Justice Sunday – June 2023

Justice Sunday – June – Refugee Awareness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOFu6b3w6c0 Bob Marley – Redemption Songs

• Welcome, acknowledgment, introduction – World Refugee Day
• Shape of service: readings, space for silent prayer, music, communion, an action

Let me tell you about my friend Ned

Ned – originally called Taha – left Iran nearly 11 years ago. His life was under threat and he was in very real danger. He left his home and his family with a promise to find a better life for them all. He crossed the waters by boat. Three times his boat turned back because it hit dangerous waters, twice it capsized and two people died during the crossing. There were nearly 70 people on board, daring to hope for a brighter future.

The day came when land was spotted – they had reached Australia – and then the boats came. Ned and all on board were captured by the armed services and detained in a shipping container while they waited to be processed. Within a fortnight everyone else on the boat had an outcome. Ned arrived before the ruling that stated ‘nobody who arrives by boat will settle in Australia’. He had done nothing wrong, broken no rules, and for the first time of many, Ned somehow slipped through the net and was placed in detention.

When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God – Lev 19:33-34

Each state has at least one immigration detention centre. Ned has stayed in them all. They are – without exaggeration – prisons by another name. For months on end Ned will not be outdoors. He never gets to make his own food or choose what he will eat. He sleeps with other detainees around him. Most of them are detained for days or weeks – they have overstayed a visa or committed a crime that means their visa is no longer valid and they are waiting to be deported. In the centre where Ned is at the moment, there are 3-4000 detainees and they change on a daily basis. Building friendships is made impossible. Suspicion is a weapon of control. Without warning he can be told he is leaving and 20 minutes later he will be taken to who knows where. Another detention centre? Or might this time be his freedom?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8BmvxqJH0g – within our darkest night

The community is to have the same rules for you and for the foreigner residing among you; this is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. You and the foreigner shall be the same before the Lord: The same laws and regulations will apply both to you and to the foreigner residing among you – Numbers 15:15-16

Ned has done nothing wrong. Other people seeking asylum have come and gone since him. Appeals have been made. Documents have been produced and lost. His last proof of ID expired in 2017. According to every system in the world Ned doesn’t exist.

“This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. ¹⁰ Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’ ¹¹ “But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears. – Zech 7:9-11

In August 2021, Ned waited at a bus stop outside the Perth Immigration Detention Centre, the meagre possessions he had collected during eight years in onshore detention bundled in a small bag.  It was a day of jubilation. After years of fighting to escape Australia’s immigration system, several suicide attempts and countless court appearances, a Federal Court order allowed him to stay at a friend’s house in Perth while waiting for his immigration status to resolve. But his bus never came.

“Waiting for that bus was like my time in detention,” he said.

“On the one hand, I had some hope that it would come. On the other hand, I knew that it wouldn’t.”

At the 11th hour, then-home affairs minister Karen Andrews invoked a provision of the Migration Act that meant that the possibility of Ned living in the community, was no longer possible. She didn’t give a reason.

“Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow.” Then all the people shall say, “Amen!” – Deut 27:19

Ned has been Diagnosed with psychogenic mutism following a suicide attempt and complex post-traumatic stress disorder. He has experienced anorexia, engaged in a hunger strike, and made multiple suicide attempts.

“I had come to expect this disappointment,” he says. “But that was the first day that I came to realise that the courts in this country have no power over the government either.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AuR8DVmQJQ – freedom is coming

Last month, Ned’s lawyer, Sanmati, went back to court to fight his case again. If he is to win, the outcome will allow hundreds of asylum seekers to live in the community while their immigration status is determined. But decisions are made so slowly. He is still waiting for an outcome to a court case from last November, so he doesn’t have hope.

I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against …those who deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. – Malachi 3:5

Unlike the UK or elsewhere, Australia does not have a system of immigration bail, nor does Australian law impose time limits on how long a person can be in immigration detention.

The department of Home affairs agree they owe Ned protection, that his case is genuine and that he has committed no crime. He is eligible for the ‘fast track’ protection process but time and again his case falls from the table and he slips through another crack in the process. Cases are dealt with arbitrarily and dysfunctionally and all the while he waits in detention. He is bright and clever and very funny and he isn’t even allowed to study.

The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. – Psalm 146:9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veiJLhXdwn8 – freedom gospel song

He could be contributing great things to this country but instead his best years have been stolen from him. He has aged. He has become deskilled. He wrote to me…

[I have multiple questions in my mind] what is this unknown sentence, how many years, years after years, couldn’t be more than a murder but it is a decade so far. You might not be able to see the diseases eating you in the head but the shitty mirror reflects gray hairs to remind you time is passing; time is up, and the world not pausing time for you.

And he goes on to say, that whatever they decide with his case, and with the cases of so many others, it will be too late. He quotes a persian proverb that says ‘it isn’t worth delivering a cure to a person who has died’.

‘I don’t know if I will be free, and if I am, I don’t know what I would do with that freedom’ and heartbreakingly he says, “Hope is like torture to me, I can’t afford it… I am not the person that I was when I came to this country. I do not know what person will walk out of this place.”

²⁴ For in^[o] hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes^[p] for what is seen? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. ²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes^[q] with sighs too deep for words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0j8GCYTK_0 – fly free little bird

Share persian food, light candles and pray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhbtVCI67pw – way maker in Hebrew, Arabic and English

Write to Josh Wilson