A film is in the offing.  We think it’s going to be great.  To see trailers and/or help us get it made, please click here to visit the website for ‘Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’.

We went to Indonesia.
We met 250 asylum seekers in jails, hostels and detention centres.
We filmed their faces, their circumstances and their untold stories.
We got the first footage behind the bars of Indonesian refugee jails.
Help us tell their stories.
Help us finish our film.

It is particularly important that the stories of asylum seekers are shown NOW, when they are being used as mute political punching bags…

Say no to winning votes by punching up asylum seekers.

Cheers.

Jess

Please note that the country prefix to contact Jessie Taylor from 12 November should be +61 (Australia) and NOT +62 (Indonesia).

Please forgive any confusion and we apologise for any inconvenience.

‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’ is a moving and visceral look into what it’s like within the Indonesian Detention System. Jessie Taylor and Ali Reza travelled the length of Indonesia between the 6th – 29th July 2009, visiting 11 different places of detention. Filmed with a combination of the latest in Digital SLR video cameras and other hidden camera devices they were able to capture stories in places journalists are not welcome. ‘Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea’ is filmed in a way that is confronting and personal.

What they found was the prequel to the story of the ‘boat person’. We see the heartbreaking decision to get on a boat, the full awareness of the possible consequences of it, and all of the living conditions endured during the waiting period. We see this through the eyes of young men, unaccompanied children, families with babies, and widowed mothers with young children. The stories are told in an unsettling manner. Real, raw, unrelenting and emotive.

All major donors will be acknowledged – if they wish – through the production of the film.

Please contact us if you have questions or require further information.

Lawyer and refugee advocate Jessie Taylor – who yesterday described the poor conditions in Indonesian detention centres – has now revealed the centres may house hundreds of unaccompanied minors. Steve Cannane reports.

Steve Cannane reports: New evidence has emerged of the condition’s many asylum seekers endure in Indonesian detention. Melbourne lawyer and refugee advocate Jessie Taylor, who documented conditions across the country, says Australia’s policy must change.

The issue discussed in ‘Behind Australian Doors’ has reached crisis point in recent days. This makes our desire to produce this film even more sharp that it was before.

Political rhetoric is reaching boiling point, with the PM using the term “illegal immigrants”, and Wilson Tuckey suggesting that there are terrorists among asylum seekers attempting to enter Australia.

There has been a lot of media coverage, and this film / movement has received some attention:

ABC Radio National Breakfast with Fran Kelly

The Wire – National Community Radio

And more to come. Watch this space!

Australia’s ugly secret: we are still warehousing asylum seekers
JULIAN BURNSIDE

The past week has seen a significant change in the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia. The grotesque practice of charging refugees for the daily cost of their imprisonment in our detention centres has now ended (despite the resistance of the Opposition). The degrading indignity of a visa which denies refugees the right to work or to receive Medicare or Centrelink benefits has ended. For these reforms the Government must be warmly congratulated.

But despite these welcome developments, the Government has an ugly secret: it is involved in warehousing asylum seekers in Indonesia in order to prevent them from seeking protection here. This is well documented, but not widely known.

Warehousing is not a new feature of Australia’s refugee policy. The Pacific Solution pioneered the idea. Nauru was a textbook example: an offshore place where asylum seekers could be kept at a distance, outside Australia so as not to trigger any legal rights, at a price that far outweighs the normal cost of processing and resettling refugees onshore.

The Rudd government has enjoyed widespread praise for closing the Nauru camp quickly. However, through the continued use of Indonesia for warehousing people, Rudd and Evans are emulating the darkest, meanest and most cynical practices of Howard and Ruddock.

There is one difference: under Howard, Nauru was closed to the outside world. Australia controlled who could go there and who could not. Indonesia is not so servile, and it is possible to visit the detention centres there to see what is being done in our name, with our taxes.

Jessie Taylor is a lawyer and refugee activist who recently travelled to Indonesia. She met more than 250 people, in 11 places of detention across the country. There were infants and young children in maximum security jails, with faeces and fungus in their drinking water. There were rodents, spiders and cockroaches in their living areas. Skin diseases, vomiting, diarrhoea, dramatic weight loss and unidentified tumour-like growths are fairly common. Despair is universal.

While in Indonesia, Jessie Taylor met a flustered, overworked UN Refugee Agency representative in a Jakarta prison. The UNHCR representative informed her that she had conducted 20 interviews the previous day. Based on an eight-hour day, this allows 24 minutes per interview. The interview is the only opportunity asylum seekers have to present their full claims to the UNHCR. Twenty-four minutes is a hopelessly short time for such an interview, but half of that time is taken up by the process of interpreting, and half of the remaining time is taken up by the UNHCR representative explaining the process and asking questions. That leaves the applicant just six minutes to explain the circumstances which forced them to flee. Any qualified migration agent or solicitor will attest to the fact that this process, done properly, normally takes many hours, over a number of interviews, allowing the applicant to go slowly and carefully when describing the trauma that has caused them to leave their homelands in search of safety.

Asylum seekers are being processed in this perfunctory way and many are being rejected and sent back to extreme danger based on information gleaned from a six minute statement. The UNHCR, International Organisation for Migration and Australia are involved in a serious breach of human rights made all the worse because it has the superficial appearance of due process. It is a charade. Australia really can do better than this.

The asylum seekers are held, mostly, by the IOM. We pay it to look after them. They can wait several years before even the brief interview they receive, and may wait another year before getting a decision on their status.

That Australia is responsible for these conditions is a fact that should keep the Immigration Minister awake at night.

Most of the asylum seekers are Iraqis, and Afghan Hazaras. Hazaras are the ethnic group considered by the Taliban to be overdue for genocide. A modest number of Hazaras have managed to get to Australia already: more than 95% of them have been found to be genuine refugees. They have been quickly resettled in Australia and are already contributing to Australian society. So here we are, paying the IOM about $8 million dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money to hold people in shocking conditions, potentially for many years.

For more than a decade, the Taliban has terrorised the Afghan people. Many Australians have fought and died in battle against the Taliban. Australia recognises the terrible deeds this group has committed against their countrymen. Why is it that so many Australians can readily recognise the evils of the Taliban or other oppressive forces, but they cannot extend that understanding to the the victims of those groups? Most Australians denounce the Taliban’s shocking human rights abuses, but few are willing to welcome the victims of those abuses, and provide them with safety and protection.

It is to our eternal shame that the best bet for the men, women and children held at our expense in Indonesia is to get on a leaky boat and make for Christmas Island. Instead we should be contributing to swift and safe processing and resettlement directly from Indonesia; not a game of maritime Russian roulette.

Many of the people held at our expense in Indonesia have plausible ties to Australia: some were caught up in the Pacific Solution but were forced back to Afghanistan or Iraq; some have family here. Australia should assess their claims for protection and resettle them here without delay: not only is it the decent thing to do, it will be cheaper. And it will go some way to restoring our tarnished reputation.

First things first – that video is NOT the final product! We hope to raise funds to make a full-length documentary feature, exploring the whole issue, and importantly, Australia’s involvement and responsibilities.

We may also need to launch a campaign around this issue.  However, it’s not the time for that yet.  In the next week or two, we will send our report to the Immigration Minister, and give him a chance to respond to it.  Let’s hope he does, and fairly quickly.  If there is hesitation from him or the government, we may need to launch a campaign letting the government know that we want humane treatment of asylum seekers, including the ones in Indonesia.

But please – watch this space and we’ll keep you posted!

We’ll also set up a FB group (and will post about that here when we do) so keep you eyes open!

Cheers.