Dec. 2004

Russell Skelton (of The Age) is not answering my emails. He it was who found no evidence in Afghanistan of the Bakhtiyaris having lived there, and now says he never said they came from Pakistan, but won't say where he thinks they are from. And he recommends the government show mercy, but warns that this may be politically unwise.

Russell seems in a mess. He has no lie detectors tests, no birth certificates, no witnesses of Ali Bakhtiyari's forty years in Quetta, his address in those years, one customer of his 'electrical plumbing', one tax return of his big business in Saudi Arabia, one school Alamdar went to in Pakistan before the age of eleven. Like the lawyers that went after Lindy Chamberlain he needs no evidence. He has a view. Such men knew the earth was flat, and held that view until death.

Montezar Bakhtiyari, however, takes my calls. On Saturday night we talked for nearly an hour. He is depressed, and 'won't go quietly', he says. He has plans. I warn him not to think of killing himself. It won't help his family. It will only confirm Russell Skelton's libellous view of children who succumb 'to the desperation and manipulative influence of older male detainees'. Write a book, I said, called Montezar's Journey. It may end up on the reading list for schools in all Australia. Go with your dad and a documentary director back to your village, film the villagers greeting you by name, and then sue Philip Ruddock for libel. And Amanda Vanstone. And Russell Skelton. 'I wouldn't sue Russell,' Montezar said. 'He's a nice man.' He apologised for not wishing me merry Christmas. He had forgotten it was Christmas Day.

That people who come here in leaky boats may respond in this way is always a shock to the racists who like our policy of sending even newborn babies back out to sea. In their world view 'these people' cannot sue for libel. 'These people' are clockwork insects seen at a distance waving their feelers above the razor wire, not sensate beings with human rights.

And this is why what happened to the Bakhtiyari children a week before Christmas -- not changing a baby's nappy and making a little girl sit in wet pants for a four hour's car journey -- was diplomatically unwise. For men accused of child abuse, it might now be argued, are trying to leave the country and take their victims with them. Will Pakistan give visas to men like that or to children needed as witnesses in trials for such crimes here? They might. And they might not.

And so the tragedy continues. A computer main-frame and software owned by the boys has been confiscated, their mobile phones, a little gold cross that, though not a Catholic, Samina treasured. Though persecuted thus and traumatised hourly -- they fear that in Quetta the Taliban will kill them -- they are, Ruddock says, 'not refugees'. Europe, he says, 'admires' his policy, and they probably do.

For this is the way our age is going. Money can move anywhere and profit, like a tsunami, smash any poor economy. But people must be locked up and not allowed to move anywhere, lest they say too much, or show too much, of the evil, unequal system infecting the world.