By Dewi Cooke
Australia, August 18: REFUGEE advocates fear a Chinese man deported in June may have been imprisoned or killed on his return.
The man’s wife and daughter have not heard from him since his deportation from South Australia on June 28, despite being in contact while he was in immigration detention for more than two years.
The man, a hairdresser, said he was targeted for having Tibetan clients. He sought protection in Australia after claiming he was tortured by Chinese police, but his application was rejected by the Immigration Department and the Refugee Review Tribunal.
A psychological evaluation by the Survivors of Torture and Trauma Assistance and Rehabilitation Service found he was “struggling to cope” with depression, anxiety and fear stemming from past trauma.
“I cannot understand how minister Andrews, knowing the attitude of the Chinese to Tibetan sympathisers and Tibetan dissidents … could send this man back,” the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s Pamela Curr said. “But that’s what he’s done, he’s taken a punt and hoped, I suppose, that the man is delivered safely.”
According to the Government, the man was accompanied on a commercial flight to Beijing by an Australian escort “engaged by the department”. On arrival he was returned his passport and passed through customs “without event”.
“The application for protection was exhaustively assessed including an independent merits review. There was also a challenge in the High Court and the minister’s decision upheld,” a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said.
But in a letter to her husband six months before he left, the man’s wife urged him to stay in Australia because “if you come back your life will be in danger. You will die. If I die alone, it is better than if we both die.”
Advocates are concerned for the wife and daughter who earlier thought they were being watched by Chinese police and have not been heard from for four weeks.
