03’30: V/O: These scenes were filmed at Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre in April. And they paint a very different picture of the way we treat people who have come to Australia looking for our protection.
03’47: V/O: Last month, more than 40 refugees escaped from Villawood. Tonight, Four Corners tells how they did it and why. And we go inside Villawood itself. Why is this man in indefinite detention? And why have these parents had to watch their six-year-old son stop moving, talking and even eating and drinking?
05’11: V/O: On 19 July, 23 people seeking refugee status who had been locked up in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre crawled through a tunnel dug into the centre's drains and escaped. Three days later, another 23 cut through razor wire fences and followed them. All but one of the 46 are still at large. In a big city like Sydney, it seems it isn't too hard to keep a low profile if you have to. But if you want to be found, you can be. A few days after the escapes, Four Corners received a phone call.
06’15: V/O: Despite the risks, some of the escapees wanted to tell their story. We were given a time and a meeting place.
06’28: V/O: There, we met a guide who took us to two other places to make sure we weren't being followed. Then with hats and coats covering our eyes to make sure we didn't know where we were, we were taken to a house in suburban Sydney. We don't know where it was or who lived there. After a while, two men arrived to talk to us.
07’07: V/O: I must say the truth. I didn't know when I woke up -- I'm going to run this evening. When did I know? I knew at 5:00 in the evening. When one of the men came and told me -- I for you want, today is the day to go out, if you want. To get your freedom.
07’24: V/O: This man, Stefan, is an escapee from Villawood. He's a 32-year-old Algerian, a trained jeweller and from a minority ethnic group, the Berbers.
07’35: STEFAN: What does it mean to be a Berber? I'll give you an example. It's like here in Australia, like Aborigines. It's the same in Algeria.
07’52 V/O: Since the early '90s, Algeria's civil war has been one of the world's bloodiest conflicts. its first six years, it's estimated that more than 70,000, mostly civilians, were murdered. The Berber minority, though less victimised than some other groups, has been targeted by both Islamic fundamentalists and the Government. But the problem is that Algeria is so dangerous that even Amnesty International finds it hard to document the violence.
08’37 GRAHAM THOM, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Well, we have some idea, a fairly good idea, of when massacres are occurring. I don't know about people who have disappeared, for instance, who have been taken by either side. This is thousands of people and we are yet to find anything about them despite repeated requests from organisations like Amnesty and the EU and others.
09’07: V/O: Stefan comes from the region at the centre of Berber nationalism. He says that, like his two brothers now hiding in France, he was a minor political activist. In 1997, after protests against the assassination of a Berber schoolteacher, Stefan says he and others were jailed for three days.
09’30: STEFAN: They kept me here. Sometimes they threw hot water on us. And they put me in a cell. No light, no nothing. No food, no nothing.
09’41: V/O: Then in March 1998, says Stefan, his life was threatened by terrorists. Three heavily armed men came to his jewellery store. One put a gun to his throat. They stole the money he had and said they'd kill him if he didn't find more the next day.
10’06: STEFAN: If these people come to you, you are going to die. You give you die, you don't give you die. Because if you give, the government says "Why are you helping them? Do you want terrorists in this country?" And if you don't help them, the terrorists think you are with the government. Whatever you do, you die. The only way is to run away.
10’32: V/O: Stefan had seen the same thing happen to other shopkeepers. And they were murdered. He grabbed some money, a few papers and ran. He wanted to get as far away as he could. He fled via Tunisia to Mauritius and Thailand. There, he bought a false passport, flew to China and then took another plane to Sydney.
11’03: STEFAN: I came with false passport -- a French passport. And in the plane I threw it in the toilet. So when I arrived at the airport I didn't have any papers. I said "I am from Algeria. I've come here as a refugee for a protection visa."
11’26: V/O: But an Australian official didn't give Stefan the welcome he'd been hoping for. He'd come without applying first for refugee status, and by our rules he was a queue-jumper.
11’40: STEFAN: He said, "Why did you come here? Why did you come here? I'll send you back now, I'll send you back." Then I said "Please don't send me back. I've run away from my country"
11’56: V/O: After an interview at the airport, Stefan, like all so-called illegals, was taken into detention. He spent his first two days in Australia in solitary confinement at Villawood. He says he was treated like a criminal.
12’20: STEFAN: I couldn't understand. Because when I came here, I thought there were human rights. I came to protect myself -- to look for protection, for my rights. When you are at Villawood you ask yourself "Why am I here -- why?"Maybe it's a crime because I came to this country? Because I applied for a protection visa?
12’50: PHILIP RUDDOCK, MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION: Now, the trick is to be able to find who are the real refugees and who are those who are intent on abusing the system? And it's a difficult task.
DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v: But while we're endeavouring to achieve that, we're locking people up. What crime have they committed?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Um, they haven't. They have --
DEBBIE WHITMONT: They haven't committed a crime?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, they've broken our law.
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Which law?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: The law that says that if you want to come, you should apply for a visa and be documented.
13’20: V/O: Dr William Maley is a lawyer and a professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
13:26: DR WILLIAM MALEY, LAWYER: None of the people who are being held in immigration detention have been charged with an offence of entering Australia with authorisation, or convicted.
DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v Q: So how lawful is our detention of them?
13’38: DR WILLIAM MALEY: Er, detention has been held to be lawful by the High Court of Australia, but it's also the case that prolonged and arbitrary detention can violate international law, specifically the prohibitions in the international covenant on civil and political rights.
14’05: V/O: After two days, Stefan was moved to a dormitory shared by 60 people. There weren't enough beds. New arrivals slept on the floor until someone with a bed was either moved or deported. Every night at 11:30 the door was locked.
14’25: STEFAN: There's a window, but it is closed. You can't open it, you can't open it. You have only this if you want to see the sky, that's all. You can't see another thing, only this box.
14’41: V/O: Stefan spent 33 months -- nearly three years -- in Villawood. Like others, he speaks of boredom, of constant identity checks, of dinner at 4:30pm every day, of no exercise facilities, and 200 people trying to share one TV set and one newspaper. Even nail clippers are banned as a risk to security. There's nothing to do, they say, but think. Most don't know how long they'll be there or if and when they'll be deported. Like others, Stefan grew frightened, then angry, then ill, and severely depressed.
15’30: STEFAN: Sometimes, in my room alone, with nothing to do -- only to see the wall, and the mattress, that's it. Sometimes, when you see yourself a long time -- two years for nothing -- Sometimes I get depression. Sometimes, I tell you, I wanted to kill myself. That's it, to finish problem.
15’49: PHILIP RUDDOCK: The point I'd make is this -- we go out of our way to ensure the detention centres provide as much amenity as reasonably possible without making them holiday camps. Without making them an incentive for people to come in the first place.
16’10: MOHSSEN, VILLAWOOD ESCAPEE (TRANSLATION): There is only constant thinking. In the detention centre, there is not much else. Not much talking, not much movement. Newcomers in the first month or the first two months, they move about a little, but the rest really don't feel like doing anything.
16’29: V/O: Mohssen is also an escapee. He's 28. Last year after taking part in free speech demonstrations in Iran, he was jailed for two months.
16’44: MOHSSEN: They hung me up with handcuffs. They used cables to hit the soles of my feet. They made me run with my injured feet. They kept me from sleeping. I had to stand on my legs constantly. I was in a place that was a small cell for one person.
17’05: V/O: Mohssen's family paid bribes to get him out of prison and then more money to get him out of the country. He ended up on a boat to Australia. When he got here, he says, he went to a police station and asked for protection. After a few months in Villawood, his first refugee application was rejected. I/v Question: What would happen to you now if you had to go back to Iran?
17’39: MOHSSEN: I'd say there is nothing waiting for me in Iran except death. If my life were safe in Iran and I had no problem, believe me, I would very much like to go back there.
17’54: STEFAN: I'm not happy I'm here, you know. No-one is happy to leave his family -- his mother, his father. I don't have choice, I don't have choice. A lot of people in Villawood, they say it's better I die. If I am in jail for nothing, it's better I die, why do you keep me here?
18’14: V/O: In the eight months he spent in Villawood, two of Mohssen's fellow Iranians self-mutilated. He saw one of them being taken away on a blood-soaked stretcher.
18’25: MOHSSEN: I'm sure they wanted to commit suicide because I had spoken to both of them just a few days before. Basically they were mentally exhausted, physically exhausted. Everything about them was in such a bad way .
18’47: V/O: that anyone could have seen they had had enough of everything. We asked the Minister Philip Ruddock how he explained the number of cases of self-mutilation in Australian detention centres.
18’55: PHILIP RUDDOCK: I think there are a variety of explanations, and I think the principle explanation is that there are some people who do no accept the umpire's decision, and believe that inappropriate behaviour will influence people like you and me, who have certain values, who have certain views about human rights, who do believe in the sanctity of life, and are concerned when people say, "If you don't give me what I want, I'm going to cut my wrists."DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v Q: Are you saying they're doing it to attract attention?
19’28: PHILIP RUDDOCK: I'm saying that there are some people who believe that they will influence decisions by behaving that way. Um, and, er, the difficult question for me is, "How do I respond?" Because I think if I respond by saying, "All you've got to do is slit your wrist, "even if it's a safety razor -- " -- which is what happens in most cases -- "..you'll get what you want."DEBBIE WHITMONT: Do you accept that these people are showing a certain desperation?
19’55: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I mean, you say it's desperation, um, I say that in many parts of the world, people believe that they get outcomes by behaving in that way. In part, it's cultural.
20’07: STEFAN: You can't believe you're in Australia when you are in Villawood. Overseas you only see Australia is good country. It's good people, nice people. But when you come to Villawood, to tell you the truth, sometimes I tell you I am not in Australia. Maybe I am not. Maybe I am in another country.
20’27: DR ZACHARY STEEL, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, every indication that we have, looking at the population from the detention centres, actually suggests that within our detention centres are probably the most traumatised people on the face of the planet.
20’42: V/O: Zachary Steel is a clinical psychologist. He says three separate studies have shown that Australia's so-called illegal refugees are more traumatised than those who come here through official refugee programs. Add that trauma to long-term detention, says Steel, and the psychiatric damage could be irreversible.
21’04: DR ZACHARY STEEL: Almost everybody within that detention environment is presenting with symptoms of clinical depression. But increasingly, we're seeing a number of individuals who are moving beyond that. Often they'll engage in activities where they'll start to rock back and forwards to self-stimulate themselves and engage in other kinds of repetitive behaviour. Things that you see in people who have been profoundly institutionalised.
21’31 V/O: The findings of Steel and three colleagues have been published in the prestigious British medical journal, the 'Lancet'. It's a remarkable collaboration. One of the contributors, Dr Aamer Sultan, is detained inside Villawood. For the last two years, Aamer Sultan has been counsellor, translator and advocate to dozens of his fellow refugees locked up in Villawood. He's documented the stages of their despair and their physical deterioration, and his own. Aamer Sultan doesn't like talking about himself. But this is his view from inside Villawood. Detention centres are off limits to the media. But Aamer secretly recorded this video and this message. He's taking a very real risk of reprisal and punishment. But he says he wants we Australians to know what it feels like to be inside one of our detention centres.
22’36: AAMER SULTAN, VILLAWOOD DETAINEE: When you are denied even the right to talk. When you can not return back. When you have got nothing but to watch yourselves and the others around. Falling apart little by little. Trying to help them, trying to reach them. Trying to give them as much as you can. I feel as though I couldn't cope with the number any more. The number is getting more and more.
23’17 V/O: Aamer Sultan grew up in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He came from a middle-class family in Baghdad and became a doctor. A Shi'ite Muslim, he went to work as a GP in a hospital in Kerbala, in southern Iraq. Since the end of the Gulf War, when the West encouraged their uprising, Shi'ite rebels in the south have been fighting against the Government. Aamer Sultan began helping the rebels, treating their wounded in a safe house on the edge of town. One day, the safe house and his room at the hospital were raided. Incriminating papers were taken. After Aamer's father and brother were seized and questioned, the family raised money to get Aamer out of the country. In May 1999, he arrived in Australia. He's certain that in Iraq his help to the rebels would cost him his life.
24’22: JACQUIE EVERITT, LAWYER: His family don't even know where he is. They know nothing. He can't get any information back to his family because the mail is watched, coming in. It's all checked. And so they have no idea. They don't know if he's dead or alive.
24’35: V/O: In April last year, the Refugee Review Tribunal rejected Aamer Sultan's claim to be a refugee. Like others, Aamer had no way of proving what had happened to him in Iraq. The tribunal had to take his word for it. But despite the dangerous implications of a wrong decision, the tribunal didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. Instead, the tribunal member decided that he lacked credibility, that significant aspects of his claims were fabricated, and that Aamer's links to the rebels wouldn't have made him wanted by authorities. To those familiar with Saddam Hussein's regime, it's an extraordinary decision.
25’17: AAMER SULTAN: We are denied the right to contact organisations. Intimidation, reprisals, revenge is applied as a standard here. Speak up and you get denied refugee status. Speak up and the Minister will even deny you staying in Australia for humanitarian reasons. Speak up even more and you will get moved from Villawood to Woomera or Curtin. Which is more strict. And more harsh definitely than Villawood.
25’56: DR ZACHARY STEEL: I know Dr Sultan is, er, is deeply upset at the process that he went through in Australia. He feels that, um, that he hasn't had a fair hearing. And I know that he's deeply concerned about what would happen to him should he return to Iraq.
26’18: V/O: Now, Aamer Sultan faces deportation. But since the Gulf War, there are no regular flights to Iraq. So, he can't be flown back. As a result, he remains here -- detained indefinitely. The danger for him is that his outspokenness may provoke Australia to try and deport him anyway.
26’44: AAMER SULTAN: I used to speak up, that's my nature. And I'm not ashamed of that there or here or anywhere. If anyone would deny you the right to speak up whether in Iraq or anywhere, I don't know what you have to live for. At least after all this is our choice. I am just shocked by the fact that here speaking up is as bad as there.
27’06: DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v Q: Look, how comfortable are you about sending someone back to Iraq?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: I am -- I am very --
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
PHILIP RUDDOCK: I am very comfortable about sending anybody back who is found under our system not to be a refugee.
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Does it never concern you that sometimes we might make a mistake, that we might send someone back effectively to their death?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, um, I wouldn't want to see that happen. Um, but I also --
DEBBIE WHITMONT: It might've happened though, mightn't it?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: I'm, I'm not aware of it ever having happened.
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Do we check?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Um, we expect that people will tell us if it does. How could they do that?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Um, because the sorts of groups that people associate with who are likely to be persecuted often have very extensive networks of communication internationally.
27’57: V/O: Australia has more than 2,800 people locked up in detention centres. More than 570 are children. Dozens of the children are here alone, without a parent. This picture was drawn in Villawood by a six-year-old Iranian boy, Shayan Bedraie. For the last six months, say his doctors, he's been drawing the same picture over and over again.
28’31: JACQUIE EVERITT, LAWYER: There's always the grid wire. There's sometimes a man -- a stick figure -- with a line on his wrist and drops of blood coming down. And when he draws his family, he draws his mother and father, and he and his sister are drawn behind the wire with tears coming all the way down to the ground.
28’58: V/O: Lawyer Jacquie Everitt met Shayan and his family in Villawood.
29’02: JACQUIE EVERITT: The family had been in Woomera for 11 months. In Woomera, there were some riots and he saw people burning, setting fire to themselves. He saw guards with batons, using the batons to try to quell the riot, and that's when he started to withdraw. And then the family became quite worried. So they came to Villawood and then, not long after they arrived in Villawood, he walked into a room where one of the detainees had cut his wrists, and there was blood, and he saw all this happening. And he ran out and he spoke to his mother and he said, "There's a man dead." And he hasn't spoken since. He doesn't speak and he doesn't eat and he's just withdrawn more and more and more.
29’58: V/O: This is Shayan Bedraie. And these are his parents, Zahra and Mohammad. They're here in Australia because Mohammad says he wouldn't be alive if he went back to Iran. Last week, Aamer Sultan and the Bedraies decided they were so desperate that their only hope was to tell the Australian public about Shayan's plight. They made this tape in Villawood in secret. It's very likely they'll be punished for doing it.
30’30 ZAHRA BEDRAIES, SHAYAN'S MOTHER: We're in a bad way, I see my son is sick all the time.
30’36: V/O: Recently, Shayan spent nearly two months in Westmead Hospital. Finally, he began to eat, drink and talk again. But as soon as he got back to Villawood, he stopped. Since then, he's had to be re-hospitalised every four or five days to be drip-fed and rehydrated.
30’56: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE, SHAYAN'S FATHER: Our child won't drink water, he won't eat. And he doesn't move four or five days at a time. He's very fearful and anxious, and he just sits in a corner not speaking. We go to the medical service two or three times a day. Then after four or five days they take him to the hospital. Sometimes they tell us the child can survive for five days, meaning that only when he is about to totally collapse will they take him to hospital.
31’32: V/O: Mohammad Bedraie escaped Iran after a student demonstration he helped plan was broken up by authorities. Along with another man who led the demonstration, Mohammad spent four months in hiding before he and his family could get out of the country. Here in Australia, Mohammad says the other man has been accepted as a refugee. But Mohammad hasn't. When he and his family applied to the minister, Philip Ruddock, for special humanitarian consideration, they were knocked back.
32’07: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE: Meanwhile, all his mother and I can do is cry and sob -- day and night for our child.Now matter how much we beg, he won't eat anything. they've seen it themselves so many times. However much we try to make him eat, he won't. They know that Shayan's problem is psychological and mental -- yet they want to blame us for everything.
32’38: V/O: Doctors at Sydney's Westmead Hospital say Shayan needs a more 'normal' environment. But they recommend that he stay together with his family, and draw attention to his particularly close relationship with his father. The Department of Immigration says the Bedraies should go back to Iran. But Mohammad says he can't.
33’01; JACQUIE EVERITT: Well, they believe they are refugees. They are convinced that if they go back -- ...well, they think they may die. But one thing that needs to be thought about is the fact that they came here with a healthy child, believing they were starting a new future. And they're going to be going back, if they're sent back -- apart from all the other issues of the persecution and the other things -- they're going back with a very, very ill child, if they're sent back.
33’31: STEFAN: They never tell you when they are going to deport you. Everytime they take the people they say it something. The supervisor wants to see you about your property, or say the nurse wants to see you about your teeth, your eyes, your health. When you go to the office, they put you in the cell. Finish!
33’50: V/O: Stefan, like others, says deportees are taken away without warning. They simply disappear. About two months ago, Stefan got his deportation order.
34’02: STEFAN: Many times I wanted to escape, but when I got this letter I didn't have a choice. Because I know I am going to die so I am looking to escape -- that's it.
34’11: V/O: Stefan knew that some people in Villawood were working on an escape. He decided he had nothing more to lose. In recent years, Villawood detainees have escaped through windows, an open gate, and at least once via the drainpipes.To stop that happening again, as the Minister recently showed journalists, gratings had been installed across the drainpipes. But as Stefan told Four Corners, the escapees simply cut through them.
34’43: STEFAN: They started digging into the ground. To make a large hole to enter through the drainpipe. There was a drain and everything. They dug almost two metres. It took almost two months. All along there were grills, bars that we had to cut. There were 10 or 12 like that.
35’14: V/O: For Mohssen, the escape came by accident. Because the laundry was too crowded in the daytime, he had to do his washing at night.
35’24: MOHSSEN (TRANSLATION): It was about 10:00 at night. I had some clothes I wanted to wash. I went to laundry section. From there, I saw some guys going into the mosque. I wondered what were they doing there so late at night. And no matter how long I waited, they didn't come back out. So I went to see what was going on. Until then, I had not been to the mosque. They'd taken away the carpet on the floor. They'd dug a 3m or 4m hole and that was connected to the main route of the tunnel which was the rainwater drain.
36’02 V/O: Mohssen says it only took him a few minutes to decide what to do.
36’10 MOHSSEN: I didn't have a choice. The end of my road was certain to me. For me, the end of the road was deportation, so I decided to escape.
36’22: V/O: Four Corners was told that the planners had drawn a map of the drains, that they'd arranged to go in groups of three or four, and that they knew how long it would take to reach the outlet. Stefan was the last out. He and three others, housed in a different part of the centre, had to cut a wire fence to get to the mosque. He waited until 12:45am.
36’50: STEFAN: The first to go were those other people -- 18, no 19 people first. We knew when they were gone because they told me what time they'd start. I knew how long it would take. I knew when they finished. After that we went to cut the fence.
37’11: MOHSSEN: From when we went down into the hole, I think we crawled through the pipe for about 30 minutes. We couldn't get up, we couldn't sit. We only moved by crawling and being very careful. There wasn't much air in there, and there was a lot of mud and stuff in the tunnel.
37’32: STEFAN: When I was under ground I was scared. I was trembling a lot I couldn't breathe. It took a long time -- nearly an hour under ground.
37’44: MOHSSEN: When I got out of the tunnel, at first I was scared. We were still crouched down. There was an open space. I went forward a bit, then I went up. I saw a lot of dirty clothes. Clothes of the guys that had already come out. I tried to find something to wear, but didn't have much luck. From there on, I had a strange feeling. I mean, I thought I had a sweet moment, because I had reached freedom.
38’21: V/O: To an Australian asylum seeker, our neighbour New Zealand might seem to be on another planet. Though fewer refugees come here, those who do find themselves in a very different system. Ali Mohammed Saleh fled a blood feud, leaving his wife and three children in Yemen. He spent four months in Villawood. One night last April, he couldn't sleep, and got up to go to the toilet. He saw the razor wire fence had been cut open.
38’55: ALI MOHAMMED SALEH: And when I see the children and family and people going, I say to them "Where are you going?", he say to me "Ali, if you want to come, come." I say "Of course I will come".
39’06: V/O: That night, there were 14 escapees -- 7 men, 2 women, and 5 children. One of the escapees had spent 5 years in detention. When he got outside, he was overwhelmed.
39’20: ALI MOHAMMED SALEH: When he go with me, when he ran away with me, outside to the street -- he cry. I tell him "Why you cry Mohammed? Why you cry?" He said, "After five years I am outside" And he's lucky.
39’37: V/O: Ali managed to get a plane to New Zealand. There, he's staying at a refugee shelter. New Zealand doesn't lock up its asylum seekers. While their refugee applications are being processed, they can apply for a temporary work permit. If they can't get work, they're paid an emergency benefit. New Zealand won't necessarily accept Ali as a refugee, but its policy is to let asylum seekers stay in the community and to prevent abuse of the system by processing their claims as quickly as possible. By Australian standards, it seems sensible and humane.
40’21: ALI MOHAMMED SALEH: Immigration New Zealand is very nice. See, I am free. I'm here. No camp, nothing happens to me. When I go to immigration, they talk with me nicely. You know, very, very, very different, you know.
40’41: V/O: Here in Australia, the Government argues that, without detention, Australia would face a much bigger refugee problem.
40’49: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Some people say to me, "Why do you, Ruddock, see this as such a big problem, "when it's only 4,000 people?" It's probably one of the questions you were going to ask me. They say, you know, other countries have bigger problems. I think the reason they have bigger problems is that they have not put in place the same comprehensive arrangements that we have. And if they did, their problems would be much less.
41’11: DR WILLIAM MALEY: In the 1999-2000 financial year, the number of people who arrived by boat was 4,174. Despite all the deterrence measures that the Minister brought in, the numbers for the following financial year dropped by precisely 29.
41’29: V/O: Since April, 60 detainees have simply escaped from Villawood. Almost all remain at large, somewhere in the community. Recently, the Government has increased the penalty for harbouring escapees to 10 years in prison. Even so, refugee action groups say they've collected a list of more than 200 people who'd be prepared to help those on the run.
41’55: IAN RINTOUL, REFUGEE ACTION COLLECTIVE: I guess in the end, most people end up offering some financial support. And people are only too willing to do that. We've had, you know, cheques up to $300 of people -- yeah, to provide money. People just say, "I don't want these escapees caught."
42’11: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Look, if they'd like to give me their lists, I'll have a look at them. I can test them. Um, but I don't think that that is creditable, quite frankly. I think most Australians – DEBBIE WHITMONT: Test them? What do you mean?
42’20: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, test them to see whether there are Australians who genuinely hold the view that they would want to help people break the law.DEBBIE WHITMONT: You don't believe that?PHILIP RUDDOCK: No, I don't.
42’29: JACQUIE EVERITT: If somebody came to me carrying an ill child -- No, there would be no dilemma. I would want to do whatever I could do to help them.DEBBIE WHITMONT: Despite the fact that you'd be committing an offence?
42’45: JACQUIE EVERITT: Um -- gosh, yes -- I have to say, I'd help them. It is not right to obey laws that are wrong theoretically. And what is the saying -- "Evil happens when good men do nothing"
43’11: V/O: It's understandable that Australia might feel it could be overwhelmed by the world's refugee problem. It's reasonable to say that we can't open our doors to everyone.But are we overstating the risk? We take pride in our reputation for humanity. But do we really care what's happening behind the razor wire?
43’45: AAMER SULTAN: After time I realised these fences around are not to prevent us from escaping -- never. No, these fences have been set to prevent you, the Australians, from approaching us. It's pretty clear.
44’01: V/O: Aamer Sultan still believes in Australia. And he believes that once Australians know what's really going on in our own country, we won't accept it.
44’16: AAMER SULTAN: What else do I feel? Why am I actually risking taping this interview, this video? Risking to give it to one of the channels -- one of the Australian channels to broadcast it? Though I know very well the consequences. It's a major incident what I am doing, actually, and I'm pretty sure I can predict what is going to happen to me, especially in the next few weeks. And of course that will be totally off the cameras and off the media. Unexpectedly, and anyone might be surprised, by the fact that I am still optimistic. Still feeling that Australians, if they knew -- and that's what I am trying to let them know -- they wouldn't accept it.
45’14: V/O: Mohammad Bedraie has been given a deportation order. He and his family could be taken back to Iran any moment. With that hanging over them, the Department of Immigration has given them three choices. They can go back to Iran voluntarily, stay together in detention until they are deported or let Shayan be moved outside Villawood and separated from his family.
45’41: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE: For us, as father and mother, separation is difficult. We have witnessed our son's illness and now we will be apart. This is the worst deal they could have made with a six-year-old child. He's become this way inside detention. And now, so that he can be free, they want to take away his father and mother from him too.
46’20: V/O: Mohammad Bedraie says authorities have accused him of preventing Shayan from eating just to attract sympathy.
46’30: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE: Do they think we are animals? We are human beings, we love our children. How could a human being possibly prevent his own child from eating?
46’49: V/O: Right now, in the middle of our biggest city, a six-year-old child is seriously ill. It wouldn't have happened if he hadn't come here to one of our detention centres. Shayan's parents are paying a terrible price for asylum. Yet we still don't believe they deserve our protection
03’47: V/O: Last month, more than 40 refugees escaped from Villawood. Tonight, Four Corners tells how they did it and why. And we go inside Villawood itself. Why is this man in indefinite detention? And why have these parents had to watch their six-year-old son stop moving, talking and even eating and drinking?
05’11: V/O: On 19 July, 23 people seeking refugee status who had been locked up in Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre crawled through a tunnel dug into the centre's drains and escaped. Three days later, another 23 cut through razor wire fences and followed them. All but one of the 46 are still at large. In a big city like Sydney, it seems it isn't too hard to keep a low profile if you have to. But if you want to be found, you can be. A few days after the escapes, Four Corners received a phone call.
06’15: V/O: Despite the risks, some of the escapees wanted to tell their story. We were given a time and a meeting place.
06’28: V/O: There, we met a guide who took us to two other places to make sure we weren't being followed. Then with hats and coats covering our eyes to make sure we didn't know where we were, we were taken to a house in suburban Sydney. We don't know where it was or who lived there. After a while, two men arrived to talk to us.
07’07: V/O: I must say the truth. I didn't know when I woke up -- I'm going to run this evening. When did I know? I knew at 5:00 in the evening. When one of the men came and told me -- I for you want, today is the day to go out, if you want. To get your freedom.
07’24: V/O: This man, Stefan, is an escapee from Villawood. He's a 32-year-old Algerian, a trained jeweller and from a minority ethnic group, the Berbers.
07’35: STEFAN: What does it mean to be a Berber? I'll give you an example. It's like here in Australia, like Aborigines. It's the same in Algeria.
07’52 V/O: Since the early '90s, Algeria's civil war has been one of the world's bloodiest conflicts. its first six years, it's estimated that more than 70,000, mostly civilians, were murdered. The Berber minority, though less victimised than some other groups, has been targeted by both Islamic fundamentalists and the Government. But the problem is that Algeria is so dangerous that even Amnesty International finds it hard to document the violence.
08’37 GRAHAM THOM, AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Well, we have some idea, a fairly good idea, of when massacres are occurring. I don't know about people who have disappeared, for instance, who have been taken by either side. This is thousands of people and we are yet to find anything about them despite repeated requests from organisations like Amnesty and the EU and others.
09’07: V/O: Stefan comes from the region at the centre of Berber nationalism. He says that, like his two brothers now hiding in France, he was a minor political activist. In 1997, after protests against the assassination of a Berber schoolteacher, Stefan says he and others were jailed for three days.
09’30: STEFAN: They kept me here. Sometimes they threw hot water on us. And they put me in a cell. No light, no nothing. No food, no nothing.
09’41: V/O: Then in March 1998, says Stefan, his life was threatened by terrorists. Three heavily armed men came to his jewellery store. One put a gun to his throat. They stole the money he had and said they'd kill him if he didn't find more the next day.
10’06: STEFAN: If these people come to you, you are going to die. You give you die, you don't give you die. Because if you give, the government says "Why are you helping them? Do you want terrorists in this country?" And if you don't help them, the terrorists think you are with the government. Whatever you do, you die. The only way is to run away.
10’32: V/O: Stefan had seen the same thing happen to other shopkeepers. And they were murdered. He grabbed some money, a few papers and ran. He wanted to get as far away as he could. He fled via Tunisia to Mauritius and Thailand. There, he bought a false passport, flew to China and then took another plane to Sydney.
11’03: STEFAN: I came with false passport -- a French passport. And in the plane I threw it in the toilet. So when I arrived at the airport I didn't have any papers. I said "I am from Algeria. I've come here as a refugee for a protection visa."
11’26: V/O: But an Australian official didn't give Stefan the welcome he'd been hoping for. He'd come without applying first for refugee status, and by our rules he was a queue-jumper.
11’40: STEFAN: He said, "Why did you come here? Why did you come here? I'll send you back now, I'll send you back." Then I said "Please don't send me back. I've run away from my country"
11’56: V/O: After an interview at the airport, Stefan, like all so-called illegals, was taken into detention. He spent his first two days in Australia in solitary confinement at Villawood. He says he was treated like a criminal.
12’20: STEFAN: I couldn't understand. Because when I came here, I thought there were human rights. I came to protect myself -- to look for protection, for my rights. When you are at Villawood you ask yourself "Why am I here -- why?"Maybe it's a crime because I came to this country? Because I applied for a protection visa?
12’50: PHILIP RUDDOCK, MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION: Now, the trick is to be able to find who are the real refugees and who are those who are intent on abusing the system? And it's a difficult task.
DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v: But while we're endeavouring to achieve that, we're locking people up. What crime have they committed?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Um, they haven't. They have --
DEBBIE WHITMONT: They haven't committed a crime?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, they've broken our law.
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Which law?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: The law that says that if you want to come, you should apply for a visa and be documented.
13’20: V/O: Dr William Maley is a lawyer and a professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
13:26: DR WILLIAM MALEY, LAWYER: None of the people who are being held in immigration detention have been charged with an offence of entering Australia with authorisation, or convicted.
DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v Q: So how lawful is our detention of them?
13’38: DR WILLIAM MALEY: Er, detention has been held to be lawful by the High Court of Australia, but it's also the case that prolonged and arbitrary detention can violate international law, specifically the prohibitions in the international covenant on civil and political rights.
14’05: V/O: After two days, Stefan was moved to a dormitory shared by 60 people. There weren't enough beds. New arrivals slept on the floor until someone with a bed was either moved or deported. Every night at 11:30 the door was locked.
14’25: STEFAN: There's a window, but it is closed. You can't open it, you can't open it. You have only this if you want to see the sky, that's all. You can't see another thing, only this box.
14’41: V/O: Stefan spent 33 months -- nearly three years -- in Villawood. Like others, he speaks of boredom, of constant identity checks, of dinner at 4:30pm every day, of no exercise facilities, and 200 people trying to share one TV set and one newspaper. Even nail clippers are banned as a risk to security. There's nothing to do, they say, but think. Most don't know how long they'll be there or if and when they'll be deported. Like others, Stefan grew frightened, then angry, then ill, and severely depressed.
15’30: STEFAN: Sometimes, in my room alone, with nothing to do -- only to see the wall, and the mattress, that's it. Sometimes, when you see yourself a long time -- two years for nothing -- Sometimes I get depression. Sometimes, I tell you, I wanted to kill myself. That's it, to finish problem.
15’49: PHILIP RUDDOCK: The point I'd make is this -- we go out of our way to ensure the detention centres provide as much amenity as reasonably possible without making them holiday camps. Without making them an incentive for people to come in the first place.
16’10: MOHSSEN, VILLAWOOD ESCAPEE (TRANSLATION): There is only constant thinking. In the detention centre, there is not much else. Not much talking, not much movement. Newcomers in the first month or the first two months, they move about a little, but the rest really don't feel like doing anything.
16’29: V/O: Mohssen is also an escapee. He's 28. Last year after taking part in free speech demonstrations in Iran, he was jailed for two months.
16’44: MOHSSEN: They hung me up with handcuffs. They used cables to hit the soles of my feet. They made me run with my injured feet. They kept me from sleeping. I had to stand on my legs constantly. I was in a place that was a small cell for one person.
17’05: V/O: Mohssen's family paid bribes to get him out of prison and then more money to get him out of the country. He ended up on a boat to Australia. When he got here, he says, he went to a police station and asked for protection. After a few months in Villawood, his first refugee application was rejected. I/v Question: What would happen to you now if you had to go back to Iran?
17’39: MOHSSEN: I'd say there is nothing waiting for me in Iran except death. If my life were safe in Iran and I had no problem, believe me, I would very much like to go back there.
17’54: STEFAN: I'm not happy I'm here, you know. No-one is happy to leave his family -- his mother, his father. I don't have choice, I don't have choice. A lot of people in Villawood, they say it's better I die. If I am in jail for nothing, it's better I die, why do you keep me here?
18’14: V/O: In the eight months he spent in Villawood, two of Mohssen's fellow Iranians self-mutilated. He saw one of them being taken away on a blood-soaked stretcher.
18’25: MOHSSEN: I'm sure they wanted to commit suicide because I had spoken to both of them just a few days before. Basically they were mentally exhausted, physically exhausted. Everything about them was in such a bad way .
18’47: V/O: that anyone could have seen they had had enough of everything. We asked the Minister Philip Ruddock how he explained the number of cases of self-mutilation in Australian detention centres.
18’55: PHILIP RUDDOCK: I think there are a variety of explanations, and I think the principle explanation is that there are some people who do no accept the umpire's decision, and believe that inappropriate behaviour will influence people like you and me, who have certain values, who have certain views about human rights, who do believe in the sanctity of life, and are concerned when people say, "If you don't give me what I want, I'm going to cut my wrists."DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v Q: Are you saying they're doing it to attract attention?
19’28: PHILIP RUDDOCK: I'm saying that there are some people who believe that they will influence decisions by behaving that way. Um, and, er, the difficult question for me is, "How do I respond?" Because I think if I respond by saying, "All you've got to do is slit your wrist, "even if it's a safety razor -- " -- which is what happens in most cases -- "..you'll get what you want."DEBBIE WHITMONT: Do you accept that these people are showing a certain desperation?
19’55: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, I mean, you say it's desperation, um, I say that in many parts of the world, people believe that they get outcomes by behaving in that way. In part, it's cultural.
20’07: STEFAN: You can't believe you're in Australia when you are in Villawood. Overseas you only see Australia is good country. It's good people, nice people. But when you come to Villawood, to tell you the truth, sometimes I tell you I am not in Australia. Maybe I am not. Maybe I am in another country.
20’27: DR ZACHARY STEEL, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: Well, every indication that we have, looking at the population from the detention centres, actually suggests that within our detention centres are probably the most traumatised people on the face of the planet.
20’42: V/O: Zachary Steel is a clinical psychologist. He says three separate studies have shown that Australia's so-called illegal refugees are more traumatised than those who come here through official refugee programs. Add that trauma to long-term detention, says Steel, and the psychiatric damage could be irreversible.
21’04: DR ZACHARY STEEL: Almost everybody within that detention environment is presenting with symptoms of clinical depression. But increasingly, we're seeing a number of individuals who are moving beyond that. Often they'll engage in activities where they'll start to rock back and forwards to self-stimulate themselves and engage in other kinds of repetitive behaviour. Things that you see in people who have been profoundly institutionalised.
21’31 V/O: The findings of Steel and three colleagues have been published in the prestigious British medical journal, the 'Lancet'. It's a remarkable collaboration. One of the contributors, Dr Aamer Sultan, is detained inside Villawood. For the last two years, Aamer Sultan has been counsellor, translator and advocate to dozens of his fellow refugees locked up in Villawood. He's documented the stages of their despair and their physical deterioration, and his own. Aamer Sultan doesn't like talking about himself. But this is his view from inside Villawood. Detention centres are off limits to the media. But Aamer secretly recorded this video and this message. He's taking a very real risk of reprisal and punishment. But he says he wants we Australians to know what it feels like to be inside one of our detention centres.
22’36: AAMER SULTAN, VILLAWOOD DETAINEE: When you are denied even the right to talk. When you can not return back. When you have got nothing but to watch yourselves and the others around. Falling apart little by little. Trying to help them, trying to reach them. Trying to give them as much as you can. I feel as though I couldn't cope with the number any more. The number is getting more and more.
23’17 V/O: Aamer Sultan grew up in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He came from a middle-class family in Baghdad and became a doctor. A Shi'ite Muslim, he went to work as a GP in a hospital in Kerbala, in southern Iraq. Since the end of the Gulf War, when the West encouraged their uprising, Shi'ite rebels in the south have been fighting against the Government. Aamer Sultan began helping the rebels, treating their wounded in a safe house on the edge of town. One day, the safe house and his room at the hospital were raided. Incriminating papers were taken. After Aamer's father and brother were seized and questioned, the family raised money to get Aamer out of the country. In May 1999, he arrived in Australia. He's certain that in Iraq his help to the rebels would cost him his life.
24’22: JACQUIE EVERITT, LAWYER: His family don't even know where he is. They know nothing. He can't get any information back to his family because the mail is watched, coming in. It's all checked. And so they have no idea. They don't know if he's dead or alive.
24’35: V/O: In April last year, the Refugee Review Tribunal rejected Aamer Sultan's claim to be a refugee. Like others, Aamer had no way of proving what had happened to him in Iraq. The tribunal had to take his word for it. But despite the dangerous implications of a wrong decision, the tribunal didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. Instead, the tribunal member decided that he lacked credibility, that significant aspects of his claims were fabricated, and that Aamer's links to the rebels wouldn't have made him wanted by authorities. To those familiar with Saddam Hussein's regime, it's an extraordinary decision.
25’17: AAMER SULTAN: We are denied the right to contact organisations. Intimidation, reprisals, revenge is applied as a standard here. Speak up and you get denied refugee status. Speak up and the Minister will even deny you staying in Australia for humanitarian reasons. Speak up even more and you will get moved from Villawood to Woomera or Curtin. Which is more strict. And more harsh definitely than Villawood.
25’56: DR ZACHARY STEEL: I know Dr Sultan is, er, is deeply upset at the process that he went through in Australia. He feels that, um, that he hasn't had a fair hearing. And I know that he's deeply concerned about what would happen to him should he return to Iraq.
26’18: V/O: Now, Aamer Sultan faces deportation. But since the Gulf War, there are no regular flights to Iraq. So, he can't be flown back. As a result, he remains here -- detained indefinitely. The danger for him is that his outspokenness may provoke Australia to try and deport him anyway.
26’44: AAMER SULTAN: I used to speak up, that's my nature. And I'm not ashamed of that there or here or anywhere. If anyone would deny you the right to speak up whether in Iraq or anywhere, I don't know what you have to live for. At least after all this is our choice. I am just shocked by the fact that here speaking up is as bad as there.
27’06: DEBBIE WHITMONT i/v Q: Look, how comfortable are you about sending someone back to Iraq?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: I am -- I am very --
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
PHILIP RUDDOCK: I am very comfortable about sending anybody back who is found under our system not to be a refugee.
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Does it never concern you that sometimes we might make a mistake, that we might send someone back effectively to their death?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, um, I wouldn't want to see that happen. Um, but I also --
DEBBIE WHITMONT: It might've happened though, mightn't it?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: I'm, I'm not aware of it ever having happened.
DEBBIE WHITMONT: Do we check?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Um, we expect that people will tell us if it does. How could they do that?
PHILIP RUDDOCK: Um, because the sorts of groups that people associate with who are likely to be persecuted often have very extensive networks of communication internationally.
27’57: V/O: Australia has more than 2,800 people locked up in detention centres. More than 570 are children. Dozens of the children are here alone, without a parent. This picture was drawn in Villawood by a six-year-old Iranian boy, Shayan Bedraie. For the last six months, say his doctors, he's been drawing the same picture over and over again.
28’31: JACQUIE EVERITT, LAWYER: There's always the grid wire. There's sometimes a man -- a stick figure -- with a line on his wrist and drops of blood coming down. And when he draws his family, he draws his mother and father, and he and his sister are drawn behind the wire with tears coming all the way down to the ground.
28’58: V/O: Lawyer Jacquie Everitt met Shayan and his family in Villawood.
29’02: JACQUIE EVERITT: The family had been in Woomera for 11 months. In Woomera, there were some riots and he saw people burning, setting fire to themselves. He saw guards with batons, using the batons to try to quell the riot, and that's when he started to withdraw. And then the family became quite worried. So they came to Villawood and then, not long after they arrived in Villawood, he walked into a room where one of the detainees had cut his wrists, and there was blood, and he saw all this happening. And he ran out and he spoke to his mother and he said, "There's a man dead." And he hasn't spoken since. He doesn't speak and he doesn't eat and he's just withdrawn more and more and more.
29’58: V/O: This is Shayan Bedraie. And these are his parents, Zahra and Mohammad. They're here in Australia because Mohammad says he wouldn't be alive if he went back to Iran. Last week, Aamer Sultan and the Bedraies decided they were so desperate that their only hope was to tell the Australian public about Shayan's plight. They made this tape in Villawood in secret. It's very likely they'll be punished for doing it.
30’30 ZAHRA BEDRAIES, SHAYAN'S MOTHER: We're in a bad way, I see my son is sick all the time.
30’36: V/O: Recently, Shayan spent nearly two months in Westmead Hospital. Finally, he began to eat, drink and talk again. But as soon as he got back to Villawood, he stopped. Since then, he's had to be re-hospitalised every four or five days to be drip-fed and rehydrated.
30’56: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE, SHAYAN'S FATHER: Our child won't drink water, he won't eat. And he doesn't move four or five days at a time. He's very fearful and anxious, and he just sits in a corner not speaking. We go to the medical service two or three times a day. Then after four or five days they take him to the hospital. Sometimes they tell us the child can survive for five days, meaning that only when he is about to totally collapse will they take him to hospital.
31’32: V/O: Mohammad Bedraie escaped Iran after a student demonstration he helped plan was broken up by authorities. Along with another man who led the demonstration, Mohammad spent four months in hiding before he and his family could get out of the country. Here in Australia, Mohammad says the other man has been accepted as a refugee. But Mohammad hasn't. When he and his family applied to the minister, Philip Ruddock, for special humanitarian consideration, they were knocked back.
32’07: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE: Meanwhile, all his mother and I can do is cry and sob -- day and night for our child.Now matter how much we beg, he won't eat anything. they've seen it themselves so many times. However much we try to make him eat, he won't. They know that Shayan's problem is psychological and mental -- yet they want to blame us for everything.
32’38: V/O: Doctors at Sydney's Westmead Hospital say Shayan needs a more 'normal' environment. But they recommend that he stay together with his family, and draw attention to his particularly close relationship with his father. The Department of Immigration says the Bedraies should go back to Iran. But Mohammad says he can't.
33’01; JACQUIE EVERITT: Well, they believe they are refugees. They are convinced that if they go back -- ...well, they think they may die. But one thing that needs to be thought about is the fact that they came here with a healthy child, believing they were starting a new future. And they're going to be going back, if they're sent back -- apart from all the other issues of the persecution and the other things -- they're going back with a very, very ill child, if they're sent back.
33’31: STEFAN: They never tell you when they are going to deport you. Everytime they take the people they say it something. The supervisor wants to see you about your property, or say the nurse wants to see you about your teeth, your eyes, your health. When you go to the office, they put you in the cell. Finish!
33’50: V/O: Stefan, like others, says deportees are taken away without warning. They simply disappear. About two months ago, Stefan got his deportation order.
34’02: STEFAN: Many times I wanted to escape, but when I got this letter I didn't have a choice. Because I know I am going to die so I am looking to escape -- that's it.
34’11: V/O: Stefan knew that some people in Villawood were working on an escape. He decided he had nothing more to lose. In recent years, Villawood detainees have escaped through windows, an open gate, and at least once via the drainpipes.To stop that happening again, as the Minister recently showed journalists, gratings had been installed across the drainpipes. But as Stefan told Four Corners, the escapees simply cut through them.
34’43: STEFAN: They started digging into the ground. To make a large hole to enter through the drainpipe. There was a drain and everything. They dug almost two metres. It took almost two months. All along there were grills, bars that we had to cut. There were 10 or 12 like that.
35’14: V/O: For Mohssen, the escape came by accident. Because the laundry was too crowded in the daytime, he had to do his washing at night.
35’24: MOHSSEN (TRANSLATION): It was about 10:00 at night. I had some clothes I wanted to wash. I went to laundry section. From there, I saw some guys going into the mosque. I wondered what were they doing there so late at night. And no matter how long I waited, they didn't come back out. So I went to see what was going on. Until then, I had not been to the mosque. They'd taken away the carpet on the floor. They'd dug a 3m or 4m hole and that was connected to the main route of the tunnel which was the rainwater drain.
36’02 V/O: Mohssen says it only took him a few minutes to decide what to do.
36’10 MOHSSEN: I didn't have a choice. The end of my road was certain to me. For me, the end of the road was deportation, so I decided to escape.
36’22: V/O: Four Corners was told that the planners had drawn a map of the drains, that they'd arranged to go in groups of three or four, and that they knew how long it would take to reach the outlet. Stefan was the last out. He and three others, housed in a different part of the centre, had to cut a wire fence to get to the mosque. He waited until 12:45am.
36’50: STEFAN: The first to go were those other people -- 18, no 19 people first. We knew when they were gone because they told me what time they'd start. I knew how long it would take. I knew when they finished. After that we went to cut the fence.
37’11: MOHSSEN: From when we went down into the hole, I think we crawled through the pipe for about 30 minutes. We couldn't get up, we couldn't sit. We only moved by crawling and being very careful. There wasn't much air in there, and there was a lot of mud and stuff in the tunnel.
37’32: STEFAN: When I was under ground I was scared. I was trembling a lot I couldn't breathe. It took a long time -- nearly an hour under ground.
37’44: MOHSSEN: When I got out of the tunnel, at first I was scared. We were still crouched down. There was an open space. I went forward a bit, then I went up. I saw a lot of dirty clothes. Clothes of the guys that had already come out. I tried to find something to wear, but didn't have much luck. From there on, I had a strange feeling. I mean, I thought I had a sweet moment, because I had reached freedom.
38’21: V/O: To an Australian asylum seeker, our neighbour New Zealand might seem to be on another planet. Though fewer refugees come here, those who do find themselves in a very different system. Ali Mohammed Saleh fled a blood feud, leaving his wife and three children in Yemen. He spent four months in Villawood. One night last April, he couldn't sleep, and got up to go to the toilet. He saw the razor wire fence had been cut open.
38’55: ALI MOHAMMED SALEH: And when I see the children and family and people going, I say to them "Where are you going?", he say to me "Ali, if you want to come, come." I say "Of course I will come".
39’06: V/O: That night, there were 14 escapees -- 7 men, 2 women, and 5 children. One of the escapees had spent 5 years in detention. When he got outside, he was overwhelmed.
39’20: ALI MOHAMMED SALEH: When he go with me, when he ran away with me, outside to the street -- he cry. I tell him "Why you cry Mohammed? Why you cry?" He said, "After five years I am outside" And he's lucky.
39’37: V/O: Ali managed to get a plane to New Zealand. There, he's staying at a refugee shelter. New Zealand doesn't lock up its asylum seekers. While their refugee applications are being processed, they can apply for a temporary work permit. If they can't get work, they're paid an emergency benefit. New Zealand won't necessarily accept Ali as a refugee, but its policy is to let asylum seekers stay in the community and to prevent abuse of the system by processing their claims as quickly as possible. By Australian standards, it seems sensible and humane.
40’21: ALI MOHAMMED SALEH: Immigration New Zealand is very nice. See, I am free. I'm here. No camp, nothing happens to me. When I go to immigration, they talk with me nicely. You know, very, very, very different, you know.
40’41: V/O: Here in Australia, the Government argues that, without detention, Australia would face a much bigger refugee problem.
40’49: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Some people say to me, "Why do you, Ruddock, see this as such a big problem, "when it's only 4,000 people?" It's probably one of the questions you were going to ask me. They say, you know, other countries have bigger problems. I think the reason they have bigger problems is that they have not put in place the same comprehensive arrangements that we have. And if they did, their problems would be much less.
41’11: DR WILLIAM MALEY: In the 1999-2000 financial year, the number of people who arrived by boat was 4,174. Despite all the deterrence measures that the Minister brought in, the numbers for the following financial year dropped by precisely 29.
41’29: V/O: Since April, 60 detainees have simply escaped from Villawood. Almost all remain at large, somewhere in the community. Recently, the Government has increased the penalty for harbouring escapees to 10 years in prison. Even so, refugee action groups say they've collected a list of more than 200 people who'd be prepared to help those on the run.
41’55: IAN RINTOUL, REFUGEE ACTION COLLECTIVE: I guess in the end, most people end up offering some financial support. And people are only too willing to do that. We've had, you know, cheques up to $300 of people -- yeah, to provide money. People just say, "I don't want these escapees caught."
42’11: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Look, if they'd like to give me their lists, I'll have a look at them. I can test them. Um, but I don't think that that is creditable, quite frankly. I think most Australians – DEBBIE WHITMONT: Test them? What do you mean?
42’20: PHILIP RUDDOCK: Well, test them to see whether there are Australians who genuinely hold the view that they would want to help people break the law.DEBBIE WHITMONT: You don't believe that?PHILIP RUDDOCK: No, I don't.
42’29: JACQUIE EVERITT: If somebody came to me carrying an ill child -- No, there would be no dilemma. I would want to do whatever I could do to help them.DEBBIE WHITMONT: Despite the fact that you'd be committing an offence?
42’45: JACQUIE EVERITT: Um -- gosh, yes -- I have to say, I'd help them. It is not right to obey laws that are wrong theoretically. And what is the saying -- "Evil happens when good men do nothing"
43’11: V/O: It's understandable that Australia might feel it could be overwhelmed by the world's refugee problem. It's reasonable to say that we can't open our doors to everyone.But are we overstating the risk? We take pride in our reputation for humanity. But do we really care what's happening behind the razor wire?
43’45: AAMER SULTAN: After time I realised these fences around are not to prevent us from escaping -- never. No, these fences have been set to prevent you, the Australians, from approaching us. It's pretty clear.
44’01: V/O: Aamer Sultan still believes in Australia. And he believes that once Australians know what's really going on in our own country, we won't accept it.
44’16: AAMER SULTAN: What else do I feel? Why am I actually risking taping this interview, this video? Risking to give it to one of the channels -- one of the Australian channels to broadcast it? Though I know very well the consequences. It's a major incident what I am doing, actually, and I'm pretty sure I can predict what is going to happen to me, especially in the next few weeks. And of course that will be totally off the cameras and off the media. Unexpectedly, and anyone might be surprised, by the fact that I am still optimistic. Still feeling that Australians, if they knew -- and that's what I am trying to let them know -- they wouldn't accept it.
45’14: V/O: Mohammad Bedraie has been given a deportation order. He and his family could be taken back to Iran any moment. With that hanging over them, the Department of Immigration has given them three choices. They can go back to Iran voluntarily, stay together in detention until they are deported or let Shayan be moved outside Villawood and separated from his family.
45’41: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE: For us, as father and mother, separation is difficult. We have witnessed our son's illness and now we will be apart. This is the worst deal they could have made with a six-year-old child. He's become this way inside detention. And now, so that he can be free, they want to take away his father and mother from him too.
46’20: V/O: Mohammad Bedraie says authorities have accused him of preventing Shayan from eating just to attract sympathy.
46’30: MOHAMMAD BEDRAIE: Do they think we are animals? We are human beings, we love our children. How could a human being possibly prevent his own child from eating?
46’49: V/O: Right now, in the middle of our biggest city, a six-year-old child is seriously ill. It wouldn't have happened if he hadn't come here to one of our detention centres. Shayan's parents are paying a terrible price for asylum. Yet we still don't believe they deserve our protection