The death of Khodayar Amini
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In the three years before his suicide, Hazara asylum
seeker Khodayar Amini says he was twice assaulted by police and was the victim
of continual harassment.
On Thursday night, October 15, Khodayar Amini was
preparing to cook for his five roommates in a suburb of Western Sydney. The
phone rang, and he listened to his friend on the other end of the line.
Australian Border Force had just raided his old address, about 10 kilometres
away. Six officers had blocked the doors and windows and searched every room,
checking the identity of the four people inside. They said they were looking
for Amini’s new address.
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The news shook him. He had already provided the
immigration department with his new address but his encounters with Border
Force made him nervous. Fearing that immigration officers would come and take
him back to detention, the Hazara asylum seeker walked out into the night,
leaving his belongings behind. “I don’t have other option. I have to run. I
don’t want to go back in detention centre. I have suffered a lot there,” he
told his friend. “They killed my best friend, Nasim Najafi.”
Amini fled the state, reaching Dandenong in south-east
Melbourne, where he hid out in nearby bushland. Within three days he would be
dead. He made a final phone call to two refugee advocates and while talking to
them set himself alight. When police found his body, it was in a circle of
scorched earth the size of a small room. He was 30.
The day before he died Amini had written in Farsi to
one of the refugee advocates, Michelle Bui. Again he mentioned his friend
Mohammad Nasim Najafi, who died in the Yongah Hill Immigration Detention Centre
outside Perth in July, and two others who had committed suicide. Amini had
shared a room with Najafi at Yongah Hill.
“I, Khodayar Amini, write the following few sentences
with my blood for those apathetic so called human beings,” he wrote. “Yes they
did this to me, with slogans of humanity, sentenced me to death. My crime was
that I was a refugee. They tortured me for 37 months and during all these times
they treated me in the most cruel and inhumane way. They violated my basic
human right and took away my human dignity with their false and so called
humane slogans. They killed me as well as many of my friends such as: Nasim
Najafi, Reza Rezayee and Ahmad Ali Jaffari. They were my friends and their
crime was that they had sought asylum in Australia.
“I write this statement with my blood for those who
call themselves human beings, I ask you to stand up for the rights of refugees
and stop people being killed just because they have become refugees. Humanity
is not a slogan; every human being has the right to live. Living shouldn’t be a
crime anymore. Red Cross, Immigration and the Police killed me with their
slogans of humanity and cruel treatments.”
Feared for his life
Khodayar Amini made the journey to Australia by boat
in September 2012. He was one of 86 asylum seekers on a tiny vessel whose
engine quit working, and was rescued by the navy after hours floundering in the
ocean. Thirty-one of the asylum seekers were taken to Nauru but Amini was taken
to Christmas Island and then to a detention centre in Darwin. After five
months, he was released into the community on a bridging visa without rights to
work, travel or study. The Red Cross was put in charge of his care.
The story Amini tells from here is one of confusion
and mistreatment. Twice, he says, he was beaten by police officers. Once so
badly that the pain of his injuries persisted for two years. He says he was
harassed by police and immigration officials. In early 2014, he was returned to
detention for 11 months after an argument with the Department of Transport,
Travel and Motoring in South Australia over a small licence fee refund, but was
released after a court found him innocent of misconduct. The uncertainty of his
visa, the fear of being deported back to Afghanistan, wore away at his mental
health. He felt unrepresented and helpless. He became convinced he would die.
“Asylum seekers might be in the community but it’s
virtually impossible to recover and to feel safe,” says Louise Newman, a
professor of psychiatry at Monash University. “When people have the ongoing
fear – whether it’s fear of being sent home or fear of being re-detained and
lack of certainty about their future – their trauma persists. They don’t know
what awaits them. And they become fearful every day, and it could affect their
daily life, like they can’t eat or they can’t sleep. And they become agitated.
People in that state are much afraid. They feel that they have no escape from
the things that are tormenting them.”
She continues: “One of the most appalling things about
the Australian government response to the needs of asylum seekers is that it
allows this to happen. We allow it to happen and I am saying it quite strongly:
that we don’t do anything to prevent it, which is preventable.”
In the last two months of his life, Amini started
writing accounts of his treatment. The notes are appeals for justice, but they
are laced with fear of the system to which he appeals.
“I am scared they plan to kill me with any wrong
accusation,” he wrote in one. “I feel that the police come to my house at night
and have a plan to kill me. I can’t sleep at night because I fear the police
would kill me. I am extremely scared. I feel every moment they would kill me.
What in 2013, they hit me so hard that still feel the pain from that time.”
His three-page handwritten letter was in a mixture of
formal Farsi and Hazaragi dialect. At the end of the last page, he added a
note.
“Translation of this will be hard because I don’t have
adequate literacy and no one has helped me. If there is any place, the translator
did not understand, call me and I will explain verbally.” He copied out his
mobile number, and signed in a script that is earnest and hopeful: “Khodayar
Amini.”
Untreated health issues
After being released from his second stint in
detention, again on a bridging visa, Amini moved to Adelaide and then to
Sydney. He set up in a house with other asylum seekers, including a friend who
had travelled to Australia on the same boat as him.
His friends noted changes in his physical and mental
health. He developed a persistent cough, for which he was hospitalised several
times. The cough continued through the night and in order not to wake his
roommates he would wrap himself with blankets and sit up all night in the
lounge room.
It seems his medical condition was not properly
diagnosed, nor his mental health. Three months ago, he called the Red Cross,
which is contracted by the government to provide assistance to asylum seekers
in the community. His insistence that he receive medical assistance got him
into an argument over the phone with a staff member. The incident was referred
to police and he was charged with making threatening comments.
“Four officers came to my home,” he wrote in an
account of what followed. “They said that they were trying to search the house.
They did not search and asked if you have a gun. I asked them ‘What you are
saying?’ They pointed to their pistol and I said ‘No.’ They handcuffed me. They
searched my body. They searched two times my shoes. Then they moved to police
station. When we’re going down through elevator, I coughed and they said
‘alcohol?’ I said ‘no’. I told them that I was sick and it is not in my hands.
They punched with fist and knee and took me inside police station. They
tortured me. I was there for about 5 and 6 hours. They forced me to give
interview.”
At time of press, New South Wales Police had not
responded to Amini’s claims of brutality.
Amini’s solicitor, Besmellah Rezaee, said Amini had no
intention to kill or threaten anybody. Amini was planning to appear in court on
November 10 and believed he would win the case. “He told me words to the
effect, ‘They kill with cotton’, and stated that he used this expression out of
frustration and extreme depression and this was interpreted as having made a
threat to kill,” Rezaee said. “He went on to say, ‘How on earth would a
helpless and despairing person like me make such a threat against person of
authority and power? I fled killing and am seeking protection to save my life –
how can I intend to take someone else’s life?’ ” The expression “kill with cotton” is a Hazaragi
phrase; it means to kill someone slowly.
“My heart ached”
The Saturday Paper has spoken to
Amini’s friends and roommates, some of whom had known him for three years. They
described him as “a good guy” with no threatening behaviours, and said he was
getting along with everyone very well. He was deeply frustrated by the claims
made against him.
Increasingly, Amini had become reserved with personal
information. His roommates say he was guarded, staying mostly at home, not
going out with them; he was awake all night and frequently listened to
melancholic songs of Ahmad Zahir, a popular Afghan singer. He gave up his
belief in God. “I don’t believe in God,” he said. “I think Tony Abbot [is] God
for refugee. [He] killed my best friend. Why? Why?”
Before leaving Sydney for Dandenong, Amini went to a
Hazara community centre in Sydney asking for advice and help. “Can you stop the
immigration for taking me back to detention centre?” Amini asked Abdul Alizada,
from the Kateb Hazara Association. “They were behind my door, wanting to take
to detention centre. I am too scared to go there. I don’t want to be deported
back to Afghanistan.”
Alizada told him that it was beyond his power to stop
immigration but he could write a support letter stating that he was of good
character. “I can’t stop immigration from taking you nor I can hide you,”
Alizada said, “but I can support by writing a letter.” They talked for about 45
minutes. Alizada said he saw no sign of depression or distress and found Amini
“very elaborate”.
On Monday, when Alizada learnt Amini had set himself
on fire, he was devastated. “I have a bad feeling that I can’t express it in
words,” he said, his voice quivering. “I failed to help him.”
His friends feel the same: “He was a very nice guy. My
heart ached when I heard about him. I have not slept for few nights.”
Amini recently launched a complaint with the
Australian Human Rights Commission against mistreatment by the Department of
Immigration and Border Protection. A letter was sent to him on October 15, but
it was already too late. “In order to progress your complaint,” it read,
“please sign and return the Authority to Release Information and/or document
form by Thursday October 22, 2015.”
“What’s our crime?”
No one knows why Amini took his life. The notes he
wrote in the last months of his life show a man persecuted by a system of
uncertainty, terrified he would be deported, deeply mistrusting of authority.
They show a man lost and uncertain where to find help.
“Are there rule of law, social justice and human
dignity in this country?” he wrote in one. “If there is, why your behaviour is
in contradictory to human rights? In 2014, the Adelaide police mistreated me
because I was asking for the refund of my $32 [from Transport, Travel and
Motoring]. Then, I was harassed, incarcerated, taken to court, tortured for 11
months inside immigration detention centre. What was my crime? How your
treatment is different from the treatment of the Taliban and Daesh? For three
years, you have tortured me in every way. What do you want from us? What’s our
crime? In your view, we are not human beings.”
When he left the house for the last time, he told no
one where he was going. A day before his self-immolation, he called his friends
in the house and told them that he was still looking for a place but had found
none. They heard nothing more.
On the night Amini left home, he sent Michelle Bui a
text message: “Hi Michelle, are you free now. I want to talk to you. Very
important.”
Bui spoke to Amini on the phone and he told her he was
in a car hiding in the bush but did not disclose his whereabouts. He said he
feared going back to detention.
On Saturday, Amini switched off his mobile phone. “The
police and immigration check my mobile phone,” he said. “I think it’s off
better.”
On Sunday morning, about 10am, Bui received a text
message from Amini. It read: “I want to cut my life.” Bui tried to dissuade him
and enlisted the help of another advocate from the Refugee Rights Action
Network, Sarah Ross. Ross had experience in suicide prevention.
Bui and Ross called Amini on Facebook video chat.
Amini showed them a petrol container. He poured it over himself. Again, they
heard him repeating that immigration was trying to kill him. “We pleaded with
him not to do it,” Bui said. “We then heard the lighter flick and saw flames.
Sarah threw the phone on the ground so we didn’t see it. Obviously at this
stage we both got very emotional. We heard the flames but we didn’t hear any
screams or sounds from him.”
It was Monday before his friends heard of the death.
Amini’s roommates were awake for nights, mourning him. They missed him, and his
cooking. “He was a good cook.” A friend who used to sleep in the same bedroom
as Amini said: “I did not believe he died when I heard about him on the news.
All night, I lay in my bed in one side and tilted my head towards his empty
bed, hoping he would walk every minute to sleep on his bed as usual. But he
never did.”
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