Australian-Lebanese leaders urge asylum seekers to return home

An asylum boat tragedy off Java late last year caught the eye for reasons beyond the death and tragedy.

(Transcript from World News Radio)

When a boat carrying asylum seekers sank off Indonesia's coast late last year, killing more than 40 people, the story caught the eye for reasons beyond the death and tragedy.

The boat carried Iraqis and Iranians, as so many boats of asylum seekers had done over the past decade or so.

But, oddly, it also carried many Lebanese, not a group that has tended to turn up on those boats in these times.

That, in turn, has led to another very unusual twist in the tale.

Ron Sutton has the story.

"My message to the Lebanese in Lebanon, it says, 'People smugglers are going to take your money, you're going to be putting your life at risk crossing the ocean, and you're going to end up in indefinite detention because of Australian policy. And if you wanted to actually arrive in Australia, you have no hope.'"

The message is unremarkable, given that government officials in Australia have been mouthing essentially the same words to every corner of the earth for months now.

But the story behind Dr Jamal Rifi's message is, indeed, remarkable.

It is remarkable because the Sydney GP has teamed up with a leader from Australia's Lebanese Muslim Association to essentially do the government's bidding -- for a policy he rejects.

The story starts with the tragic news one morning last September that an asylum-seeker boat had sunk off the Indonesian coast of Java overnight.

When the facts eventually became clear, 44 people were believed to have died on board the boat bound for Australia, as many as 35 of them Lebanese men, women and children.

That is when Jamal Rifi and Mouataz, or Mark, Zreika, the Sydney-based treasurer of the Lebanese Muslim Association, went to work.

First, in the days after the disaster, Mr Zreika travelled to Indonesia at the request of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to help identify the bodies.

But then the emphasis quickly shifted, becoming, instead, a personal journey by the two men to convince the Lebanese survivors they should return home -- and to help them get there.

In January, Dr Rifi and Sheikh Malek Zeidan, the Australian representative of the Mufti of Lebanon, travelled to Australia's detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru.

Then, after visiting the centre on Christmas Island, Dr Rifi returned to Manus Island with Mr Zreika in March following the riot that left one asylum seeker dead and scores injured.

Their message to the Lebanese survivors, Dr Rifi says, has been simply about the harsh reality of their situation in today's Australia.

"I didn't go to these places to tell people what to do. I went there to inform them about the current policy, about their situation, and about different options. Because, most of these people, they were given certain information that, unfortunately, did not correspond to the current policy and way of thinking in Canberra. And they were actually given some hopes, where, in my view, there is no hope about ... uh ... They were told that, by December ... then, by Easter, there was going to be an amnesty and that sort of things."

Now, seven months after the boat sank, the story has shifted to Lebanon itself.

Almost half of the 43 Lebanese asylum seekers on Manus Island have voluntarily returned home -- to a country where many spent their last money to make the journey out.

And Dr Rifi and Mouataz Zreika, who helped get them repatriated, have committed to helping them complete the journey home by helping them find work and financial help.

Mr Zreika has travelled to the Lebanese capital Beirut and villages in the country's north to check the wellbeing of those who returned and to seek out philanthropists who can help.

The Australian government paid for him to go to Manus, but Mr Zreika, chief executive of an Internet-technology company, made this trip at his own expense.

"It is very simple. There are so many ways to help these people, and we're trying our best, and we're knocking on every single door.** And it is a big issue for everyone, and we want to try to get it solved for the sake of everyone. You know what I mean? For the sake of everyone."

For the sake of the survivors, for the sake of their families.

For the sake of Mouataz Zreika's homeland, which does not want more people to leave, and for the sake of his new land, which clearly does not want more people to come.

He cites an old saying he tries to live by.

"It is better to teach people not to do (something,) any issue or any problem, rather than help them with their problem."

The flood of refugees from neighbouring Syria into northern Lebanon -- 1 million in a country of 4-and-a-half million -- has deeply strained Lebanese society.

That strain ranges from competition for jobs to unrest between those who support different sides in Syria's civil war.

Dr Rifi says the Lebanese on Manus Island and Nauru fled for all those reasons -- economic, safety, even familial or legal issues -- but he believes most are economic refugees.

He and Mr Zreika, working with both the Australian and Lebanese governments, have worked hard to spread word throughout Lebanon that others should not follow.

Dr Rifi, who likewise is spending his own money after visiting the detention centres as part of a council advising Australia's government on asylum seekers, feels they have succeeded.

He says he can assure there are no more Lebanese waiting in Indonesia to catch boats to Australia to seek asylum.

"I was praying (pleading with) people not to come -- not because I agree with the policy, (but) I felt I am well-positioned, knowing the situations in Lebanon, knowing their mentality, knowing what they have gone through, to give them the facts so they can make an informed decision."

Mouataz Zreika says those he visited in the villages who had returned home from Manus Island were successfully settling back into life at old jobs, new jobs or as returning students.

The Akkar region and the Tripoli area, where many come from, are strongholds of Saad Hariri and his Future Movement party, and they have helped open doors.

Mr Zreika says that was critical because of the reality on the ground in the north.

"These areas in the north of Lebanon, most of the people there are poor people. Most of them, they're working like in Beirut or somewhere like in the restaurants as a waitress and all this stuff -- all those small things, light duties and stuff. So when, after the Syrian war (started), all these refugees came to Lebanon -- and these refugees, they work very, very cheaply -- most of the restaurants, or most of the companies, they replaced the Lebanese workers with Syrian workers. So that's one of the issues there, as well. That's what gave them a bit of thinking, 'Aw, we got to leave this country.'"

Dr Rifi says he has done his duty as a responsible citizen of Australia and done to his duty to his Lebanese countrymen and women.

But he is openly critical of Australia's asylum-seeker policy, both the Abbott Government's policy and the previous Labor government's.

That led to a couple of tense, very personal exchanges when he appeared on a recent talkback show on SBS Radio's Arabic program.

"The question was put to me, 'Dr Rifi, if someone would knock on your door, and you don't know who it is, would you let him enter your door, your house?' And my answer was, actually, 'If someone is outside and knocks on my door because there is a risk to his life, because someone wants to kill him or shoot him, then, yes, I'll open my door and I'll let him in and give him protection.'"

And as for his doctor's surgery?

"Then, I had someone else asking me, 'In your surgery, if you have 20 people waiting to come and see you, if someone will come, will you let them actually in front of the other ones waiting their turn?' My answer, 'Yes, if someone will come in who has a heart attack or has a risk of dying, then I will take him immediately to save his life. I'm not going to get him to wait for the other 20 to be processed by my receptionist.' So, this is the way I stand."