A CHRISTIAN Brothers backed agency which raised allegations last week of Australian immigration officials helping asylum seekers into Syria on false passports has taken its concerns to the United Nations (UN).
Phil Glendenning, who is director of the Edmund Rice Centre (ERC) for Justice and Community Education in Sydney, made the claims on ABC TV’s Lateline on September 29 and left for Geneva the next day to give details to the UN.
In a joint project involving ERC and the Australian Catholic University’s (ACU) School of Education, Mr Glendenning and Dr Tony Morris, of ACU, went to Syria recently to interview more than 20 asylum seekers who had been deported from Australia.
On Lateline, one of the asylum seekers told of how an Immigration Department official at Port Hedland detention centre had approved of him obtaining a false passport for a flight to Syria.
The man said a departmental official told him he would be helped to leave Australia if his relatives in Syria could send him a false passport.
Mr Glendenning said this amounted to people smuggling.
He said he and Dr Morris had heard many others in Syria make similar serious allegations about Australian immigration officials who had encouraged the use of illegal travel documents.
Before leaving for Geneva, Mr Glendenning told The Catholic Leader he did not know how widespread this practice was.
Mr Glendenning said although the ERC would be happy to talk to the Immigration Department about its claims, it had not taken its concerns to the department because the department was responsible for these people being in this situation.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) said the department took seriously any suggestion of misconduct and it was examining the allegations raised by the ERC to assess if there was any substance to them.
She said DIMIA considered it was the ERC’s public duty to present any information which may assist the department in any investigation.
