Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:28:42 -0500
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      CAM: Cambodian refugees in Australia fail to find freedom

01/04

CAMBODIAN REFUGEES IN AUSTRALIA FAIL TO FIND ...

SYDNEY (JAN. 4) IPS - Thousands of miles away from their war-raaged country,
Cambodians remain unsure of what freedom is as they bide their time inside
detention centers.
   Some 118 Cambodians fled their homeland more than two years ago aboard a
tiny fishing boat for the Indonesian island of Galang.
   But they ended up in Australia instead, where they have been kept since in
detention centers originally meant for those caught fishing illegally in the
country's waters.
   Scheduled for deportation last month, the refugees won a federal court
injunction that gives them leave to stay until their cases are heard early this
year.
   But the High Court has also upheld the amendments to the Australian
Migration Act, allowing the government to detain illegal immigrants and asylum
seekers while their status is being decided on.
   "Being in Australia I think is the same as (being) in Cambodia," "Sisom"
told IPS. "We escaped from our country to look for freedom, away from trouble.
But we live in a jail and the government doesn't allow us to stay in Australia.
They prefer to send us back to that trouble, that suffering again."
   Indeed, human rights activists have been hitting Canberra for trying to
"force" the refugees to return home to Cambodia, which remains in a state of
political uncertainty.
   They say Canberra's policy of keeping the "boat people" in cramped detention
camps is one of the government's tactics to convince the refugees that home is
still the best place to be.
   But being cooped up for too long is taking a toll among the refugees, says
Andrew Biro, a former welfare worker at one of the detention centers.
   "When they get another bunch of rejections...the morale just drops," he
says.  "People wouldn't go to exercise classes, they wouldn't go to English
classes, they would just mope around."
   After a while, Biro adds, the refugees used to say "well, I'm laughing on
the outside, but I'm crying on the inside."
   "Now they don't even laugh on the outside much," he says.
   Sisom, for instance, landed in the psychiatric unit of Sydney's Cumberland
Hospital shortly after ending a hunger strike with two other Cambodian women
refugees.
   Isolation from the other Cambodian refugees, however, apparently just made
her condition worse. Sisom has since been returned to a detention center -- in
a high-security area.
   Reports say Sisom signed an agreement to return to Cambodia following an
assessment by the immigration ministry's psychiatrist that she was fit to make
the journey. But an independent psychiatric appraisal has concluded she is not.
   Sources among the Cambodian refugee community say it is inconceivable for
someone who is "prepared to die" to die rather than return home would voluntary
agree to be repatriated.
   "When they break, they are returned to their country," says Biro. "Then they
become walking advertisements: Don't go to Australia, because this happened to
me in Australia."
   Aside from Sisom, four other refugees have reportedly agreed to return to
Cambodia. All men, they are planning to move from village to village in their
homeland in their search for safety.
   During their hunger strike, Sisom's co-protesters were also put under
pressure to sign documents for their "voluntary" repatriation.
   Following the signing of the Cambodian peace accord in Paris in October
1991, it was thought that refugees from that country would soon be returning
home.
   Repatriation efforts began last year, starting with camps along the
Thai-Cambodian border.
   But with the Khmer Rouge guerrilla group resisting the full implementation
of the peace plan, such expectations are beginning to crumble.
   Australian Shadow Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs Philip Ruddock
has said it is important that the right for the government of the day to
determine who should and who should not enter Australia to settle permanently
to be maintained.
   Such words, however, are incomprehensible to the likes of Sisom, who says
she has known no freedom since she was born.
   "We find that freedom place, but we have no freedom," she says. "We cannot
understand what freedom is. The government doesn't understand our feelings and
our feelings in jail."
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU