Consultations Homepage || Meeting Notes: 30 May 2003
Consultation with Iraqi refugee women in Shepparton hosted by the Shepparton Ethnic Communities Council at the Goulburn-Oven's TAFE, 30 May 2003
The meeting was facilitated by Omeima Sukkarieh (who also translated from Arabic to English) and Susanna Iuliano from HREOC. It was attended by 21 invited participants, all Iraqi women living in Shepparton who attend English classes at the Goulburn-Ovens TAFE. The consultation was held during regular class-time and two TAFE English teachers attended as observers.
Most participants were refugees either on Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) or Permanent Protection Visas (PPVs). They ranged in age from teens to mid-40s/50s. Most had lived in Australia for two years or less, although one woman had lived in Australia for ten years.
What are your experiences of discrimination and vilification?
At school
One participant, a young Iraqi woman, who had completed secondary school and was attending TAFE, talked about feeling uneasy on the TAFE campus after 11 September 2001. "The 'Australian' boys and girls laugh at the Muslim students, whisper behind our backs and generally make us feel unwelcome..." The young woman and her friends ignored the teasing, but frictions escalated to the point where she stopped coming to English classes for a period of time because she felt so uncomfortable. The young woman also described how she had been teased in high school by not just Anglo-Australian students, but students from other ethnic and racial groups. A common taunt was, 'go back to your own country'. Another woman told of how her brother was abused by a fellow student who told him, "get out of this country - this is not your country, you are Iraqi ..."
In shopping centres, banks, government offices etc
Shops and shopping centres were common sites of discrimination or harassment for Iraqi women in Shepparton. Some women felt they were unfairly singled out for attention by staff in supermarkets and stores. One participant believed that Muslim and Arab women were subject to greater scrutiny by security staff checking bags at store exits.
"I have noticed that they do not check other people's bags as often as they check our bags - that makes us feel humiliated because other people are watching. They don't do this even to Aborigines, Greeks and others. We are targeted and they don't know how that makes us feel ..."
Harassment from people outside shops was also a matter of concern to some participants.
"I went to the shopping centre with young children and outside the store there was a group of young Australian kids - boys and girls - who started taunting me and asking me rudely, 'why are you wearing that thing on your head?' I was afraid that they were going to take the hijab off my head so I held on to it tightly... I went to the lady serving me and told her that there were these kids who were harassing me and that I was afraid. The lady said to me 'don't worry about it - just ignore it'."
At home
One woman reported being abused in the front garden of her home because, as a woman who wears the hijab, she is identifiable as a Muslim which also makes her house a target for abuse.
"We have to lock our gates now because after being sworn at and verbally abused by our neighbours and people driving by - we are afraid. We don't go out unless we have to and I am scared ..."
The issue of neighbourhood disputes was raised by one participant as an area of concern. Her concern was not about neighbourhood disputes between Muslims or Arab Australians with other non-Muslim or Arab neighbours. Rather, she was concerned about Australians' reluctance to intervene in disputes between Muslim or Arab neighbours. She also felt that police only intervene in neighbourhood disputes involving 'Australians' and that they were afraid to get involved when an argument involved Muslim or Arab neighbours with each other. "People who are not Arab or Muslims do not interfere when there is a dispute between Arabs or Muslims - maybe they are afraid?" The subject of tensions or rivalries within the Iraqi community in Shepparton surfaced throughout the consultation.
In the street or public transport
Abuse and harassment on the street was perceived to have gotten worse after 11 September, Bali and the Iraq war. One woman retold the story of a friend's son who was badly beaten by a young Australian man who jumped out of his car and attacked him on the street in Shepparton. The boy was so badly hurt and traumatised that he was unable to speak for two days. A friend had taken the licence plate number of the attacker's car and the boy went to the police to complain about the assault but no further action was taken.
Other experiences
"From the first time I arrived in Australia in the camp, I never saw so much discrimination, mostly by workers. It is not even like that in the Arab world, in Iraq ..."
For many of the women who attended the consultation, their experiences of discrimination in Australia were coloured by their initial contact with Australians in immigration detention centres. Participants were not asked to elaborate on the subject of immigration detention as the focus of the consultation was on issues relating to settlement in communities. However, clearly detention had impacted on how refugees perceived Australians outside detention centres in communities like Shepparton. One participant was able to differentiate clearly her own experiences of discrimination from those of her sisters who had lived in Australia longer and had not experienced life in immigration detention. She explained, "My sisters have lived here for a while and their experiences are different to mine with discrimination - but they still experience it ..."
Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs)
The TPV provides refugees with a three year temporary visa and only limited access to the kinds of settlement support available to other refugees. TPV holders are not eligible for many types of social security assistance and cannot sponsor their families to join them in Australia. The lack of stability and insecurity engendered by the TPV visa system clouded the lives of the Iraqi refugee women who participated in the consultation.
"Our biggest problem is the temporary protection visa. Yes we came here by boat which is against the regulations, but if Australia opened up its doors to us then we wouldn't have come that way, especially with our children who are very young. Australia claims that it is a democratic country, but where is the democracy? What will solve a lot of our problems is getting rid of this visa ...It abuses our rights as human beings and abuses our children's rights also."
"The difficult thing for us is that we are on TPVs for 3 years ...we all came by boat and there is no sense of stability or permanency. We were refugees who fled from Iraq to Iran and we never had a sense of stability there. Now we come to Australia with our children - but it is useless for our children to learn here because of this so they do other things and find work."
"At least give our children a sense of security and stability ..."
"Our children go to school and ask us all the time 'what's the point of going to school if we are going to leave here anyway?'"
"We are constantly being told by others 'Why don't you leave this country now? You are only here for a little while anyway. Why don't you go back to Saddam Hussein?'"
Services
"We cannot access a lot of services because we have TPV ..."
Delivery of social services such as housing and health were major issues for the women at the consultation. Many rely heavily on social networks because government services are inaccessible because of language or cultural difficulties or they are excluded from certain government services because they hold only Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs). The TPV provides refugees with a three year temporary visa and only limited access to the kinds of settlement support available to other refugees with permanent protection.
Housing
One of the main problems encountered by the Iraqi refugee women in settling in Shepparton was finding suitable housing. Participants argued that their search for a suitable place to live was hampered by discrimination from real estate agents and from the Department of Housing.
"Real estate agents especially do not rent to Iraqis and give preferential treatment to those who are Australians. Many of our applications for rental property are rejected over and over again ...it was only after great difficulty and a bit of luck that we found the house we are in now ..."
"In regards to the Iraqis living here, there are a lot of issues with housing. Many are like me where I have been looking for a house for over 1 year and 4 months ...no-one has been willing to rent to us and we have not been given any help from public housing either ..."
The difficulty of finding suitable housing was further complicated by the size of Muslim families which can be larger than the average Australian household (the average Australian household in 2001 was between two and three persons). Housing larger families was an obvious point of friction between one Iraqi woman with five children and a staff member at the local Department of Housing who allegedly told her, "you don't deserve to live amongst Australians, not with that many kids." The Department of Housing found the woman a two-bedroom home to rent for her family of 7. When she complained about overcrowding, the Department of Housing staff instructed her to "put the little boys in one room and the girls in another room and the older boy can find his own place to rent." As she felt that it was completely culturally inappropriate to kick her eldest son out of the home, she declined to rent from the Department of Housing. In the end, she eventually found a larger home through social networks and rented privately.
Health services
The Iraqi women reported mixed experiences with the Australian health system. There are frequent misunderstandings between hospital staff and other health service providers and Muslim women with regards to their religious practices and personal preferences. Islam does not prevent Muslim women receiving treatment from male doctors, however it is preferred if there is a qualified female doctor available to perform the same job. Mixed wards which do not allow for privacy also pose cultural and ethical issues for Muslim women, especially if they wear the hijab. Under Islam, women are not permitted to reveal any part of their body except for their hands and face, to any male except for their husband or men they may not marry (such as sons or brothers). Maintaining privacy and modesty in hospital is a major challenge for some Muslim women. There is one Arabic speaking female doctor in the local area (and also one Arabic speaking male doctor) who are available for medical consultations.
Women's experiences with the hospital system were extremely variable. One woman was extremely positive about her stay in the Mercy Hospital for Women. "My experience was very good there - I was given a female doctor and I felt well taken care of." Another woman gave birth three days after arriving in Australia at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
"I had my baby at this hospital without my family or anyone with me. It was awful and I felt like I was treated like an animal ...no-one stopped to help me and ask me if I needed anything - they did not have an interpreter on hand ...I did not get the support I needed ..."
Another woman whose sister was admitted to hospital for an emergency operation felt that her sister had been treated unfairly by the hospital because she was an Iraqi refugee. She had asked to be put in a private room for cultural and religious reasons but the hospital would not allow it and she was discharged a day after her operation before she had fully recovered. Her sister argued, "The point is that if this was an Australian woman the nurses would not have treated her that way and would have taken better care of her ..."
Telephone service
One participant spoke of the difficulties she had encountered in getting access to international calls through Telstra. The woman claims that Telstra refused to connect her local line because of her status as a TPV holder. She eventually got a phone line connected using the name of her sister, who is an Australian citizen. Telstra cut this line alleging that she had $6,000 in unpaid international calls. The woman claimed that this was impossible and she and her sister hired a solicitor to dispute the bill and reconnect their phone service. Telstra did reconnect their local line but they are still unable to access international calls and are effectively 'blacklisted'. The woman believed, "this never would have happened to an Australian man because he would have gotten his rights ..."
What more could be done to fight anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice and discrimination?
The meeting proposed the following strategies for achieving some of the key objectives identified by the Isma project.
Promoting positive public awareness
"Educate the children about other religions at school - even if it is brief"
Providing community support
"Get more Arabic newspapers in Shepparton - there are none that exist now and it is important because it is a good tool for education and it gives us news about what is happening in Australia and overseas so we do not feel so isolated ..."
Informing communities about their rights
None of the participants was aware of existing state or federal anti-discrimination laws although teachers present explained that these laws had been a previous topic of discussion in English class.
Final note
At the end of the consultation, after recording of the discussion had ceased, a number of women came to speak to the HREOC staff running the consultation about several issues that were not raised during the meeting itself. The women who approached us for further discussion did not speak during the meeting because they felt uneasy about speaking in front of some of the other women in the group. Sectarian differences and divisions relating to geographic origins (city/country - Northern Iraq/Southern Iraq) appear to be quite significant. The women explained how these divisions along sectarian or geographic lines were exacerbated by the differences in visa classes and residency status of Iraqi refugees in Shepparton.
Many of the women who approached us at the conclusion of the meeting wanted information about the progress of their applications for further protection. One TPV applicant from Iraq who had been detained in Woomera and who had lodged an application for a PPV before 27 September, 2001 was eager to know the status of her visa application. She claimed that nobody was keeping them informed of the process, and as a result rumours were rife that they were going to be sent back to Iraq. We explained that we were unable to answer their questions but promised to pass their concerns on to the relevant authorities.
