*Pic: Khodayar Amini
In the three years before his suicide, Hazara asylum seeker Khodayar Amini says he was twice assaulted by police and was the victim of continual harassment.
On Thursday night, October 15, Khodayar Amini was preparing to cook for his five roommates in a suburb of Western Sydney. The phone rang, and he listened to his friend on the other end of the line. Australian Border Force had just raided his old address, about 10 kilometres away. Six officers had blocked the doors and windows and searched every room, checking the identity of the four people inside. They said they were looking for Amini’s new address.
The news shook him. He had already provided the immigration department with his new address but his encounters with Border Force made him nervous. Fearing that immigration officers would come and take him back to detention, the Hazara asylum seeker walked out into the night, leaving his belongings behind. “I don’t have other option. I have to run. I don’t want to go back in detention centre. I have suffered a lot there,” he told his friend. “They killed my best friend, Nasim Najafi.”
Amini fled the state, reaching Dandenong in south-east Melbourne, where he hid out in nearby bushland. Within three days he would be dead. He made a final phone call to two refugee advocates and while talking to them set himself alight. When police found his body, it was in a circle of scorched earth the size of a small room.
He was 30 …
Read more, The Saturday Paper, here
Independent Australia has pulled an earlier story on Chris Kenny …
*Pic: Abyan’s desperate note …
Abyan: Raped by the Australian Government
Abyan: Independent Australia Contributing editor-at-large Tess Lawrence says there is another side to the tragic story of Abyan that needs to be discussed.
SOMALIAN WOMAN ABYAN has been raped twice. Firstly, by an unidentified rapist whilst imprisoned at the dysfunctional detention centre in Nauru. Secondly, by the Australian Government.
Impregnated by her rapist, the beleaguered 23 year old was flown to Australia, ostensibly for an abortion, but in murky and disputed circumstances was instead deported back to the notorious off-shore prison for asylum seekers where, presumably, Abyan’s rapist can resume access to his victim.
The lack of empathy for Abyan by the Government machine and, in this instance, the oily men and shamefully mute handmaidens who help drive it, is yet another example of the callous rigidity of politics by rote, devoid of compassion and compromise and lacking in any understanding of cultural and religious mores.
I understand that Abyan – not her real name – had “the cut” when she was a little girl.
Genital mutilation is rife in Somalia, the world’s capital for this centuries old widespread patriarchal imposition and physical dog-tag of male domination.
Genital mutilation was also prescribed by some doctors in Victorian England as a cure for insomnia for little girls.
Genital mutilation is performed in Australia and, every year, hundreds of girls are taken overseas to have their clitoris removed.
Sometimes, not only is the clitoris lopped off – often with crude and filthy implements, like razors, tin can lids, barber cut-throats, kitchen knives and bits of glass – but other parts of your genitalia can also be damaged.
Read more here where there are full hyperlinks
• phil Parsons in Comments: The way this matter has been, and is being handled, puts the lie to Turnbull’s concern over domestic violence by demonstrating to everyone that there is no real sympathy for the woman’s plight, no change to the causative factors and no allowance for her culture. This has nothing to do with stopping drowning at sea or the woman making a choice, but everything to do with men in control from the rape to every violation since. Had the woman’s requests been treated properly and sympathetically none of the additional harassment would have been necessary. Whilst Turnbull should apply himself to resolving this issue to avoid being seen as a nicer suit being just as cruel and harsh. It will be enough to erode his popularity by sticking with the Abbott government’s social welfare policies, he should not risk the votes of those who abhor domestic violence.
• Amnesty: Tasmanians rally for rights for asylum seeker Abyan When: 10am Saturday 24 October, 2015. Where: Hobart Parliament Lawns.
