The Tampa,Afghan Refugees and New Zealand: A Commentary on the Duty to Protect and Refugee Integration

Abstract

New Zealand has a long history of receiving persons in search of safety and security. These populations span Danes fleeing suppression during the German occupation in the 1870s, Jews escaping persecution from Tsarist Russia in the 1880s, Polish orphans during World War II, Asians expelled from Uganda in 1972–73, Vietnamese boat people between 1997 and 1993, and refugees from Afghanistan starting in 2001. New Zealand’s formal refugee resettlement program dates from 1944 with the arrival of the Polish orphans and their caregivers. This commentary discusses a case that builds on this history — New Zealand’s reception of Afghan refugees who were rescued by the MV Tampa, a Norwegian container ship. The authors — a researcher and a refugee saved by MV Tampa — explore New Zealand’s reception of refugees in light of the “Kew Garden” ethical principles on the responsibility to assist imperiled persons.

Keywords

Afghani New Zealand refugee Tampa

Introduction

In 2001, the MV Tampa rescued 433 asylum-seekers from Afghanistan and five crew members in the Indian Ocean (Cue 2022). They were in a fragile Indonesian fishing vessel (the KM Palapa 1) that had stalled en route to Australia’s Christmas Island. Following their rescue, the passengers watched as the boat broke up and sunk (ABC News 2001).

In different ways, the United Nations, smugglers, international organizations, and governments were all involved in the refugees’ journey (New Zealand Government 2001a, 2001b). The passengers were stranded at sea for more than a week, while discussions took place between Indonesia and Australia on where they could land. Many had traveled from Afghanistan to Pakistan and then to Indonesia and had paid smugglers to land in Australia. However, Australia refused to let the MV Tampa land on Christmas Island, and Indonesia announced that the boat and its passengers were Australia’s problem (ibid.). Prior to this incident, Australia had experienced increasing numbers of asylum-seekers, which had caused unease in the nation. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) approached New Zealand’s Permanent Mission in Geneva to explore possible solutions to the MV Tampa situation. The Australian Foreign Minister asked the New Zealand High Commissioner in Australia to assist in this crisis based on humanitarian concerns and support for Australia’s efforts to stem refugee flows linked to smuggling and people trafficking.

The New Zealand government agreed to admit 150 people for processing and eventual resettlement. The other Tampa passengers were settled in Australia and other countries. New Zealand’s actions emphasized “He tangata He tangata He tangata” — translation of this Māori proverb “it is the people, the people, the people” — as the country gave the refugees a home, after Australia refused the request of the Tampa’s Captain, Arne Rinnan, for safe passage (Rummery 2005; Nazari 2021). Norway later awarded Rinnan its highest civilian honor for his brave and humanitarian stand and UNHCR awarded the ship’s captain, owner and crew with its highest award, the Nansen Refugee Award in 2002 (Cue 2002). Many of the ship’s passengers subsequently made their homes in New Zealand.

New Zealand’s stance for the Tampa refugees, as they came to be known, put into practice the Kew Garden principles (Simon, Powers, and Gunnemann 1972; Hollenbach 2016). These principles were named after a neighborhood in Queens, New York City, where the infamous murder of a young woman, Kitty Genovese, had taken place. Media reports indicated that 38 bystanders had failed to respond to Ms. Genovese’s repeated cries for help, as she was attacked more than once and stabbed to death. These reports were later found to be inaccurate: some residents had, in fact, acted to help Ms. Genovese (Kassan 2017). The Kew Garden principles — derived from this case — provide that in certain circumstances, there are positive duties to help remedy harm and respond to persons in distress, even by individuals, organizations, communities, and states that did not cause the harm (Simon, Powers, and Gunnemann 1972). As detained below, the five principles speak to need, proximity to the need, capability to address it, being the last resort, and that the action taken does not cause disproportionate harm to the assistance provider (Hollenbach 2016, 156).

New Zealand is party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In 2020, New Zealand set a resettlement quota of 1,500 refugees (Parliamentary Service 2020; New Zealand Immigration 2021). Between 1995 and mid-2021, New Zealand accepted 6,470 refugees from Afghanistan, though this figure must be read keeping in mind data conundrums from UNHCR and Statistics New Zealand figures.

This remainder of this commentary offers a multi-layered, reflexive commentary, presented through the frameworks of the Kew Garden Principles and New Zealand’s refugee resettlement strategy. It also builds on the work of Marlowe and Bernard (2022), Pio et al. (2021), and Wessells (2021) in recognizing voice and agency and the need for governments, organizations, and individuals to play an active role in enhancing the trajectories of refugees. The commentary emphasizes the need for integration as refugees navigate the landscape of work and life in their new home country.

Frameworks

Frameworks offer anchor points from which to park the rich material available in qualitative research. In writing about the duty of care and ethics for responding to refugees, Hollenbach (2016) offers the five Kew Garden principles. They provide an excellent framework for analyzing the Tampa situation and New Zealand’s response. The first principle states that there must be critical need. In fact, the displaced MV Tampa passengers were in a state of exhaustion and had no place to go. Second, the agent (in this case the New Zealand government) had proximity to the need. The MV Tampa was in the ocean close to New Zealand. Third, the agent must have the capability to assist. New Zealand has been accepting people fleeing persecution for more than a century (Beaglehole, 2005). Finally, New Zealand was the last resort for the refugees. Australia had refused to help and the MV Tampa was struggling to accommodate the Afghan refugee families on board. To its credit, New Zealand focused on positive duties arising from our common humanity — duties that reached across national borders — in taking action to respond to and alleviate the crisis pertaining to Afghan refugees with no place else to go. The fifth principle of not causing disproportionate harm to the person offering assistance was well illustrated by the New Zealand government in being part of the international solution for the refugees on the Tampa.

This commentary dives into a response from New Zealand to hear and act on the entreaties of the Tampa refugees. In accepting and creating a home for these refugees, New Zealand implemented its own refugee resettlement strategy (New Zealand Immigration 2017). This strategy had five desired outcomes: self-sufficiency (paid work); housing (independent of government housing assistance); education (English language skills and qualification); health and wellbeing (healthy, safe, and independent lives); and participation (active participation and sense of belonging to New Zealand). These five goals were not officially implemented until 2013, but they were the focus for the Tampa refugees who arrived in 2001.

Refugee equality in New Zealand must mean that both quota refugees and asylum seekers are provided with a safe start and a fair future (Marlowe and Bernard, 2022), though the current resettlement strategy is available only to quota refugees. Pio et al. (2021, 32) suggest the importance of dialogic engagement between senior executives in organizations, policy makers, and refugees, to shift the paradigm from refugees as an “unattractive option by management” and to ensure they are not unemployed, underemployed, or primarily working in low-paying jobs.

Research Approach

Twenty-one years after the Tampa ship rescued Afghan refugees, we use collaborative auto-ethnography (Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez 2013), to provide insight into the layered intersecting complexities of displaced Afghan refugees in New Zealand. This ethnography is collaborative, as it is between the researcher (first author) and a refugee on the MV Tampa who repeatedly checked with her family and other Tampa families regarding their memories of their journeys from Afghanistan to Pakistan, then to Indonesia and finally to New Zealand. Collaborative auto-ethnography, a form of qualitative research, is a pragmatic process for understanding phenomena through dual and solo meaning-making in an iterative rather than linear manner.

We spell out our identities and location in this collaborative auto-ethnography to provide context to our writing. The first author is New Zealand’s first professor of diversity, a migrant, and a scholar of color. The second, a Shia Muslim woman who wears a headscarf, is a graphic designer/photographer at a university and was a little girl on the Tampa. Research rigor (Le Roux 2017) is evident based on this work being a worthy topic that has sincerity, credibility, and meaning. The authors relied on published material and memories of the Tampa refugees who made the hazardous journey to New Zealand. These memories and the act of remembering provide emotive aspects to the writing. Our analysis focuses on three time periods — Pre-arrival (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia), Initial-arrival (entering New Zealand), and Contemporary times which focus on their current lives.

Findings and Discussion

Here we present the Tampa author’s voice, in three parts — pre-arrival, Initial-arrival, and contemporary times.

Pre-arrival

Being a Shia Hazara and living in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not easy. Hazaras have very distinct features and are easy targets for the Taliban and ISIS. Leaving everything behind to live and survive. Shia Hazaras are victims of target killings in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. My mother could not go to school as she was a girl. My parents have made huge sacrifices and given up everything for their children, they simply wanted the best for us. They wanted us to have a safe life and get a good education so that when we grew up, we didn’t struggle in life, like them. The small wooden boats provided by the smugglers in Indonesia could not handle the number of Afghans on the boat and the huge waves, we had no hope, but we were rescued by the Tampa, and the New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. We did not know a country such as New Zealand existed and we had never heard its name before.

This extract indicates the desperation of the refugees and their desire for safety and a better life for themselves and their children. Hazara Afghans are Shia, they speak a Dari dialect and display Asiatic features, which indicate Mongol and Iranian ancestry. They were sold as slaves even in the nineteenth century and have faced discrimination, marginalization, and persecution in Afghanistan (Hucal 2016). The fact that they boarded so many unseaworthy vessels is a testament to their anguish. If they returned to Pakistan or Afghanistan, they would have nothing, but venturing on a boat could mean survival and shelter in a peaceful country.

Initial Arrival

New Zealand gave my family shelter and support. We were taken to the Mangere Refugee resettlement centre in Auckland, which became our first home. We did not know where we were going, and the 9/11 attacks had just happened so we were thought of as terrorists and the buses in which we travelled to the centre were covered up and no one was allowed to open the curtains. We went to school within the centre and started learning English. We had the most amazing people to teach us. We interacted with and are grateful to the counsellors and employees working at the centre and translators. We would play hide and seek with the other children and security guards. My parents also went for English classes with the other adults. We were given clothes, shoes, toys, books stationery and found safety, security, peace, comfort, and support. We used to get so excited when we saw one of the volunteers, as she would always bring us presents and we are still in touch with her today. At the Refugee resettlement centre, we did not fear that we were targeted. The volunteers took us shopping, to the cinema and when my parents started their first jobs, they came and took them to work for the first day and showed them the way to their workplaces, like bus routes and ways to public transport. One of the interpreters would take my parents to the Halal meat store. After about three months, on Christmas eve 2001, we were taken to our second home in New Zealand and we felt safe and were ready to settle.

In the center there was optimism, hope and plans for a better life, through a configuration of individuals who sought to help the Tampa refugees settle. Here there was no fear of the security guards who would protect rather than hurt them. They came only with the ragged clothes on their backs, but at the center they received clothing, shoes, food, and interacted with individuals who wanted them to be happy and safe. There was a move toward self-sufficiency in getting jobs, education in the English language, counselors and medical staff for their health and wellbeing, and a roof over their heads. They had begun to participate in New Zealand life — thus they were on the road to achieving the integration outcomes of the refugee resettlement strategy (New Zealand Immigration 2017).

Contemporary Times

Today I have a graduate qualification and hold an awesome job in the field of communications in a New Zealand university. My parents, teachers in school and university have been a huge part of my life. Now my parents converse in English, and we have our own life-style block home. This life-style block gives us more space and has a large garden . . . A family friend taught me driving. Every year we have been celebrating Tampa day around 26 August, but the Afghan community has grown tremendously, and they live in different parts of New Zealand, hence we now celebrate this day in our own home. The government continues to support Afghan refugees and there are more privileges and support for them than when we came, including support from ex-refugees. We are aware that some Afghan refugees have gone to Australia, but I would never go, as New Zealand provided a safe haven for us, and this is our home.

Here, we note that this family from the MV Tampa have their own life-style block home, which is safe and secure. The little girl on the Tampa (a co-author) is today a graduate with English language skills and a job she loves and that provides not only monetary benefits, but also a multi-layered sense of self-esteem for a proud Shia, Hazara woman. In fact, she emphasizes her religion, ethnic group, and gender — all of which were problematic prior to arriving in New Zealand. In this contemporary time extract, agency is displayed by the refugees and by their support networks, such as friends they developed in the refugee center, the government, and other refugees. These efforts, combined with the implementation of government programs, express a culture of collaboration and testimony to the joy of living in New Zealand. Along with her parents and siblings, this former MV Tampa passenger feels she belongs to New Zealand and has a sense of wellbeing. All her family drive and this has created independence and enhanced self-worth.

On March 15, 2019, a dark day in New Zealand’s history (Ministry for Culture and Heritage 2021), a self-proclaimed “white nationalist” used five weapons, including two semi-automatic assault rifles, to attack worshipers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and live-streamed the killings. Fifty-one people died and 40 were injured. After this horrific event, the woman fears for her safety as she is easily identifiable as a Muslim woman since she wears a headscarf. While she has been able to secure a great job, many refugees struggle to find appropriate employment (Pio et al. 2021) and this is an area that needs greater concerted strategic effort between policy makers, senior leaders in organizations, government agencies, and refugee communities (New Zealand Immigration 2022). However, it is heartening that New Zealand now collects data on each of the five outcomes on its refugee resettlement strategy, to further align with successes and plug in gaps (New Zealand Immigration 2020).

Concluding Comments

While we are aware that this collaborative auto-ethnography is one research approach, there are other approaches with a range of data from other Tampa families, which may provide further insights into protracted displaced situations and refugees. Moreover, it would be pertinent to research current Afghans and compare their experiences with those who arrived on the Tampa, to situate the changes and improvements in government policy and the sense belongingness of refugees in their new country. Furthermore, a study into current fears of refugees who have lived in New Zealand for more than 20 years and how they deal with these emotions after the Christchurch massacre may help other Muslim refugees and provide action points for safety and security.

Collecting stories of older and younger refugees can pave the way for testimonies that document hardships and successes for future generations. A focus on developing social capital through various networks is another fertile area for research. Through our commentary, we have shown how New Zealand intervened through diplomacy and in a non-violent manner. New Zealand believed in porous borders as a positive duty in interpreting and responding to complex, layered, and ambiguous refugee regimes. There is need to further underscore the need for policy makers, organizations, and individuals to play a role in enhancing the trajectories of refugees for integration as they navigate the rhythms of work and resettlement in a new country.

Footnotes

Disclosures

This article did not involve human or animal subjects, which obviates the need for informed consent.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Edwina Pio ONZM

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