By early April some 3,500 of the 4,000 Kosovars in Australia had agreed to return "voluntarily." The push to remove them came when immigration minister Philip Ruddock made a unilateral determination that conditions in Kosova were no longer unsafe. The Kosovars fled their homeland in the midst of pogrom-like attacks by special police units, rightist militias, and others loyal to the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic, as well as a massive bombing campaign by the imperialist powers.

Following the "voluntary" departures from Australia, the government then used the move as a bludgeon against claims by those remaining. They were portrayed by Ruddock as asking for special treatment. "I'm satisfied that they have no claims that would single them out over and above any other Kosovo Albanian for persecution," he said April 9. Some of those who finally agreed to leave are from Presheva, which is now part of southern Serbia.  
 
Kosovars organize protests
Some 100 Kosovars living at the Bandiana Safe Haven, a converted army base near Albury-Wodonga, carried out an organized protest and hunger strike April 9–10.

On behalf of all those remaining, 81 refugees at the Bandiana camp also appealed to the High Court against Ruddock's deportation order. Their appeal was rejected April 10. At that point the refugees became "unlawful non-citizens" and Bandiana was transformed into a temporary detention center watched by some 20 security guards. A small solidarity protest organized by local residents gathered at the fence that evening.

Government threats were wrapped in blandishments. Those who refused to cooperate with its order to leave were threatened with "an appropriate level of force" by immigration department official Philip Mayne. At the same time Ruddock threatened the 81 with having to pay the costs of their ongoing detention if they didn't agree to leave. But he also cynically held out the possibility that those who did cooperate would be permitted, once back in Kosova, to apply for visas to return.

About 30 refugees, including some who had been living and working outside the camps, escaped or went into hiding to avoid deportation in the days that followed. Immigration cops searched homes of Albanians in Sydney. Catherine Ordway, a spokeswoman for the Albanian Association of New South Wales, condemned the searches. "They have taken out search warrants and gone into the Albanian community and searched people's houses, under beds and in wardrobes. It is outrageous."

At least two teenagers attempted suicide, but Ruddock was dismissive, calling them "an attempt to pressure him," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

At least 21 Kosovars who continued to defy the order to leave were flown to the remote Port Hedland Immigration Detention Center in Western Australia April 15–16, where they will await forced deportation. A handful of others have had their visas temporarily extended for health reasons.

The actions taken against Albanian Kosovar refugees are part of the brutality and coarseness that has increasingly marked Canberra's policies toward refugees and unlawful immigrants for nearly a decade.

Over the last 10 years only 7.94 percent of applicants gained asylum first off. In the same period, just over 100,000 people were taken in, either through the government's resettlement program for refugees living overseas or through granting asylum to refugees applying after arriving in Australia.

In May 1999, Parliament enacted amendments to the immigration law, which granted Kosovars fleeing the carnage at home a new "temporary safe haven" visa. However, in doing so, the Kosovars were legally precluded from applying for asylum or permanent residence as "refugees."  
 
'Humanitarian' Canberra, East Timor
With the precedent set, this new category was also used to temporarily airlift East Timorese to Darwin in September 1999, who faced imminent danger to their lives from rightist militias controlled by the Indonesian military command at the time.

Both moves were designed to portray Canberra as a "humanitarian" power. But its recent actions in forcing Kosovars to return give the lie to that image. In fact, all aspects of temporary safe haven visas are in the hands of the minister of immigration, who is empowered to act unilaterally and arbitrarily. Those granted this status also lose their right to due process in the courts, as in the case of the 81 Kosovars.

In October 1999 the government introduced a three-year temporary visa for those found to be refugees but who entered the country "illegally."

They have no right to reenter Australia if they leave, cannot apply to have family members join them, and only receive extremely limited government resettlement assistance. Refugees who enter Australia "legally," for example with a tourist visa, and then apply for refugee status are still eligible for permanent residency.

In December 1999, with the backing of the Australian Labor Party, Canberra enacted further amendments to its immigration laws, permitting the boarding of boats in international waters in search of "illegal" entrants being transported by people smugglers. It enshrines the concept of the "safe third country," where, if a person claiming refugee status in Australia has resided in a third country for at least seven days, the immigration minister can send them there, based on his arbitrary determination that the third country has procedures that the potential refugee can use to apply for asylum.

These draconian actions come on top of other moves. Today, there are nearly 4,000 people in mandatory detention in six immigration centers. Two of these were opened in 1999 to deal with a near doubling of detainees since 1996. Some 2,800 undocumented asylum seekers arrived by sea in the second half of 1999, giving rise to an ongoing campaign in the big-business media against "boat people" and "queue jumpers."

Mandatory detention of immigrants and refugees arriving in the country without proper papers, with few exceptions, was introduced by the Labor government in 1992. Other moves have included:

August 1996: introduction of measures including penalizing an asylum applicant for failing to lodge all evidence at the time of application and removing the requirement that applicants should be interviewed; withdrawal of financial support administered by the Red Cross once an applicant is rejected initially.

July 1997: withdrawal of permission to work and denying access to Medicare, the national health program, to anyone who doesn't apply for refugee status within 45 days of arrival.

May 1998: burden of proof reversed, requiring all visa applicants to show they are of good character; requirement that any character cases heard by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal be decided within 45 days or the applicant automatically loses.

July 1998: asylum seekers become ineligible for Legal Aid; removal of permission to work for those asylum seekers requesting ministerial intervention on humanitarian grounds.

December 1998: If they make repeated requests for ministerial intervention on humanitarian grounds, asylum seekers lose eligibility for a bridging visa, which keeps their status lawful pending the outcome of an application.

1999: legislation passed removing the power of the government's own Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) to initiate contact with immigration detainees to advise them of their right to seek asylum.

Conditions facing those in immigration detention centers are "abominable," according to the HREOC. Reports surfaced in February 2000 that detainees in the new immigration detention center at Curtin Air Base had sewn their mouths shut to protest their conditions.

Doug Cooper is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.  
 
 
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