Asylum dream turns to nightmare: Young girl Hasti faces Iranian foster care after failed bid to reach Australia

 

Tough ordeal ... Hasti struggled for six hours in the water after the asylum seeker boat she and her mother had boarded for Christmas Island sank off Java's smuggling coast.

 

THINGS could not have gone any worse for eight-year-old Hasti since she was put on a pitilessly overloaded boat that went down off Java on July 23. 

The young Iranian girl’s mother is dead, asylum seekers in Indonesia have tried to use her as their ticket to Australia, her father has been prevented from seeing her due to accusations he is a drug user, and she now faces life in an Iranian foster home.

Future uncertain ... An exhausted Hasti after her asylum boat ordeal. 

 

News Corp reported last year on the case of Hasti*, who Indonesian police dumped exhausted on the streets of Cisarua, in West Java, with a group of adult Iranian asylum seekers on the night of the sinking.
Hasti became separated from her mother, Fatemah, who was brought to shore in a state of severe diabetic shock after she lost her insulin supplies after the boat went down.
 
Fatemah did not recover and died a few days later in West Java’s Cianjur hospital, though it was two months before Hasti was told by a psychiatrist in Indonesia that her mother had died.

An Iranian family who were on the sunken boat took Hasti into their refugee accommodation in Jakarta, but others in the asylum network accused them of using Hasti to assist their claims to get to Australia.
The family refused to let News Corp see Hasti after we had tracked her down in Jakarta six weeks after the sinking, on an innocent request to see how she was doing.

In another cruel setback, relatives of Hasti living in Australia hung up the phone or blocked Facebook messages when an asylum seeker in Java told them that Fatemah had died and suggested they try and bring Hasti to live with them in Australia.

“No. It’s a lie. If I use drugs why don’t they catch (arrest) me? Fatemah’s family have been saying that to news agencies."
Amir Ali Shirali Esmaeili

Former Labor Immigration minister Tony Burke took personal interest and asked the UNHCR to monitor the child with a view to processing her as a special case and bringing her to Australia for adoption, if possible.

But Mr Burke’s office first needed to ensure that Hasti’s father — whom Fatemah divorced five years ago, and did not know she and Hasti had taken a boat — relinquished any claim to guardianship.
According to asylum sources monitoring the situation on social media from Indonesia, the father, Amir Ali Shirali Esmaeili, demanded that he be allowed to come to Australia with Hasti.

Hasti arrived back in Iran in January. Mr Esmaeili told Iran’s Fars News that he was not permitted to see her after a UNHCR representative delivered her straight to an Iranian government welfare organisation.

Tug of war ... Hasti has now been placed with a welfare agency in Iran. 

 

Asked by an Iranian journalist if it was because he used drugs, he said: “No. It’s a lie. If I use drugs why don’t they catch (arrest) me? Fatemah’s family have been saying that to news agencies.”
Mr Esmaeli claimed he’d wanted to go to Indonesia to collect Hasti after he learned about Fatemah’s death but said the family caring for her had discouraged him from coming.


He said he loved Hasti and his new wife loved her also.
Fatemah told asylum seekers she had befriended while preparing for the doomed voyage that the father had shown no interest in Hasti since the divorce.

*Due to a misunderstanding, Hasti’s name was originally reported as Fatemah, because the people with her pointed to her saying, “Fatemah”, but meaning she belonged to Fatemah.

Asylum-seeker lifeboat abandoned on Indo beach: exclusive pictures

Eighty asylum-seekers are said to have abandoned a lifeboat on the Indonesian island of Java after interception by the Australian Navy en route to Christmas Island. News Corp Chief Reporter Paul Toohey reports from Jakarta.

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