http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=19594&group=webcast
Lies, Lies, Lies: Media seek to discredit Baktiyaris by GLW supporter 10:56pm Tue Aug 27 '02 address: PO Box 394, Broadway, Sydney, NSW 2007, AUSTRALIA phone: Free Call (+61) 1800 634 206 - Fax (+61 2) 9690 1381 [EMAIL PROTECTED] To all you AGE believers: Read the indypendent media or shut up! --- Media seek to discredit Baktiyaris BY SARAH STEPHEN The Murdoch family's Australian newspaper and the Fairfax's Melbourne Age have spent a number of weeks helping the government in its campaign to destroy the credibility of the Baktiyaris, a Hazara family who are seeking asylum in Australia. Ali Baktiyari, the father, was first accused of fraudulently obtaining refugee status in April. The immigration department no longer believed his claim that he was from Afghanistan. The August 14 Australian ran an expose on the �real� story behind the Baktiyaris, titled �No recognition in Afghanistan�. The Age ran a two-week investigation in Afghanistan, armed with photographs of the family, the names of people Baktiyari knew in his village and detailed UN maps of the region. None of the villagers of Charkh or nearby Chaper could identify the Baktiyaris. According to Cyrus Sarang from Sydney's Refugee Action Collective, who has also been acting as Ali Baktiyari's interpreter, the journalist went to the wrong village � he should have gone to Charkh Knowlege. Sarang argues that the apparent inconsistencies were due to misunderstandings, in translation over a satellite phone, about the name of Bakhtiyari's village. A week later, the same two newspapers ran sensationist headlines claiming that Baktiyari had admitted he had spent two years in the Pakistani town of Quetta, something he had earlier denied. The August 23 Melbourne Age ran a story headlined �The truth behind Bakhtiyari�, while the August 23 Australian ran a story titled �Asylum dad `admits Pakistan origin'�. The August 24 Age reported the government's gloating: �Prime Minister John Howard said criticism of the government over its treatment of asylm seekers and the case of Ali Bakhtiyari and his family was unjustified, given the revelations in the Age. `I would just invite people who've been so ready to criticise [immigration minister] Philip Ruddock, and so ready to brand the government as heartless � to have a look at this material and just accept that we're not people who are behaving unreasonably,' he said.� Immigration officials are currently in Quetta investigating the Baktiyari family's background. Ruddock told the August 24 Age that Ali Baktiyari would have between 14 and 28 days to respond to the case against him. The department would then move to cancel his temporary protection visa. Roberto Jorquera from Free the Refugees Campaign in western Sydney told Green Left Weekly: �The government's accusation that Ali Baktiyari is Pakistani is blatantly false, and the media's willingness to offer this up as investigative reporting is a disgrace. He admitted that he spent two years in Pakistan. That doesn't make him Pakistani. �To meet the definition of a refugee under the UN convention, asylum seekers must be outside the country in which they have suffered persecution. Close to 3 million Afghan refugees, fleeing the Taliban from 1996 onwards, spent anywhere up to six years in the cities and refugee camps of Iran and Pakistan. This doesn't invalidate their claims to refugee status, which is based on a well-founded fear of persecution if they were to return to their country.� �Asylum seekers often leave out details of how they arrive in Australia in order to avoid implicating those who have helped them get here�, Jorquera added, �but this shouldn't invalidate their claims. The government and the Refugee Review Tribunal are notorious for rejecting asylum claims when there are inconsistencies. They're not interested in why asylum seekers are scared about revealing their whole story.� >From Green Left Weekly, August 28, 2002. Visit the Green Left Weekly home page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Media misinformation aids Liberal lies BY KERRYN WILLIAMS CANBERRA � On August 11 the Canberra Times printed dramatically incorrect results from a Telepoll on attitudes to refugees. The report claimed that 18% of respondents voted yes and 71% no to the question, �Should children be freed from the detention camps holding asylum seekers?� This result came as a significant shock to many, given the widespread public opposition in Canberra to the federal government's policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. In addition, the total votes didn't add up to 100%, even though the only options given were to vote �yes� or �no�. When inquiries revealed that the wrong poll results had been printed, the Canberra Times was forced to print a retraction. The actual question asked was �Should children be held in detention camps holding asylum seekers?� The real results were that 18% voted yes and 82% voted no. Prior to the printing of the correction, Liberal member of the ACT Legislative Assembly Greg Cornwell used the false poll results to argue against the Legislative Assembly's current hosting of a refugee display. The display, including artwork from ACT school students and information on the refugee issue, was recently forced out of the Tuggeranong library. Cornwell argued in the August 20 Canberra Times that the display �isn't in the interests of community harmony�. He cited the false poll results to indicate a lack of support from the Canberra public for the display. The Canberra Times �correction� box printed on August 20 was less than 7cm x 4cm, far smaller than the original report. From Green Left Weekly, August 28, 2002. Visit the Green Left Weekly home page. http://www.greenleft.org.au/ ---- Further articles in GLW #506: ----------------------------- Ruddock's refugee tribunal biased BY SARAH STEPHEN The August 8 High Court decision that the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) had denied two applicants �natural justice� when its members lied about having studied all the material the applicants had submitted with their initial applications, highlighted the tribunal's role as an instrument of the federal government's policy of denying sanctuary to refugees. [..] Oppose deportations of refugees BY JODY BETZEIN In the past few weeks the immigration department has begun sending letters to those refugees who were first granted temporary protection visas (TPVs) in late 1999, demanding that they must provide justification for their continued residency in Australia. These TPV holders must prove that it is still unsafe for them to return home for fear of political, religious or ethnic persecution. [..] Muslim students denied swim classes [..] Afghan refugee speaks at La Trobe Uni [..] Uni students support `refugee sanctuary' [..] [by the way: 10 bucks for 7 weeks (intro) is cheaper than reading online] . -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
