Refugee laws under fire as soft

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters last night slammed the refugee authority for allowing an army deserter to live in New Zealand because of fears he would be killed by his own family if he returned home to Iraq.

The man who can not be named sucessfully appealed the decision to deport him.

He claimed that because he had become "westernised" by marrying a Kiwi woman, his family wanted to kill him.

The couple wed in Sri Lanka in 2004 but the woman ended the relationship when her new husband arrived here on a visitor's visa shortly afterwards.

Peters, the Foreign Affairs minister, said New Zealand was becoming a "soft touch" for refugees and the Iraqi should have been given his marching orders.

"The appeals authority needs to act with some consistency rather than this kind of bogus reasoning which is coming out now for a case which is disgraceful," Peters told Sunday News.

"We've got to change the appeals authority because too many decisions they're making just don't stack up."

"They're ridiculous, they're silly, they're stupid and it's a betrayal of this country's interest."

The Iraqi was initially refused refugee status but that decision has been overturned by the Refugee Status Appeals Authority.

They had accepted the man's life was in danger if he were to be deported back to Iraq.

"It accepts that as a result of his marriage to a Christian woman from New Zealand, male members of his family have threatened to kill him for violating a strict social code that is enforced in his sub-tribe regarding marriage."

And despite the short-lived marriage, authority members felt it did not change the way the man's family feel.

The authority also had little confidence the Iraqi police would be able to provide him protection from being the victim of an "honour" killing.

It was told the man was born into a devout Shia family in Baghdad, where one of his uncles was the Imam of a local mosque.

He was forbidden from watching television or listening to music and he was not allowed to socialise with Sunnis or Christians.

He was expected to marry a first or second cousin, according to his family's interpretation of the Koran.

After deserting from the Iraqi army, the man went to live in Jordan and later Sri Lanka.

In 2004 he met his Kiwi love through the internet and they were married in Sri Lanka.

The man applied for and received his visitor's visa to New Zealand.

But when he arrived in in the country, his wife was not at the airport.

When he found her, she told him she had had second thoughts and had decided to end the marriage.

The refugee authority said the man never mentioned the marriage to his family in Iraq but they found out.

In telephone calls back home, the man denied that he had married a Christian.

In one call his brother angrily swore at him and said he would kill him if he returned to Iraq.

He later received a CD from the family where they disowned him as a son and brother and told him they wished to have nothing more to do with him.

"The appellant believes that if he is returned to Iraq, he will be killed by male members of his family for having transgressed the social norms of the sub-tribe and having brought dishonour to the family," the authority said.

But Peters, who three years ago used parliamentary privilege in an attempt to "out" alleged former bodyguards of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein living in New Zealand, said the man should have been sent packing.

"This has all the hallmarks of the kind of bogus case that is made far too many times in this country to obtain an objective which had no honest purpose from the start," he said.

 

- © Fairfax NZ News