A Syrian asylum seeker on Manus Island was repatriated to the war-torn country after almost two years at the detention centre and was assisted in his return to Damascus by Australia’s immigration department.
The man volunteered to return to Syria late in August and his repatriation comes amid growing pressure on the federal government to take more refugees from Syria as the country’s refugee crisis worsens.
The immigration department has gone to extensive lengths to persuade Syrian asylum seekers to return to the country.
Asylum seekers at the Manus Island detention centre sent a petition to the federal government on Monday. They called on European nations to urge Australia to cease their detention.
The letter said: “While your countries have been faced with the critical and difficult crisis due to the constant flow of war-torn people and all the world is witness that the Europe is endeavouring to exercise its humane and moral responsibilities through providing hundreds of thousands of refugees with protection, the Australian government has imprisoned us ... for 26 months on Manus Island in the heart of Pacific Ocean. The situation is utterly inhuman and difficult over this period.”
It continues: “We have fled persecution just like the asylum seekers in Europe. We need safety and resettlement.”
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has suspended any assistance for voluntary returns due to the high risks involved and has not taken part in the return of Syrians from other countries since 2012, according to their latest report. As a result, the Australian immigration department is helping Syrians on Manus to return home.
In a letter written in April 2014 the man who has now returned wrote that he fled Syria’s civil war in 2o13 in order to seek a safe place for his family.
“I want to tell you my story, about in Syria and about civil war and the crime of killing innocent people in Syria – I came out because of this. And I thought to find a peaceful place and I promised my wife to find a place to live peacefully.”
The man arrived on Christmas Island on 8 August 2013. He was moved to Manus Island on 5 September. It is understood the man had grown increasingly concerned over the fate of his wife and children – from whom he had not heard – and agreed to go home.
On Sunday, the prime minister, Tony Abbott, said of the four-year Syrian conflict: “This is a very grave situation in the Middle East. People in Syria are caught between the mass execution of the Daesh [Islamic State] death cult on the one hand and the chemical weapons of the Assad regime on the other. It is important that there be a humanitarian response.”
Speculation has also grown that Australia will join airstrikes against the Syrian regime.
The return of asylum seekers to Syria – even on a voluntary basis – has also sparked concern because the immigration department will generally contact the Syrian embassy or consulate to arrange travel documents for their return.
The practice has also raised concerns because of the conditions asylum seekers are placed in on Manus Island.
David Manne, the executive director of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, questioned whether the decision some asylum seekers have made to return to Syria could genuinely be considered a voluntary act.
“The whole issue of informed consent and voluntariness is far from simple in this context. Is a person who says they will return to the extreme and deadly dangers of Syria from indefinite incarceration on Manus Island really acting with free will?”
“Given the extreme dangers of return to Syria, and the very real chance of facing life-threatening persecution, serious questions surround the conditions he was subjected to on Manus Island.”
He added: “The critical question here is whether the situation he was placed in by Australia [on Manus] was so inhumane, so damaging, and so traumatic, that he felt no real option but to return; return to the very real dangers which forced him to flee and which he still fears.”
He said it was “impossible to reconcile” Australia’s commitment to expanding assistance to Syrians while engaging in the current repatriation process.
“Amid the current humanitarian crisis, this situation starkly highlights how Australia is applying a domestic ‘solution’ to a global problem. Australian asylum policy should be helping, not harming Syrian refugees. It should provide urgent sanctuary to Syrians seeking protection, not send them to situations so harsh as to compound their insecurity and harm.”
In a recording obtained by Guardian Australia in 2014, immigration officials can be heard telling a group of Syrians on Manus Island that their details would be passed to the Syrian consulate if they agreed to return.
Meeting minutes from the Ministerial Council on Asylum Seekers and Detention from September 2014 released under freedom of information laws said that research conducted into voluntary removals found that the primary motivator for asylum seekers to return was generally “associated with family”.
The minutes noted that while the International Organisation for Migration mostly conducted voluntary repatriations, the department has been “providing assisted returns for destinations that IOM have been unable to assist”.
Both Coalition and Labor governments in Australia have returned asylum seekers to Syria, but no cases of involuntary removals have occurred for some time. In one case reported by New Matilda, a Syrian man was deported against his will to Damascus in May 2011. He said he was beaten on arrival and interrogated by the Syrian intelligence service.
Sweden has offered permanent residency to all Syrian refugees who reach the country.
