There are currently 51 people who have been found to be refugees yet face detention for the rest of their lives due to negative ASIO security assessments. Some have been detained for over three years with drastic consequences for their mental health. A number of children are forced to share the same fate because their parents are locked up.<\/p>\n
ASIO claims that they are a threat to Australia\u2019s national security. Their ASIO finding means no other country will accept them, and they are unable to be sent home because they have been classified as refugees. Yet it is the government that has made the decision to keep these refugees in indefinite detention. The Immigration Minister has the power to allow ASIO negative refugees to live in the community, yet has refused to do so. <\/p>\n
A High Court decision in October 2012 held that the government could not deny refugee visas to refugees simply on the basis of ASIO negative security findings. But it did not rule against indefinite detention, and the government has said it will look at other ways to deny such refugees a visa, including on character grounds. The court decision has not led to these refugees being released.<\/p>\n
But as a response to public pressure, the government has appointed retired judge Margaret Stone to carry out a review of ASIO assessments. But ASIO still has the final say, with the ability to ignore recommendations of the reviewer. So far two ASIO negative refugees have had their decisions overturned through the review, leading to the release of the Rahavan family, after ASIO agreed to overturn the findings against both parents. But three other refugees, including mother of three Ranjini, have had their assessments upheld and will remain in detention. <\/p>\n
The review process remains unfair and shrouded in secrecy, with the refugees not allowed to see any of the detailed evidence against them and given \u201creasons\u201d for the decisions only a few short paragraphs long to respond to. <\/p>\n
Who are the ASIO negative refugees?<\/strong><\/p>\n Most of those on ASIO negative assessments are Tamils from Sri Lanka, but they also include Rohingyas (a persecuted ethnic minority from Burma and Bangladesh) an Iranian and an Afghan refugee.<\/p>\n It is clear that many Tamils are given the assessments because of suspected involvement with the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. But the Tamil armed struggle has been confined to Sri Lanka, and a response to the ethnic cleansing and oppression Tamils face there. The Tigers are not designated as a terrorist organisation in Australia. Professor Clive Williams, head of terrorism studies at ANU believes, \u201cThey\u2019ve never done anything here except collecting money and they\u2019ve never posed a threat to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n Former Tamil Tiger fighters have been accepted as refugees in the past without being classified as threats to national security. So it is not clear why ASIO has changed its policy and why so many Tamils are being judged to be a threat. <\/p>\n Refugees can also be deemed a security risk simply because a relative was involved in people smuggling in another country. <\/p>\n Can ASIO assessments be trusted?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are compelling reasons to mistrust ASIO\u2019s decisions. Many suspect that it bases decisions on information from foreign security services, including information on Tamils from the Sri Lankan government. It has admitted to doing this in the past. Information obtained from the very governments refugees are fleeing cannot be trustworthy.<\/p>\n ASIO has got it wrong before. In 1999 it was forced to admit that it had relied solely on reports from the either the Iraqi or Kuwaiti secret police in declaring a refugee from Kuwait \u201cdirectly a risk to Australian national security\u201d. These were the very people whose persecution he had fled. He was held in detention for two years as a result before finally being released. In May this year ASIO also changed its mind and agreed to the release of Manokalo and her son Ragavan, after they had spent a year and a half in detention.<\/p>\n The last two refugees left on Nauru under the Howard government, Muhammad Faisal and Mohammed Sagar, were both given ASIO negative security assessments. ASIO did a second assessment on Faisal after he was hospitalised with mental illness and reversed its decision. Sagar was accepted as a refugee by Sweden despite the ASIO assessment.<\/p>\n Two Tamils given adverse assessments and held in a Melbourne detention centre have attempted to kill themselves. These detainees were already victims of trauma and torture. Kokil, a Sri Lankan refugee fighting ASIO\u2019s secret ruling told Lateline about his waiting ordeal: \u201cI can\u2019t live with this daily torture. It is better to die.\u201d<\/p>\n The story of Ranjini<\/strong><\/p>\n Ranjini, a Tamil woman, fled Sri Lanka with her two boys Pirai, 8, and Kathir, 6. She was found to be a refugee and allowed to live in community detention in Melbourne while her case was being finalised. But in May she was called in to a meeting with the Department of Immigration with her two children and informed she had received a negative security assessment from ASIO. As Michael Gordon wrote in The Age, Ganesh, \u201cwas given five minutes to say goodbye and hug his crying wife and the boys before half a dozen or more security people appeared\u201d. Ranjini and her two boys were whisked away to Villawood detention centre, where they are now locked up indefinitely.<\/p>\n
\nEarlier this year she married Ganesh, who arrived from Sri Lanka himself in 2004, after her first husband died in Sri Lanka\u2019s civil war. After spending over a year living in the community Ranjini won the support of many friends, including Jenny Sims, a church minister in Brisbane who described her as \u201ca loving, caring, gentle person who has been through a lot of trauma\u201d.<\/p>\n