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Aussie immigration department censured

Paritosh Parasher in Sydney

The Australian immigration department has been censured by an ombudsman report for denial of natural justice to a Pakistani Australian resident, leading to his death.

Ombudsman Ron McLeod criticised the department for showing "administrative ineptitude" in processing Shahraz Kayani's application to bring his wife and three daughters to Australia under a humanitarian visa.

McLeod has also damned the department for showing bias against the Pakistani family and not keeping the promises made to the dead man.

Kayani had set himself alight outside the Australian parliament in Canberra in April to protest against the delay in processing the application. He died of his injuries two months later in a Sydney hospital.

His case was in the Australian media till his last days. The Pakistani community had also organised a protest march against his 'mistreatment' by the immigration authorities. It also attracted attention because his eldest daughter Asma, 12, came from Pakistan to be by his bedside in Sydney's Concorde Hospital.

Though critical of the government's handling of the Kayani case, McLeod has not recommended any compensation for the dead man's family in Pakistan, because a coroner's inquiry into the death is yet to end.

Kayani, who got permanent residency in Australia on humanitarian grounds in 1996 after claiming to be facing persecution in his native country for association with members of the Ahmadiya community that is oppressed in Pakistan, applied for his family's immigration four years ago.

A complication in Kayani's application was that he went to Pakistan after getting asylum in 1999, violating an important Australian migration regulation. But McLeod adjudged his brief return to Pakistan as "ultimately irrelevant".

McLeod was of the opinion that had the government handled the application in a limited time frame, "the argument would not have arisen at all".

"From an administrative viewpoint, the handling of this case is a tragic reminder to all government officials that in applying bureaucratic processes and procedures, they should never lose sight of the human dimension of their work," he remarked.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock and the department had attributed the delay in processing the application to Kayani's eight-year-old daughter Anum, who suffers from cerebral palsy.

Ruddock had on a number of occasions made it clear that if Anum was allowed to come to the country, she would cost the taxpayers Australian $750,000.

Kayani's brother Shahzad and other family members had ridiculed this estimate and offered to give any undertaking to look after Anum for the rest of her life in a meeting with Ruddock, after Kayani burnt himself.

Ruddock, who has been under constant attack from various human rights and refugees' advocacy organisations, has expressed his disappointment at McLeod's report, labelling it unbalanced.

"The ombudsman apparently believes we should look at this case in isolation and not apply the same standards as are applied to all other cases involving the health waiver," he said in a statement after the report was made public.

Indo-Asian News Service

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