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When Australia opened its doors to Iranian soccer players seeking asylum, Ferdos experienced a whirlwind of emotions. She felt relief knowing they were now safe, yet was left puzzled and frustrated by her own visa ordeal, which has been unresolved for 14 long years.
At just 23, Ferdos’s journey as an Iranian refugee began when she was only 10. She, along with her family, endured five years in detention on Nauru. Eventually, in 2018, she was transferred to Australia with her brother due to health concerns.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding her visa status, Ferdos has built a life in Australia. She completed her high school education and now works as an employment caseworker, contributing to the community while living in a state of limbo.
Recently, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke made headlines by granting asylum to a group of women from Iran’s national soccer team. These players faced potential persecution at home for refusing to sing the national anthem during the Asian Cup in March. Their decision to seek refuge in Australia was met with support and empathy.
“I was really, really happy that Australians really gave that opportunity to such beautiful women to stay here and feel safe,” Ferdos expressed to reporters in Canberra on Tuesday, highlighting her mixed feelings about the contrasting fortunes of the asylum seekers.
“It was really hard for me to understand how the government has this power to do so in less than 48 hours, but for us, it’s been years and decades.”
There are about 700 Iranians found to be refugees who remain in limbo, according to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.
“It’s time that Australia shows them the protection that they deserve,” the centre’s deputy CEO Jana Favero said alongside Ferdos, whose surname is not being used for safety reasons because she has family in Iran.
‘The difference is they are not popular sporting identities’
Advocates for Afghan refugees have also pointed at a double standard over the quick processing of the players.
Ghairat Jawahiri had his humanitarian visa application rejected after years of waiting, despite being in hiding with his family in Pakistan in fear of being deported back to face the Taliban’s wrath.
He helped NATO forces track the terrorist organisation’s camps in the mountains during the Afghan war and was captured and tortured when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021 before fleeing to Pakistan.
His daughter Namja worked in the human rights and women’s rights sector as an activist, making her return to Afghanistan too risky as the Taliban brutally cracks down on women’s rights.
The Taliban believes she co-operated with the Afghan government and international forces during 2001 and 2021 because of her numerous media interviews and human rights projects with international organisations during the Afghanistan war, she said.
Rural Australians for Refugees national president Marie Sellstrom, who is helping the family, offered to resettle them in Shepparton.
“While I am pleased the Iranian women have received support this puts to nonsense the response of the Australian government to the Jawahiri family that ‘Australia does not have the capacity to accommodate them’,” she said.
“Rural communities can support the Jawahiri family immediately, they were and are in just as much danger if not more than the Iranian women.
“The difference is they are not popular sporting identities.”
Sellstrom also pointed to Farzana, who remains in hiding in Iran after she was rejected from joining her family in Shepparton because she was 24 and not 22.
She aged out of being able to be included in her father’s family reunion visa by the time his application was put through, Sellstrom said.
Afghan women’s rights organisation Azadi-e Zan has made representations to the offices of multiple minsters, outlining a list of high-risk women and families.
Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster told a parliamentary hearing in February the department could identify “individuals who might need to be taken out of the queue because of particular circumstances” when representations are made by a minister.
“For example, that might be where we have families where daughters are about to reach an age where they wouldn’t be able to travel with their families, and if we processed them in the normal way there would be a perverse outcome,” she said.
Favero said the system needed reform as organisations couldn’t be expected to make a case-by-case representation for hundreds of cases.
There are more than 300,000 refugee and humanitarian visa applications, including more than 270,000 that are offshore, which amounts to unprecedented demand due to increasing global instability, according to Home Affairs.
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