Is the 'Pacific Solution' unravelling?

[Harpodom]

There are probably people on this forum who could dissect what you've said and pointed out the problems with it an eloquent way, but I'm not one of them. I'll just say that your comment makes me sad and sick. It's a disgusting sentiment.

Welcome to the thread, fellow member of humanity!

[Harpodom]

If I believed in hell (which I don't), I'd wish that Scott Morrison rots in it. It would be a form of karma if you like.

 

His handling of the situation in Nauru, where multiple allegations of child self harm and abuse have been made, essentially suggesting that Save the Children fabricated the allegations AND encouraged the children to self harm, is nothing short of disgraceful.

 

He may have stopped the boats but the human misery unfolding under his watch won't just disappear, no matter hard he tries to prevent media scrutiny.

 

He MUST resign. Nauru and Manus must be closed immediately.

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/04/nauru-detention-centre-staff-persistent-child-abuse-self-harm

 

 

 

Nauru staff report persistent child abuse and self-harm, leaked documents show

 

Exclusive: minutes of meetings and an intelligence report obtained by Guardian Australia reveal regular concerns about child protection and self harm in detention centres

 

Children in the Nauru detention centre protesting over government policies. Photograph: Supplied

 

Staff at Nauru detention centres have reported persistent acts of child abuse and self harm within the offshore camps over several months, a series of leaked documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal.

 

A Save The Children (STC) staffer says allegations that staff working for the agency coached asylum seekers to self-harm, and are responsible for a fabricated political campaign, are “an insult”. Ten STC employees have been suspended as a result of these allegations.

“We would never train a client to self-harm as we see the effects of what happens there, we realise it can lead to suicide and death. We are trained and committed humanitarian staff,” the Save the Children staffer said.

After the allegations were raised by the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, on Friday, Dr Peter Young, the former chief immigration psychiatrist responsible for the mental health of all asylum seekers detained by Australia, said the immigration department had “no understanding of self-harming behaviours at all”.

Guardian Australia has obtained, from a number of sources, minutes of welfare meetings and a Transfield intelligence report, which detail some of the child protection and abuse concerns in Nauru camps.

Those documents show, in the week beginning 2 June:

 

 

• A 17-year-old boy who attempted suicide with a razor after being told he was not allowed access to the internet.
  

 

 

 

• A 16-year-old girl who told her case workers she had been tormented and sexually harassed by detention centre security guards. The girl reported a number of male Nauruan employees “have tried to hug her, kiss her, told her they would marry her and asked her to have a ‘sexy party’”.
  

 

 

 

• A 17-year-old boy who attempted suicide by strangling himself.
  

 

 

 

• A nine-year-old boy from a war-torn country who had begun bed-wetting, and pulling clumps of hair from his head. His mother talked openly about suicide, and “states that she wishes to be dead and would gladly kill herself, however this is a sin and she will be punished so will not do this”. The boy’s mother had discussed being returned to her country of origin because she “knows this will result in her being killed”.
  

 

 

 

• An eight-year-old boy regularly in fights with other children, and who staff struggled to deal with because there was no interpreter who spoke his family’s language.
  

 

 

 

• A 13-year-old boy who had only irregular access to his sleep medication, and who was uncontrollably manic at school after not sleeping for 24 hours. His mother was missing.
  

 

 

 

• A 15-year-old boy who was not eating, and was “displaying signs of depression” after his father was taken to Brisbane in a medical emergency.
  

 

In the report for the week ending 13 April, reports raised concerns about:

 

 

• An eight-year-old boy who bullied and fought with other children and had attacked teachers, but who cried under a blanket each night, hiding his distress from his parents.
  

 

 

 

• Several children, the youngest aged four year, who had had both parents arrested for taking part in protests, and were left with no family to care for them.
  

 

 

 

• An eight-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother who were attacked by other detainees because their father was accused of assaulting another detainee.
  

 

 

 

• A 10-year-old boy who had to be physically restrained from attacking other children and had been banned from school because of the threat he posed to other students.
  

 

Guardian Australia has also obtained a copy of a Transfield Services intelligence report for Saturday 2 August. It shows:

 

 

• Eight detainees were required to be under constant ‘line of sight’ monitoring, four for acts of self-harm.
  

 

 

 

• One man, who had “self-harmed by banging head” was not permitted to be more than arm’s length from a guard at any time.
  

 

 

 

• Three women were deemed high security risks because of attempts and threats of self-harm, and aggression towards staff.
  

 

 

 

• Other detainees were on half-hourly monitoring, others on three-hourly, also because they had committed acts of self-harm, or were deemed “vulnerable”.
  

 

 

 

• Guards were instructed to monitor detainees’ moods and whether people were refusing food and water.
  

 

Morrison announced on Friday that his acting department head, Phillip Moss, would head an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of children in Nauru’s detention centres.

 

But the minister also said he was concerned by allegations staff of detention centre service providers were facilitating protests by detainees and even encouraging them to self-harm.

“Allegations of the abuse and misconduct are serious and they need to be addressed … making false claims and, worse, allegedly coaching self-harm and using children in protests is also completely unacceptable, whatever their political views or whatever their agendas.”

An STC contractor who has worked for an extended period on Nauru told Guardian Australia Morrison’s comments and the intelligence report arguing STC staffers encouraged self-harm were “an insult to the work we do on the island”.

“Self-harm happens in the centre on a weekly basis and we would never encourage self harm as a means to get to Australia,” the contractor said. The STC staffer said they had no direct knowledge of abuse claims raise by the Greens immigration spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, earlier in the week.

Ten STC employees were identified for removal by the department. One has already left the organisation, and three are rotated off the island. The six remaining on Nauru have not been told to leave the island, but are not allowed access to the detention centre.

All nine workers still employed by STC are suspended indefinitely, at the behest of the department. They are on full pay but have been given no reason for their suspension, and Morrison stressed there was no suggestion any had behaved improperly towards detainees.

Hanson-Young said the incidents revealed in the reports were just the tip of the iceberg, and Morrison’s reaction amounted to “shooting the messenger”.

“These reports make it clear that the minister has known for a long time that Nauru is toxic. The fact that this trauma is so clearly documented and the minister did nothing is shocking.

“Why didn’t he act and initiate an investigation before this week when he was dragged to one, kicking and screaming, by extremely serious allegations?”

 

Peter Young branded the minister’s comments over self-harm on Nauru “ill-informed”. He said he was aware of documented instances of child abuse across the detention network, and that they occurred “periodically”.

“Child abuse is inevitable in this type of institution, we’ve seen it in other [detention] institutions,” Young said.

A leaked independent assessment of the healthcare available to asylum seekers on Nauru warned in February that children inside the centre were vulnerable to sexual abuse as no working-with-children checks were undertaken on Nauruan staff who make up more than 50% of the detention centre workforce.

Guardian Australia has documented numerous examples of the abuse of children in the centre. One case – a sexual assault – occurred on 16 November 2013, when a teenage boy was grabbed in the groin by a local cleaner, who was later sacked.

In another instance, on 27 March, it was alleged that a young girl was hit over the back of the head by a detention centre guard so hard that she fell to the ground.

Morrison has declined to answer questions on either of these instances and has provided no answer to why working-with-children checks are not undertaken on local staff.

Young said that on the mainland healthcare workers were often asked by immigration department staff to seek approval before reporting child abuse to external agencies.

 

He said Morrison’s comments on Friday indicated that the minister displayed a “real level of ignorance” about mental health problems in detention.

“At the beginning of mental health week, it shows just how little he knows or cares about the issue,” Young said.

“Self-harming rates increase rapidly after six months - they [the immigration department] know this, their own research shows it and it’s not at all surprising. Experts have been warning the government and the department about this for many years. It’s a consequence and responsibility of the policy,” Young said.

Guardian Australia has also reported the contents of a leaked report written by mainland detention centre managers Serco in which the department is clearly warned that the effects of long term indefinite detention will result in greater levels of self-harm.

Morrison’s office did not respond to a request for a response.

[HappyHeart]

well this is an interesting thread with a lot of strong opinions. Without reading it all and without claiming to have a clue about international politcs and immigration policy... I think wherever you place yourself on the political spectrum, a semblance of empathy and humanity ought to be afforded to those humans who endure more than us first world citizens could ever, ever, comprehend...walk a mile in their shoes I say, before casting judgements and stones. If we could turn back time and make the world a place where each and every human was afforded the same rights and basic needs were met, freedom from oppression and injustice was a basic right...we wouldn't have these issues...but we don't and never will live in a world like that so all we can do is open our minds/educate ourselves/try to be a decent human being and show love and mercy to all......pipe dream right?

[Harpodom]

It is truly unbelievable that no working with children checks are conducted on Nauruan staff working in the centre, in this day and age!

[MARYROSE02]

Stop quoting The Gusrdian. We all know that they HATE the Lib govt. Would not matter if Libs closed all the camps and opened the borders to all comers. They would still hate Libs. Fortunately few people read The Guardian and they have zero influence with we that voted for Tony.

[Harpodom]

well this is an interesting thread with a lot of strong opinions. Without reading it all and without claiming to have a clue about international politcs and immigration policy... I think wherever you place yourself on the political spectrum, a semblance of empathy and humanity ought to be afforded to those humans who endure more than us first world citizens could ever, ever, comprehend...walk a mile in their shoes I say, before casting judgements and stones. If we could turn back time and make the world a place where each and every human was afforded the same rights and basic needs were met, freedom from oppression and injustice was a basic right...we wouldn't have these issues...but we don't and never will live in a world like that so all we can do is open our minds/educate ourselves/try to be a decent human being and show love and mercy to all......pipe dream right?

 

It is a pipe dream that certain people (whose opinions are all over this thread like a rash) can 'open our minds/educate ourselves/try to be a decent human being and show love and mercy to all', but I believe the vast majority of Australians, if they truly knew what was going on in these places, would be appalled Fi.

[Harpodom]

Stop quoting The Gusrdian [sic]. We all know that they HATE the Lib govt. Would not matter if Libs closed all the camps and opened the borders to all comers. They would still hate Libs. Fortunately few people read The Guardian and they have zero influence with we that voted for Tony.

 

No.

 

Stop talking crap and get yourself educated, mate.

[Wellers and Whitehead]

I have to admit as the situation for asylum seekers deteriorates, I cannot read and fully comprehend information from friends working in narau etc.. It is too horrific for words.

[Parley]

It is really disgusting that many of these detainees have been coached to self harm on the expectation that they will then get better treatment.

 

I am disgusted at the Save the Children staff and others who have encouraged this.

[Wellers and Whitehead]

It is really disgusting that many of these detainees have been coached to self harm on the expectation that they will then get better treatment.

 

I am disgusted at the Save the Children staff and others who have encouraged this.

 

How do you know that? Anybody in the right mind would not tell somebody to self harm due to the physical and emotional risk self harming has.

If save the children have said that? ? They clearly have no idea how the system works. . The government just don't care.

One of my concerns about working in the 'caring' profession in Australia, was you don't have to be qualified for some jobs that you would expect people to be trained for hence lower standards of care.

[MARYROSE02]

No.

 

Stop talking crap and get yourself educated, mate.

 

Sitting here with my first schooner of the night in the Shakespeare and frankly I don't care what happens on Manus or Nauru. There are enough horror stories about abuse of Aussies kids for me to care about what happens ALLEGEDLY in the camps. Naturally the Grauniad does not give a stuff what happens to Aussie kids.

[Guest]

Sitting here with my first schooner of the night in the Shakespeare and frankly I don't care what happens on Manus or Nauru. There are enough horror stories about abuse of Aussies kids for me to care about what happens ALLEGEDLY in the camps. Naturally the Grauniad does not give a stuff what happens to Aussie kids.

 

What makes you say that?

[Harpodom]

How do you know that? Anybody in the right mind would not tell somebody to self harm due to the physical and emotional risk self harming has.

If save the children have said that? ? They clearly have no idea how the system works. . The government just don't care.

One of my concerns about working in the 'caring' profession in Australia, was you don't have to be qualified for some jobs that you would expect people to be trained for hence lower standards of care.

 

I certainly agree with the highlighted comment. That much is obvious. Asylum seekers who have arrived by boat, sorry, 'illegals' are treated as if they are a lower species than the rest of us, effectively subhuman.

 

How else could you explain away the fact that it is deemed acceptable for people with no working with children checks to have unfettered access to these highly vulnerable children in detention?

 

It defies common sense, let alone the most basic human decency, morals or ethics

[MARYROSE02]

No more comments for me as I am happy with the present situation.Why don't you all devote some time to hand wringing over all the poor sods who drowned because off ALP incompetence. Just think how traumatic it was both for the people themselves and the Aussies who tried to rescue them.

[Harpodom]

[/b]

 

What makes you say that?

 

Typical rightard bull$hit, feigning concern for the vulnerable when it suits.

 

The paradox that they support a government that has proposed but so far failed to make such drastic changes to welfare support (so drastic that they breach human rights legislation) is totally lost on them.

[HappyHeart]

Sitting here with my first schooner of the night in the Shakespeare and frankly I don't care what happens on Manus or Nauru. There are enough horror stories about abuse of Aussies kids for me to care about what happens ALLEGEDLY in the camps. Naturally the Grauniad does not give a stuff what happens to Aussie kids.

 

Dave, I am disappointed you feel that way. I really am. The day we stop caring is the day we dehumanise these people...2 wrongs don't make a right!

[HappyHeart]

It is truly unbelievable that no working with children checks are conducted on Nauruan staff working in the centre, in this day and age!

 

If that is true, then it shocks me too....

[Guest]

No more comments for me as I am happy with the present situation.Why don't you all devote some time to hand wringing over all the poor sods who drowned because off ALP incompetence. Just think how traumatic it was both for the people themselves and the Aussies who tried to rescue them.

 

 

Sadly, no amount of 'hand-wringing' (as you choose to call it) will bring back any of those who lost their lives in awful circumstances. But, by keeping the conditions in the camps in the media spotlight may, just may, effect some change eventually in govt. policy. It's a long shot I know, but concerned citizens can get involved in this issue in the hope that by registering their disgust with how the Australian Govt. is treating these arrivals things may eventually change.

[Harpodom]

I think Mary is silently crapping himself that these reports may turn out to be true

[MARYROSE02]

Did you read about the four year old kid in SA who was eventually killed by her druggie low life mother and her equally awful boyfriend whilst SA social services ignored every warning they were given by concerned relatives and neighbours. That affected me deeply because the little girl was an Aussie. Do I care what allegedly happens in Manus and nothing like as bad as this? No.

[Harpodom]

Did you read about the four year old kid in SA who was eventually killed by her druggie low life mother and her equally awful boyfriend whilst SA social services ignored every warning they were given by concerned relatives and neighbours. That affected me deeply because the little girl was an Aussie. Do I care what allegedly happens in Manus and nothing like as bad as this? No.

 

What a strange statement, surely you care because she was a vulnerable child.

 

Why should nationality play a part in whether or not you feel empathy?

[tea4too]

What new lows some of the posts on this thread stoop to. Children, young vulnerable people with no voice and no ability to change the horrendous circumstances they find themselves in – how can any human being ignore that, happier to focus on who is to blame, who might be more (or less) worthy of sympathy or attention.

 

And all the political point scoring is just smoke and mirrors imo because at the heart of it all are children and vulnerable people who are being made to suffer while others use them to further their own agenda. There are enough credible witness accounts to know that people who have committed no crime, are being made to suffer at the hands of the people they looked to for safety. And tbh it shocks and really saddens me that people not only don’t care, but are happy to proclaim loudly that they don’t care. Tx

[Harpodom]

What new lows some of the posts on this thread stoop to. Children, young vulnerable people with no voice and no ability to change the horrendous circumstances they find themselves in – how can any human being ignore that, happier to focus on who is to blame, who might be more (or less) worthy of sympathy or attention.

 

And all the political point scoring is just smoke and mirrors imo because at the heart of it all are children and vulnerable people who are being made to suffer while others use them to further their own agenda. There are enough credible witness accounts to know that people who have committed no crime, are being made to suffer at the hands of the people they looked to for safety. And tbh it shocks and really saddens me that people not only don’t care, but are happy to proclaim loudly that they don’t care. Tx

 

Only because they perceive themselves to have safety in numbers tea, pretty cowardly if you ask me.

[Harpodom]

A Hazara refugee, refouled to Afghanistan, where he was captured and tortured by the Taliban inside 3 weeks. He escaped but the local police thought he was a terrorist, they didn't believe it possible that he was deported from Australia, assuming he must be a spy.

 

http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2014/10/04/taliban-tortures-abbott-government-deportee/14123448001068#.VDDwL-fYKyM.facebook

 

a one-page letter came from Morrison’s department: “As you have no further matters before the department, you are expected to leave as soon as practical.”

 

The Afghan embassy in Canberra didn’t issue a passport for Zainullah, disagreeing with his forced removal from Australia. Instead, the Australian government issued a travel document bearing his name and photo, but not his signature. The document was carried by his escorts, who showed it at every checkpoint. He was given a photocopy.

 

FFS what have we become?

[Harpodom]

The whole article here:

 

 

Oct 4, 2014

 

 

Taliban tortures Abbott government deportee

 

Abdul Karim Hekmat

The first Hazara asylum seeker refouled by the federal government was taken by the Taliban inside a month.

An Afghan police photograph of Zainullah Naseri after his escape from his Taliban captors.

 

 

Zainullah Naseri has been in Afghanistan three weeks when the Taliban find him. They stop the car in which he is travelling and find in his pockets his Australian driver’s licence – a memento of the country that on the night of August 26 made him the first Hazara to be forcibly deported back to the country he was fleeing.

The six Taliban also find Zainullah’s iPhone, but he pretends it is not working. They do not believe him. Zainullah is punched and kicked. “They told me they would kill me if I didn’t open it.”

The Taliban bundle him into a car and after 20 minutes’ driving, take him to a mud house ringed by high walls. They beat him with wet rods cut fresh from a tree, demanding he open his phone. Again they threaten to kill him. Zainullah relents and offers his PIN.

Immediately, they are scrolling through pictures: the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, a video of the new year he recorded in 2014. Speaking in broken Dari, the Taliban tell him, “You from an infidel country.” They mean Australia. “You infidel. We kill you. Why you come to Afghanistan? You a spy.”

On the day of his deportation, he was asked repeatedly to return to Afghanistan. “A person talked so much, it was as if there was a wasp on my mind.” He tells them the truth: he was deported after his refugee application was rejected. But they do not believe him. He is laid out on the ground and again is beaten. “I swear to God, I was deported from Australia,” he pleads. “I don’t live there anymore.” The six men do not relent. “They kept bashing me,” Zainullah remembers.

The Taliban tortured him for two days. He begged for mercy and his life. They gave him five days to arrange a payment of $300,000, threatening otherwise to decapitate him.

Not able to afford food or accommodation in the three weeks since he had been back in Afghanistan, he counted down his days, remembering what he told the Australian government. “I told them 100 times not to deport me. I would be killed. But they did not believe me.”

Zainullah imagined his own death. “Although I was scared, I did not care too much if I die after all this,” he tells me. “There was one thing in my mind: I wanted to see my wife and daughter. I did not see my daughter because I was in an Australian camp when she was born.”

Back to top

Feeling scared

 

I first met Zainullah four weeks ago in Kabul, two weeks after he was deported from Australia and a week before he was abducted. I met him in one of the busiest places in Kabul, Kote Sangi, metres from where hundreds of Afghan addicts, smoking heroin, huddle under Pul-e-Sukhta bridge, most of them former refugees who were deported from Iran and Europe. Laila Haidari, who runs a “mother’s camp” for addicts in Kabul, told me “about 90 per cent of addicts are deportees”.

Zainullah looked disoriented and very sad. When I told him that I came from Sydney – I arrived in Kabul a day after he did – his face flickered with excitement. This soon died down, however, once he realised I could not help him go back. He told me that he was staying in a guesthouse in Kote Sangi, sharing a room with many other travellers, mostly Pashtuns, who come from other provinces. “I feel scared there. Who knows, a Talib may be among them, but I don’t have money to pay for a separate room.”

After the first meeting, I lost contact for a few days – his mobile phone was switched off. A week later, I got a call from him with a different number, telling me that he had been captured on the way to his home town. We met again and I looked on in disbelief as he showed me the lash marks on his back and a photo and video taken at the police station where he sought refuge following his escape from his Taliban captors.

Back to top

Hellish escape

 

It was thoughts of his daughter that prompted Zainullah to break out. On the second night in captivity, at 10pm, he heard gunfire in the valley. He saw that the Taliban had gone out to fight and locked the gate. He realised it was an opportunity to escape but his feet were chained together. He groped in the darkness, found a rock, and brought it down onto the chain every time he heard gunfire.

At the back of the house, steps led up to a traditional Afghan squat toilet system, a hole above a chamber below. Having broken his chain, he ran for the toilet and dropped into the excrement. The human waste is collected for fertiliser, accessible with a shovel from outside the house’s wall through a hatchway. Zainullah wriggled out through the hatch. For eight hours, covered in faeces, he walked through darkness and early morning. At some point, exhausted, he heard more gunfire – the whizzing of bullets as they passed his ear.

A video captured by Afghan police shows officers firing on him, suspecting him to be a suicide bomber. A voice calling “help” is heard in the darkness. Moments later, three police speaking in Hazaragi are shown in the video, saying in angry voices, “Who are you?” and “Raise your hands”.

You can hear the chain clanking on one of Zainullah’s feet as he staggers on a gravel surface, his arms raised and his shirt ripped at the shoulder. He is being escorted by police now, and asks in a trembling voice, “Where is this?” A soldier answers him: “This is the police station.” Another shouts: “Here is the police station – shut your mouth.”

He was taken to the assistant commander of the area, Abdul Gorgee, where he was interrogated in a closet-sized room. More video shows him still tangled up with a chain. The assistant commander asked him where he came from and what happened to him. He explains in the video that he had been deported from Australia and was captured by the Taliban on the way to Jaghori, his district.

“Why you did not stop?” the commander asks.

“I was scared,” he answers.

“Our soldiers could have killed you,” the commander says, swearing at him.

“Life is too bitter,” Zainullah answers, putting his head down. “It would have been better if they had killed me.”

After a short interrogation, the commander ordered his soldier to break the chain and take him to a hotel where he could shower.

After two days under the supervision of police in Jaghori, he was released. Instead of going to his home, to the daughter he had never seen and the wife for whom he yearned, he fled in fear back to Kabul by a different route.

Back to top

‘Not a real risk’

 

In December 2012, Australia’s Refugee Review Tribunal ruled it was safe for Zainullah to return to Jaghori. This was the beginning of the events that almost ended in a Taliban outpost two weeks ago. A week after Zainullah’s disappearance, an Afghan-Australian named Sayed Habib Musawi was killed in the same area. But the tribunal had asserted in Zainullah’s case that “there is a significant population living in Jaghori. His family are living there … [and] as there is a route from Kabul to Jaghori that is secure, there is not a real risk the applicant will suffer significant harm.”

Zainullah is from Ghazni province, the most volatile and dangerous province in Afghanistan at the moment. Of its 22 districts, 18 are very insecure, including Jaghori. In recent weeks, Islamic State supporters have penetrated into Ghazni and in some areas IS flags have been raised. Since last Thursday, the Afghan government has been engaged in fierce battle with the Taliban and the IS in Ajristan, a district bordering Uruzgan province, where Australian troops were based. The insurgents associated with the IS have decapitated 11 innocent men and women in that district and driven many people into the mountains. General Qasimi, a Hazara parliamentarian who survived a recent assassination attempt near his home in Kabul, told me “at least two or three Hazaras are killed in Ghazni province every week by the Taliban”.

Mohammad Musa Mahmodi, the executive director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, said: “It’s totally unacceptable to return a refugee to Afghanistan in this critical moment. It contradicts their [Australian] own law not to deport refugees where they face danger.”

Asked about Zainullah’s case and whether any attempt had been made to assess the ongoing safety of deported asylum seekers, a spokesperson for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said: “People who have exhausted all outstanding avenues to remain in Australia and have no lawful basis to remain are expected to depart.”

Back to top

Depressed and alone

 

Zainullah’s capture and torture is one thing, but he also grapples with the fact nobody will believe he was deported from Australia. “You must have committed a crime in Australia,” Afghans told him when he returned. “They don’t deport refugees.” He denied the accusation, but nobody believed him, including his family.

When he arrived in Kabul on August 27, he went to see a GP – there are no psychologists – about the depression and anxiety he developed during the nearly three years spent on a bridging visa and in detention centres in Australia. It had become worse in the lead-up to his deportation. He couldn’t sleep for five consecutive days: two in Villawood, and three more on the way to and in Kabul.

In a letter addressed to Morrison before Zainullah was forcibly deported, forensic psychologist Kris North wrote that Zainullah had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder that “will deteriorate further if he is returned to Afghanistan” given “he will not get proper psychological help” there.

Zainullah has had a long walk to find protection. As a Hazara, a long-persecuted minority in Afghanistan, he fled and spent nine years in Iran as a refugee but was deported back in 2011. After staying in Afghanistan for another two months, and getting married, he again felt unsafe. This time, he decided to go to a place where he would not be deported.

It took him six months to get to Australia, including 12 days on a boat. “We nearly lost our lives,” he says. “I wish I would have died then, than to suffer like this. It’s very hard.” After six months in detention on Christmas Island and at the Curtin centre, he was released into the community on a bridging visa that allowed him to work. He soon found a job, working as a professional tiler for a year after getting his licence and buying a car and tools.

But in August 2012, Zainullah’s refugee application was rejected by the Immigration Department. Four months later, he was rejected again by the Refugee Review Tribunal on the grounds that Jaghori was safe. He made further applications until, in January this year, a one-page letter came from Morrison’s department: “As you have no further matters before the department, you are expected to leave as soon as practical.”

For seven months, he attended a monthly appointment where he was asked to leave the country and each time refused. In August, he thought he would refuse again. He took his mobile and a wallet and parked his car under a shopping centre in Auburn without realising he would never come back. At the interview, his case manager pressured him either to return voluntarily to Afghanistan or be taken to Villawood. He rejected both. He pleaded with his case officer not to take him into detention. “I cried a lot and asked, ‘Please, please don’t take me to the detention centre. I have been there before. I don’t want to be deported.’ ”

On the day of his deportation, about 10am, he was transferred to a solitary room where he was asked repeatedly to return to Afghanistan. “A person talked so much, it was as if there was a wasp on my mind.” That night, he was taken to Sydney airport. He and six department escorts boarded the plane from a different door, away from other passengers’ eyes. “I did not know where I was. I did not sleep for two nights. My mind was not working. I just knew that my world is going to end.”

The Afghan embassy in Canberra didn’t issue a passport for Zainullah, disagreeing with his forced removal from Australia. Instead, the Australian government issued a travel document bearing his name and photo, but not his signature. The document was carried by his escorts, who showed it at every checkpoint. He was given a photocopy.

Walking alongside me, he shakes his head. “I ask why the Australian government wasted my time for so long. Made me wonder for three years. Then they dump me here. I have no future now.”

On the dirt roads of Kabul, he looks at the scars of war on the buildings, the open sewers smelling like rotten meat, and female beggars in burqas stretching out their hands, asking for money. We reach the fourth-floor restaurant where we first met, and I asked him about his future. “I don’t know. I can’t go back to my home town,” he tells me, rubbing his chin nervously. “I feel like jumping from here, or ending up living with those addicts under the bridge, if I stay in Kabul.”