Feature
This unfriendly shore
by Gordon Campbell
The treatment of Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui is not an exception. It is an example of the tough stance now being taken by New Zealand officialdom towards some of the most vulnerable people on the planet.
The Immigration Service recently raised the hackles of the Ombudsman by blocking his access to information – but long before the “lie in unison” scandal hit the headlines, the Service had made bureaucratic inflexibility into an art form. In August 1995, for instance, a 34-year-old microbiologist called Asad Osman Abdullahi (who held a valid residency visa to enter New Zealand) was barred from boarding his flight from Singapore to Auckland, because of his … taste in clothes. As the official concerned told New Zealand’s Singapore immigration bureau chief Andrew Lockhart in an internal memo: “His suit, sky blue, was ill fitting, with brand label still stitched to the outside of suit sleeve, and he had on yellow socks.”
Overall, the border sleuth felt Abdullahi’s “whole demeanor [sic] did not fit somebody with tertiary qualifications”. Moreover: “The following day when he was re-interviewed, he had removed his tie and appeared to be unable to do it back up.” Abdullahi not only missed his flight to Auckland but also had his passport defaced with a handwritten note, saying that the bearer could not use it for entry to Australia “under any circumstances”.
Ultimately, this little exercise in vigilance cost the Immigration Service (NZIS) a sizeable out-of-court settlement – it was sued for over $180,000 in damages – and an apology to Abdullahi. Changes have since been made. Lockhart, for instance, is now the general manager of the entire Service. However, the personnel and management failings exposed by the “lie in unison” affair suggest that the departmental culture may not have changed all that much. Certainly, asylum seekers and refugees now face higher hurdles than the crimes against fashion attributed to Abdullahi. In that respect, the treatment of Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui and Abdikarin Ali Haji (the Somali seen on television screaming hysterically at Auckland airport last November, as he narrowly avoided being forcibly deported back to the carnage in Somalia on dubiously authentic travel documents obtained for him by the Immigration Service) are not exceptions to the rule – rather, they are examples of the tough stance now being taken by New Zealand officialdom towards some of the most vulnerable people on the planet, with the support of politicians from both sides of the House.
The rights of refugees to seek asylum from persecution – but not merely to seek a better life, economically – are enshrined in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which New Zealand recognises. Articles 31 and 32 of that document acknowledge that refugees will routinely travel on false documents. This fact of refugee life is poorly understood, even by those who should know better. In his notorious Listener interview, for instance, SIS Inspector-General Laurie Greig spoke disparagingly about “lots of people coming in on false passports [that they’ve] thrown down the loo on the plane and saying, ‘I’m a refugee …’”
For one thing, “lots” of people are not flocking here to claim refugee status. New Zealand gets only a tiny share of the global flow in refugees and – though one would not know it from the fuss made by New Zealand First – refugee numbers have been declining over the term of the Clark government. The numbers of those trying to claim asylum at, or within, our borders is on the wane and last year New Zealand even failed to fill its annual quota of 750 UNHCR refugees. Overall, refugees comprise less than two percent of the entire immigration programme.
For Greig’s information, judges both here and elsewhere have stressed that false documents should not prejudice the case of refugees for asylum. In the Uxbridge case in Britain in 2001, Judge Simon Brown made this clear: “The problems facing refugees in their quest for asylum need little emphasis. Prominent amongst them is the difficulty of gaining access to a friendly shore. Escapes from persecution have long been characterised by subterfuge and false papers. As was stated in a memorandum from the UN Secretary-General in 1950: ‘A refugee whose departure from their country of origin is usually a flight, is rarely in a position to comply with the requirements for legal entry [possession of national passport and visa] into the country of refuge.’” Self-evidently, Brown
concluded, the UN provides immunity “for genuine refugees whose quest for asylum reasonably involved them in breaching the law”.
Locally, High Court judge David Baragwanath made much the same point during the Refugee Council case in May 2002. “The combined effect of visa requirements and carrier’s liability has made it well nigh impossible for refugees to travel to countries of refuge without false documents.” The law, in such cases, had to be realistically compassionate, not inflexible.
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