 hours on a bus to Surabaya, followed by a two-hour taxi ride to a village. There they found more than a hundred other Afghan and Iraqi refugees. A week later, they boarded rickety boats and were told they would reach Australia in a week.

There were about 125 refugees, more than half women and children. The boat was so crowded that they were forced to sit with their knees up against their chests.

Nine days later, they arrived at the deserted Ashmore Reef, a nature preserve in Australian waters. The navy took them into custody. Two nights later, another refugee boat arrived, with about 100 Iraqis. The navy intercepted it as well.

Two weeks later, they were all put on another ship. On Oct. 15, 2001, they landed at Nauru.

"It was unbelievable, and horrible," Mr. Sarwari said. "The weather was very, very hot. There was only enough water to wash the face." There were fans, but there was no power most of the time. "There were so many of mosquitoes, they bit us there, there, there," he said, moving his hands over his arms and legs.

Learning that his brother, Sakina's father, was in Australia on a temporary protection visa, Sajjad Sarwari wrote to him. Mrs. Sarwari and Sakina applied for asylum in Australia so the family could be reunited. They were turned down three times.

One of Sakina's friends in the camp, Firishta, had a similar journey. She arrived in Nauru on Dec. 31, 2001, with her mother, Latifa Najafi, whose husband had fled a year before she did. After he left, their two sons, ages 5 and 7, grew ill and died, Mrs. Najafi said.

"If I stay, I know she will die," Mrs. Najafi said, explaining why she fled with Firishta, just 2 years old.

The smugglers took them first to Pakistan, where she said she was given "a small notebook with my picture and my daughter's picture." It was a passport.

They flew to Indonesia. There, she got a letter from her husband, delivered by the Red Cross. He was in Australia, free after eight months in detention, and he was trying to find them.

The smuggler in Indonesia loaded Mrs. Najafi and Firishta onto a boat with scores of refugees. The boat sprang a leak. People jumped overboard. Two drowned. Mrs. Najafi jumped into the water with her daughter, but they were separated in the dark. Waves pushed Mrs. Najafi to the Indonesian shore, where a man grabbed her. Another rescued Firishta.

A month later, the smugglers sent them off in another boat. The Australian Navy intercepted the boat and escorted it to Nauru.

Eventually, with the United Nations high commissioner for refugees acting as interlocutor, New Zealand gave residency to the Najafis. They arrived in November.

The Sarwaris also won New Zealand residency, and the mother and daughter arrived on the same plane. The government also gave residence to Sajjad Sarwari, because he had been Sakina's guardian for so long.

The two families now live in this town, about an hour's drive south of Auckland, in houses provided by the government.

Firishta, now 6, with deep brown eyes and brown hair in bangs, lay on the floor with a pencil and pad of paper, practicing what she is learning in school - writing letters and numbers.

"I would like my daughter to become a lawyer," Mrs. Najafi said. "Then she can help people fairly, and know about human rights. Because when we were in Nauru, no one thought we were human."

There are still 350 refugees on Nauru, nearly 100 of them children, she said. "I am here now, and I am happy," she said. "But when I think about people of Nauru, about the children of Nauru, I am so sad."

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