URGENT APPEAL
PLEASE HELP MANAF WMA1561
LOBBY DIMIA
A daughter growing up without her father
Suite MF 40
Parliament House
Canberra,ACT,2600
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Fax 02 62734144
Compassionate Australians demand that Manaf ,a detainee in Woomera be allowed adequate phone access to his wife and daughters!
We ask that Manaf and fellow detainee Abbas be given their first interview ,without further delay.
We refute the assertion of the Minister for Immigration - Phillip Ruddock that "detainees prolong the process by their own choice of appealing legal decisions".
The Background
2 Iraqi detainees waiting for first interview decisions after nearly 2 years in detention
Manaf (WMA1561), an Iraqi man in Woomera detention centre in sheer desperation at the length of time he has had to wait for even a primary decision about his visa application has asked that someone help him.
Permission was granted by him to make public his name and Woomera number
Manaf left his wife and 4 daughters in Iraq 9 years ago. He crossed the border into Iran but was arrested and jailed there for 7 years, on suspicion of spying since this was during the Iran-Iraq war. After his release he sought asylum in Australia-where he has been for nearly 2 years.
During this time his wife and daughters moved to Syria. Manaf's wife made applications to the Australian embassy in Beirut on his behalf.She met a number of times with representatives of the embassy, and because of this came to the attention of the Syrian secret police. She was arrested three times, and kept for questioning for periods of up to 6 days.
The stress of her father's prolonged absence and her mother's arrests, caused Manaf's eldest daughter to develop psychological/ psychiatric problems, which were described as havving e "lost her personality and part of her memory-her personality became double".
When his wife appealed to the Australian Embassy for help for her daughter-whom she held responsible for her condition-she was told to go away.
This girl,now 18 years old, now requires medication which is prohibitively expensive at U.S.$200 each fortnight.
Manaf expressed his emotional thanks to an Adelaide doctor who has been sending the medication for his daughter, and other friends have been supporting his wife and children financially.
His daughter's doctor in Syria has stressed that she should have as regular contact as possible with her father, since his absence was one of the causes of her problem.
Before the recent fires in Woomera, DIMIA allowed him to make calls to his daughter twice a week for about half an hour each (although he "had to fight for it each time"). However, since phone contact has been severely reduced. At most he can call his family once a week for about 10 minutes. In this time he is barely able to talk to his wife and this daughter. He doesn't get the chance to talk to his other 3 daughters at all. The youngest was 5 months old when he left - she is now 10years old and has no memory of her father.
Manaf had the first interview by his case officer (Wendy Direston) nearly 2 years ago. He still hasn't received a decision from this.His lawyer has told him that there is nothing that can be done about this.When an advocate asked what reasons he was given for the delay-the only one which he was aware of was that the time he spent in jail in Iran (7years) was different from the term he was sentenced to (12years)- so there was some doubt whether these documents were genuine.On subsequent enquiries to this case officer, he has just been told that they are "still checking"-and, sometimes-that the case officer "is on holidays".
Another Iraqi man in Woomera, Abbas (WMA1274) has also been waiting for nearly 2 years for a decision from his first interview.
Manaf has gone on hunger-strike in an effort to get a decision from his interview. This results in threats of being put in "management" (isolation) unless he stops his hunger-strike.
Ali,the Iranian man who was bashed by ACM after he became distraught and self-harmed, is still in isolation after his return to Woomera from Glenside Hospital in Adelaide.His friend Masoud, who supported him,is also still in isolation.Neither of them has been allowed any contact in a week.The irony of it is that the nurse who told Ali he was "less than an animal" is probably leading a very normal life.
