Australia wouldn't deport Ali Panah. So why are we trying to?

Since the Tampa incident and the mandatory detention of refugees in isolated desert camps, New Zealanders have had a low opinion of Australia's treatment of refugees. But as the Herald this morning points out, they're better than us in at least one respect: they won't deport Christian converts to Iran:

Libby Hogarth, an Adelaide immigration consultant who represented 40 Iranian Christians held in 2005, said Australia had effectively accepted that genuine Christian converts should not be returned to Iran.

"Immigration deported one person in 2005," she said.

"There was such an outcry from the churches when that person was arrested at the airport and taken to prison that the then Immigration Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone, said she would not deport any further Iranians."

Mrs Hogarth said she had since won temporary visas for all 40 of her Iranian Christian clients and they were applying for permanent refugee status.

This policy has also been adopted by the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada and Holland, all of which recognise that it is simply too dangerous to deport Christian converts back to Iran. So why are we trying to? Aren't we meant to be better than the Aussies?

Character assassination

Since releasing Ali Panah yesterday, Minister of Immigration David Cunliffe has embarked on a systematic campaign of character assassination, hinting darkly whenever interviewed that there is something bad in Panah's past but then retreating under cover of the Immigration Act and saying that he is legally forbidden from discussing the details of a particular case. However, while Cunliffe is so bound, the media aren't, and details of Panah's appeals before the RSAA have been openly discussed in the Herald, on Radio New Zealand, and in a piece in Salient yesterday. The long and the short of it is that the RSAA believed that Panah's conversion in South Korea was not genuine, and that (as a result of this finding) his subsequent religious activity in New Zealand were "calculated for the sole purpose of advancing his refugee claim".

This may help the Minister feel morally superior, but it's quite irrelevant. Even if we accept the RSAA's original findings (and I'm not sure that we should), what matters in assessing the danger Ali Panah faces if returned to Iran is not his religious beliefs then, but his religious beliefs now. And on this, the evidence is quite clear: Panah is a committed Christian. His friends think so, his church thinks so, the Archbishop of New Zealand thinks so. He talks about his god, goes to church (which is more than most New Zealand Christians ever do), and tries to convert people. If this evidence was described to us about any other person, we'd have no trouble saying that "yes, they're a Christian". But because Panah is a refugee claimant, he must be just "making it up". There's a word for that attitude, and it is "racism".

Ali Panah granted bail

Ali Reza Panah, the Iranian refugee detained without trial for 20 months, has reportedly been granted bail:

A hunger-striking Iranian man who faces deportation from New Zealand has been granted bail.

Ali Panah has been on hunger strike for 53 days in protest against efforts to deport him to Iran, where he says he will be persecuted due to his conversion to Christianity.

[...]

Mr Panah was this afternoon released on bail at a hearing in North Shore District Court, Radio New Zealand reported.

The Department of Labour did not oppose his release.

Mr Panah was given strict bail conditions by the court including that he is to stay at his vicar's house and he is to resume eating.

I guess the government realised that if he died, people were going to lay the corpse on their doorstep.

This is good news, but its not victory. That will only come when we cease our indefensible practice of indefinite detention without trial and accept our human rights obligation not to return converts to religious persecution in Iran. There are still two more Iranian converts who have been similarly detained - one of them for over two years. Isn't it time we released them too?

Support Ali Panah

Amnesty International has begun a campaign in support of Ali Reza Panah and other Iranian converts to Christianity currently being denied refugee status and indefinitely detained:

Amnesty International's position is to oppose the return of proven Christian converts, as any such return would be unsafe.

Amnesty International believes any such return could see New Zealand in breach of its international human rights obligations under the Convention Against Torture and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights to which it is signatory

In cases of proven Christian converts Amnesty International recommends that individuals be provided with a "complementary form of protection", which would allow them to reside and work in New Zealand until such time as it is safe for them to return home.

[...]

What you can do
Write to or phone the office of the Minister of Immigration, David Cunliffe. If writing copy in your local MP. See this link for contact details: http://www.labour.org.nz/labour_team/mps/mps/david_cunliffe/index.html

1. Highlight Amnesty's position on the return of Christian converts to Iran
2. Call for proven Christian converts to be offered a complementary form of protection here in New Zealand until such time as the situation in Iran improves.
3. Point out that any such return could see New Zealand in breach of its international obligations under the Torture Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Additionally phone, visit or write to your local MP to raise concerns and ask for them to be forwarded to Mr Cunliffe.

If you don't know who your local MP is, Parliament has a list which you can sort by electorate here. Further information about human rights in Iran and the Iranian government's repression of religious minorities can be found here and here.

Is Labour going to let Ali Panah die?

Ali Reza Panah is now on the 53rd day of his hunger strike against his indefinte detention under immigration laws. According to Wikipedia, the estimated limit for a hunger strike is 60 days. People have lasted longer (the world record is 94 days), but its not likely. So, if his hunger strike continues, then sometime in the next two or three weeks Ali Reza Panah will likely starve to death.

What I'm wondering is whether the Labour Party is willing to see that happen. Are they so bereft of compassion that they will let a man die, just to prove that they are "hard", and that we are not a "soft touch" for refugees?

If so, then they will have finally and absolutely proven themselves to be a party without a soul.

More indefinite detentions

New Zealand First is banging the xenophobia drum again, complaining about the difficulty of deporting people when they refuse to sign the papers required for their travel documentation (something which incidentally is entirely in the hands of the destination governments, not the New Zealand government). But their xenophobia has served a useful purpose: it has highlighted the use of prolonged detention without trial in New Zealand.

According to answers to Parliamentary questions, there are 51 people currently detained under the Immigration Act (table here [PDF]). Nine of these are detained under s59, essentially waiting for their plane. 16 are detained under s128, which applies to people who show up without permits or are refused entry at the border. These are usually refugee claimants, and so most are held at the Mangere detention "accommodation" centre (though three are in prison, all from Muslim countries, one who has been held for six months). The remaining 23 are detained under a Warrant of Commitment issued under s60, and it is this group which is most troubling. Section 60 allows people to be detained for up to three months on a monthly warrant of commitment where it will take more than three days to make travel arrangements (either because they have no documentation, or because of timetabling issues) - and this seems acceptable. The problem is that it also allows longer detention where people refuse to cooperate in their own deportation. As many of those detained under this clause are failed refugee claimants who have very good reasons not to return home (for example, they fear being killed or tortured, regardless of how the New Zealand authorities (who you can safely say have never faced such danger) assess the risks), it can result in effectively indefinite detention.

We saw this in the case of Thomas Yadegary, who was freed in April after being imprisoned for more than two years for refusing to sign a passport application he views as his own death warrant. But Yadegary isn't the only one. According to the Ministry of Immigration's figures, there are six people - four Iranians, a Chinese and a Czech - who have been imprisoned for more than a year. Two of them have been imprisoned for more than two years - without any sort of trial, let alone a conviction. They are in prison purely for the convenience of the authorities, in an effort to coerce them into signing travel documents.

This is simply wrong. Regardless of what you think about immigration and the need for deportation, this sort of prolonged detention without trial goes against our deepest values. Throwing people in jail and keeping them forever is the sort of practice indulged in by absolute monarchs, third-world despots, or the Americans in their Caribbean gulag in Guantanamo - not by my New Zealand.

Another indefinite detention

Earlier in the month Thomas Yadegary was freed from Mount Eden Prison after a judge ruled that his detention had become arbitrary and could no longer serve its purpose. But Thomas Yadegary wasn't alone. Last year, an OIA request revealed that there were six people who had been detained for more than a year for immigration purposes. And today we've learned about another one of them: Ali Reza Panah.

Panah's case is similar to Yadegary's: he left Iran in 2000, and converted to Christianity in Korea before travelling to New Zealand and applying for refugee status. That application has been denied and his appeals exhausted, and he has been detained for the last eighteen months in an effort to get him to sign an Iranian passport application.

The RSAA does not believe that Panah faces a genuine threat of persecution in Iran. They are wrong. According to the US State Department's 2006 International Religious Freedom Country Report for Iran, Iran has the death penalty for apostasy, and converts are subject to arrest, torture, and extrajudicial murder. Most tellingly, the New Zealand government has demanded Panah sign an indemnity saying that if he is subsequently persecuted in Iran, it is not the fault of the New Zealand government - hardly the action of people who believe he faces no danger.

Meanwhile, there is the other issue: we have kept a man in jail for eighteen months now because he will not sign his own death warrant, and show every sign of keeping him there indefinitely. This is an affront to our deepest values. Throwing people in jail without trial and keeping them there forever is the sort of thing practiced by absolute monarchs, third-world despots, or the Americans in their Caribbean gulag in Guantanamo - not by our New Zealand.