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Mother's Naïveté Led to Visa Rejection
Saturday, July 20, 2002
By Fergus Shiel
With Julie Szego
The Age

"What the Refugee Review Tribunal hasn't taken into account is that here's a woman in tribal, rural Afghanistan who is not literate in her own language ... and, under the Taliban, she wasn't allowed out of the house unless accompanied by a male relative," Mr Murphy said.

ASYLUM BOYS FATHER: Melbourne, July 19, 2002. Ali Baktiari, the father of two Afgani boys who were yesterday refused asylum by the UK shows the stress the ordeal has caused at a press conference in Melbourne in Melbourne today.
Image Credit: Simon O'Dwyer -- Australian Associated Press (AAP).

The mother of the two boys at the centre of this week's refugee controversy was denied an Australian visa after she failed to name any large towns near the village she claimed to have come from and was unable to identify the currency of Afghanistan.

Roqiah Baktiyari, whose sons Alamdar and Muntazer were flown back to the Woomera detention centre yesterday, was interviewed by a delegate for the Immigration Minister on February 22 last year.

She was denied a visa on the grounds that she was not an Afghan refugee as she claimed.

In a transcript of the interview, provided to The Age by lawyers for the family, Mrs Baktiyari said she had never been outside her village in rural Oruzghan province.

"Ladies are not allowed out of the house," she said.

She was also unable to name the currencies of either Afghanistan or Pakistan, saying only men used money in her village.
(More: The Age News Source)
2002 © The Age Company, Ltd.

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