Dec. 2004

The tragedy continues. The Bakhtiyari family, though Afghans, are to be sent 'home' to Pakistan, a place too dangerous for Australians, the government says, to visit. There, Ali believes the Taliban will kill him -- or them -- for what he said about them in his application to come here. There are many Taliban in Pakistan but none in Kabul, where he has asked to go, and Amanda Vanstone won't let him go, although they are Afghans and have that right at least of repatriation.

The Afghan embassy, guardedly, thinks they may be Afghans. The District Governor, plus the Governor of the Province, plus the resident of the local mosque, plus a representative of the village of Charkh, plus relatives of Roqia Bakhtiyari in that village, plus the Transitional Islamic Government of Afghanistan attest that they are who they say they are, citizens, Hazaras, Afghans, with voting rights like Muhzar Ali, Roqia's brother, whom Ruddock sent 'home' too, to Pakistan.

This evidence of their innocence, and our government's unjust treatment of them, is known to DIMIA but has not been 'considered'. They need not consider it ever under Australia's new laws, nor can any court make them do so. No subsequent evidence matters under the law. Had a law like this applied in 1980 to murder trials Lindy Chamberlain would still be in gaol.

Father O'Kelly, headmaster of St Ignatius, has posed with all the school medals the boys won this year including, for Alamdar, the English medal. He is considering a Bakhtiyari Scholarship under which they and other children so disadvantaged may study here as foreign students. The children's schoolfriends ring them daily and read aloud in full the newspaper stories. Anyone may ring them, but their mobile phones have been confiscated and they may not ring back.

Montezar when I rang him was very depressed. 'It is not good,' he said. 'My dad thinks we will be killed when we go there.' Amanda Vanstone, relenting somewhat, has said they will not go before Christmas. She said on Sunday she had said 'my last word on the subject' and on Monday was all over the airwaves, parenthetically admitting she had looked at none of the evidence; no Pakistani birth certificates, for instance, for there weren't any. They must have got mislaid somehow, all eight of them.

In The Age Fred Menzies of Dandenong writes a letter to the editor saying the Bakhtiyaris 'arrived here illegally, lied and abused our legal system' and 'should have been deported long ago.' I write to him saying the family can now sue him, for a possible maximum total of $1.75 million. I dare to hope he will sleep as uneasily as they do for at least a couple of nights.

Amanda Vanstone, though, sleeps very soundly, and will not be moved, Cameron Murphy of the Civil Liberties Union tells me, by any appeal for mercy. One of his clients is being sent back to Algeria even though his three brothers, sent back by Vanstone and Ruddock, were each lynched and killed at the airport. None of them were refugees, Ruddock and Vanstone say, and must therefore be 'sent home'. How do human beings become so detached from reality? I'm told it's to do with not looking at the evidence. If you looked at the evidence, you'd never make a decision. New Zealand too has refused to look at the evidence, not wanting to interfere with Australian 'processes'.

And so the tragedy moves towards its end. An innocent family dumped without money in the streets of Karachi among other beggars will have to sleep rough and learn the language, fearing each night the Taliban will find them. Documentary filmmakers will interview them there, I guess, and a film on the BBC show evidence of Vanstone's folly and the new Australian cruelty to the stranger within our gates.

And this in time will perhaps lead, or perhaps not, to Vanstone and Ruddock's arraignment before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity (the Algerian brothers seem stark evidence of that) and, in their old age, long years in gaol. And so the tragedy moves towards its end. A tragedy for all of us.