Opposition leader Peter Dutton has dampened the hopes of the families of women and children in Syrian detention camps who have been appealing for the Australian government to find them an urgent pathway out of the increasingly precarious environment.
There are 42 women and children remaining in the camps, with some of the women saying they were coerced or tricked into travelling to Syria to join the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group.
The Australian government has been getting regular briefings about their conditions, and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has said: “the environment in Syria is dangerous and changing rapidly”.
In a 3AW radio interview on Tuesday, Dutton was asked about the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and whether Australia should bring back the “brides of Islamic State fighters”.
Dutton was previously home affairs minister and has had close contact with the detail of the cases.
“It wasn’t safe for us to put people into that region to extract even Australian citizens, and the advice to me at the time was that it was dangerous to put even the SAS (elite soldiers) or to put our people at risk, and I wasn’t prepared to put our diggers at risk to bring some of these people back to Australia,” he said on Tuesday.
He went on to maintain the national security risk of repatriating the families has only increased since then.
“I think the risk has only compounded since that time, because the children aren’t four or five years of age, they’re now 12 and 13 and 14 years of age, and I think it would pose a very significant risk to Australia, [on] their return.”
The former Morrison government had allowed Australian orphans in the camps to return home, and in 2022, former Labor home affairs minister Clare O’Neil allowed four women and 13 children to be brought back to Australia. Dutton has warned he would expect the children have been radicalised.
“I think people … have made a decision as a parent, as a mother or father, that you’re going to abandon your country and you’re going to fight under another flag and you’re going to raise your children according to that indoctrination that they’ve received every day of their life,” Dutton said.
“My priority, our priority, is to keep Australians safe and do what’s in the best interests of our country, and that’s how I would see it.”
Save the Children appealing to government
The group Save the Children has been appealing to the Albanese government to act to help the children, warning that “time is running out” and arguing that the women are prepared to face any legal processes required in Australia.
“For years we have been urging the Australian government to act before it’s too late. The longer the women and children stay there, the more danger they face,” Save the Children CEO Matt Tinkler said.
Kamalle Dabboussy is an advocate for the children in the camps and the grandfather and father of some of the families who have been brought home.
“Until recently, I’ve been hearing from terrified Australian women and children stranded in the Roj camp [in northeast Syria]. They are scared for their lives — the fear is palpable.”
Displaced women walking at Roj detention camp in northeastern Syria in 2019. Source: AAP, EPA / Murtaja Lateef
He also said the women are prepared to face any punishment in the Australian legal system. “All the families have offered and undertaken to cooperate with law enforcement on their return if need be, and those who have already returned have done just that,” he said.
“They have settled back in without any problems.”
He went on to say there is no evidence of wrongdoing that has been provided about the women publicly.
“If, in fact, there are legitimate concerns, they should be dealt with under due process, but to date, no evidence has been provided of any wrongdoing. The Australian courts have accepted the fact that these women are being held without charge in contravention of Australian and Syrian law.
“Under any law, they are being held without charge, and certainly no child should be in detention or in harm’s way.”
ASIO says risk does not apply to all
Earlier this year, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said that while there were lingering security concerns about some Australians in Syria, that did not apply to everyone.
There are still a number of Australian men being held in Syrian prisons, who had fought with IS.
But boys who have grown up in the camps are also moved to the adult jails when they reach the age of 12.
SBS World News reported earlier this week on the cases of two 12-year-old Australian boys who have been allowed to remain with their mothers in one of the camps, in a sign of the Australian government’s successful advocacy with Kurdish authorities to stop them from being isolated from their family support networks.
The strong comments from the Opposition are a blow to the efforts of advocates to work with Australian authorities on a mission to extract the Australian children — a lack of bipartisanship would make the task of bringing families back a more political equation for Labor.
The task is highly complicated and presents a level of risk in terms of sending people to northeastern Syria, or securing passage out of the country for the families.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has been managing the expectations that there will be any likelihood of the group being able to get out.
“The government’s ability to provide assistance to those in Syria is severely limited, due to the extremely dangerous security situation and because we do not have an embassy or consulate in Syria,” he told SBS World News on Tuesday.
“The government is providing consular assistance to the families of individuals detained in Syria.”
