Africans who seek new lives in Australia

By Phil Mercer
BBC News, Sydney

Melbourne hosted the championships earlier this month

A search is under way in Australia to find two Congolese athletes who went missing earlier this month, after competing in the World Swimming Championships in Melbourne.

Refugee campaigners say it is almost certain the men will apply for asylum, given the instability and violence back home.

This is not the first such incident in which African athletes have tried to start new lives in Australia, despite the country's strict asylum rules.

Fourteen athletes from Sierra Leone disappeared from the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne last year.

They were eventually granted refugee status after being sheltered by a network of sympathisers.

In recent years, the Australian government has significantly increased its intake of migrants from Africa.

Last year it accepted 7,100 Africans under humanitarian programmes, with the largest group coming from Sudan.

While life for these newcomers in a country very different from their own is often hard, many say it is nothing compared with the problems they have left behind.

War-torn homeland

The Congolese pair - Aymard Lumuamu-Dimbu and Iglay Dangassat-Sissoulou - have visas valid until June, but after that the situation is unclear.

At work I sometimes feel racism. Some people say bad personal things to you Ibrahim, Sudanese refugee in Sydney

Australia's immigration minister, Kevin Andrews, has warned them that any attempt to evade officials or overstay their visas would not help their case.

The men are currently still thought to be in Melbourne.

"I think they are in the care of a Catholic organisation," said Jacques Mwandulo, the vice-president of the Congolese community in New South Wales.

Mr Mwandulo said he could understand why the athletes do not want to return home.

The two swimmers are reportedly from Kinshasa, the capital of DR Congo, a country trying to recover from a five-year war that claimed millions of lives, mostly through disease and starvation.

David Manne says many rejected asylum claims are overturned

"Recently there were some problems in Kinshasa," Mr Mwandulo said. "The fighting killed about 600 people and security there is almost vacant."

Refugee campaigner David Addington believes the unrest would make any application for asylum in Australia a compelling one.

"The Democratic Republic of Congo is an extraordinarily bitter and long-running war that has killed more people than any other conflict since the Second World War," he told the BBC.

"At work I sometimes feel racism," said Ibrahim, a Sudanese refugee who has been in Sydney for three years. "Some people say bad personal things to you."

But he added: "I feel like a human being here. Because of the fighting in Sudan, sometimes you feel you are not a human being."

Helping hand

Leaving family and friends behind in Africa can be extremely hard.

Some of the 14 athletes from Sierra Leone are hoping to bring relatives to Australia.

They worry, though, that loved ones at home could be punished because of their decision to seek asylum in a faraway land.

DR Congo has been blighted by years of conflict

Should the Congolese swimmers decide to do the same, they will have to apply for a protection visa and detail why they fear they would be persecuted if they were repatriated.

David Manne, an immigration lawyer and refugee advocate in Melbourne, says Australian officials would then have 90 days to make a decision.

If their claims were to be rejected, Aymard Lumuamu-Dimbu and Iglay Dangassat-Sissoulou would have an automatic right of appeal to Australia's Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT).

David Manne says this independent body often reverses findings made by the authorities.

"In the last four years or so, the RRT has overturned 92% of Afghani and Iraqi refusals - that's 3,200 people allowed to stay after their cases were rejected by the Immigration department."

The Congolese community in Australia might be small - about 700 strong - but if the pair is allowed to stay they will be assured a helping hand.

"Settling down in Australia will not be very difficult for them," said Jacques Mwandulo. "We'll make sure of that."