Open Letter to the minister: Please act to stop other deaths inside detention centres

Dear Hon Chris Bowen, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship

We wrote to you on earlier occasions several times asking you to act to stop the flood of blood inside Australian detention centres. Today, we are writing to you to ask you to take urgent action to stop yet another loss of innocent life inside these “hell holes”.

We understand that Mr Samisoni Bolatagici has written to you recently asking you to use your discretionary power to stop his deportation to his death, or at least to uncertainty and possible persecution. We understand that you did not yet take any decision to accept or refuse this request. Nevertheless, your department has acted in a pre-emptive way and detained Mr Samisoni. And even before handing him your decision, they informed him that he will be deported tomorrow. And yet, your department refused media reports (we are aware of its validity for some time now) that they delay handing decisions to detainees, because they know the devastation effect they will have on mental health of already depressed detainees.

Usually your ministerial intervention team does not bring to your attention cases that they decide not worth bringing to your attention. And usually they are wrong on doing this, with usual disastrous consequences. We understand that the case of Samisoni is one of these cases that could have disastrous effect if you do not intervene.

Mr Samisoni is the cousin of Josefa Rauluni, the Fijian guy who lost his life inside Villawood detention centre late September. He is also a comrade of Mr Rauluni in their struggle to expose the dictatorship of Fijian rulers.

Not only this. Mr Samisoni had witnessed the suicide of his cousin and was the first to inspect his dead body. He was the last to speak to Mr Rauluni. You can imagine the deep traumatic scars this left him with.

We expected that your department will take all these into account when they deal with Mr Samisoni’s case. But we are proved to be wrong again. We misjudged the lack of humanity in your department’s managers and case officers. And that is big worry for us.

We are afraid that if your department officials will go ahead with deporting Mr Samisoni tomorrow, you will have more blood on your hands. Mr Samisoni is traumatised enough to commit desperate act if he will be enforced to return to his imminent death or persecution.

We are afraid that you will be known as the bloodiest immigration minister in the history of this nation. So far, there were 3 deaths in detention centres since you became minister. There were also a lot of blood spelt, but lives not lost, fortunately. We hope that you will take urgent action to stop the flood of blood started with you resuming your responsibility as minister for immigration.

We know that you and your party want to be seen as tough decision maker, but in the wrong issues we are afraid. We want you to be tough on taking decisions to relieve the life hardship millions of Australians are facing now. We want you to take tough decisions to build tens of thousands of homes to relieve rental crisis. We want you to show some toughness when you deal with tax-evasions of millionaires. And we do not mind you to be very tough trying to restore humanity to this nation. But we expect you to be very soft when you are dealing with very vulnerable people running from homelands for freedom and to save their lives and the lives of their beloved ones.
So far, you and your government disappointed us deeply. But we expect that disappointing actions will not result in more blood spelt inside the detention centres.

We frankly do not know how you really feel after this blood that flooded your detention centres. And we do not want to put ourselves in your shoes.

We want to ask you here to show some compassion.

Enough blood spelt.

In our previous letters we asked for specific requests. But in this letter, in addition to specific request of stopping the deportation of Mr Samisoni, we can offer you our advice. We do not mind to meet with you and give you some practical advice how to deal with the crisis inside the detention centre. And we can do this with a lot of love and compassion, not with more blood.

Thanks for your time and if you need any more information concerning this case or to discuss any aspect of this letter, I can be contacted on 0404 447 272

Yours sincerely


Jamal Daoud