| SUNDAY REPORT THE TORTURERS |
| LARRY SCHWARTZ |
| Farooq Mirranay is flat out attending to the needs of recently arrived Afghan asylum seekers. As chairman of the Afghan Australian Welfare Association, he is always on the go. He tells his story in rooms at the Dandenong Community Health Centre. Dr Mirranay was the second-eldest of seven children in a family prominent in Afghan politics. The family were arrested in the late 1970s. Most were released, but both his eldest and youngest brothers died in prison; another brother survived despite being shot five times. Dr Mirranay, 50, has scars on his hands where he says he was given electric shocks. He was beaten so badly he dislocated a hip and had to be carried by relatives when released in 1980 after 18 months in jail. His eldest brother, Said Yousaf, then 35, had been general secretary of the Afghan Social Democrat Party established in the mid-1960s when the country was still ruled by its last king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. His youngest brother, Said Shereen, was just 17 when he died. Dr Mirranay was a medical practitioner in Kunar when the rest of his family were arrested in Kabul in the April 1978 coup known as the Saur Revolution. He was arrested a month later. He escaped to Pakistan and worked in refugee camps, establishing an aid organisation before migrating to Australia in 1991. Canberra-based Mahmoud Saikal, honorary consul of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, has spent half his 38 years in exile. He was a schoolboy in the equivalent of year 11 at the time of the 1978 coup and was studying engineering at university when tens of thousands of Soviet troops arrived the following December. It wasn’t long before he encountered on the streets of Kabul, not just Soviet soldiers but, most distressing, Afghan members of the Communist Party “showing them around”. “The very same elements,” the honorary consul said, “who hosted the Soviet occupation, who paved the road for the Soviet brutality.” Mr Saikal, who was imprisoned for his part in the student underground, said he fears that the processing of refugees has been undermined to favor migrants with a dubious past. “We believe that the Australian immigration program has been hijacked by these people,” he said. “They have really abused the system. Certainly there are loopholes within the system. “They have got a special humanitarian program for the refugees who have arrived in this country. It will be extremely shocking to know that the very people who have forced many people to become refugees have utilised the same program to come to this country. “After many, many years of atrocities in their own home country at last they come and enjoy the luxury of Australian lifestyle and just relax on the beaches of Sydney and Melbourne.” Abdul Wasy Kaliqy, has lived in Australia for 13 years. He works for a motor parts manufacturer. At 50, he still grieves the death of his sister, Wajeeha, 20 years ago. She was just 17 when Communist Party members opened fire on Kabul high school students demonstrating against the Soviet presence one spring day. He remembers the day he visited a morgue and searched for her body among the corpses of young people killed. He was a radio and television journalist at the time. Not all Communist Party members were guilty of abuses, he said. But it disturbs him to know that some who are responsible now live freely in Australia, some under assumed names. He hopes the United Nations will some day bring perpetrators to justice, “because the criminals have to be punished”. The Sunday Age, 13-Aug-2000 |
Larry Schwartz Writer 