After escaping from prison for 30 years, Desik surrendered to the police in Sydney. His friends and family are now begging the Australian government to have mercy on him and let him stay
Last modified on Friday, November 12, 2021, 15.25 EST
Sometime next year, Darko Desic will complete the imprisonment that began in 1990-interrupted by three years of difficult freedom-facing the bizarre prospect of being deported to a country that no longer exists.
Desik's case has attracted international attention with the hardships of the plot and the arc of redemption, and his communities in Sydney's northern beaches have also turned to him for help.
According to the royal forgiveness privileges rarely invoked by New South Wales, the request for leniency is currently before the Attorney General.
But his case is also one of the rising trends in Australia's deportation and indefinite immigration detention. Experts say that “becoming a member of the Australian community is harder and easier to be deported”.
"I believe it," the slender, bearded man said to the stunned police officer at the Dee Why police station on a quiet Sunday in September, "you have been looking for me."
In fact, the police have been looking for Desik and they have stopped searching.
In 1990, Desik was sentenced to a maximum of three years and eight months in prison for two counts of marijuana cultivation.
But in July 1992, after serving 19 months in prison, he used a hacksaw blade to cut through the fence of the cell in Grafton Prison, cut through the fence with bolt cutters, and then ran away.
He said that he ran away to avoid being deported to his native Yugoslavia at the end of his sentence, when Yugoslavia was caught in a brutal civil war and fled there as a teenager in the 1970s to avoid compulsory military service.
Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s. The country to which Desic legally belongs no longer exists. The Adriatic port town Jablanac where he grew up is now part of Croatia.
In the 29 years after his escape, Desik established a life on the fringe.
He has never taken out a medical insurance card-when his teeth rot, he would pull them out with pliers. He was unable to apply for assistance from Centrelink. Because he couldn't get his driver's license, he walked or took a bus to go to work.
This is a secret life, but by no means lonely: his life is also a life of friendship, labor, community, and reciprocity.
As a businessman, he taught himself a mason, worked with cash on hand, and repaired rents for local real estate agents. He is in charge of the cash register at a local wine bottle shop.
He is the "Dougie" of the community.
But Desic's freedom has been very unstable, and the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the network. His work dried up. The dilapidated house he shared with a partner of Avalon, with an umbrella on an uncovered outdoor donkey, was sold, and he found himself sleeping in the dunes behind the beach.
He confided to a friend.
"Man, I committed a crime, so I will deal with it."
A police source said bluntly: "He turned himself in to build a roof on his head."
On the basis of completing the original sentence, the magistrate Jennifer Atkinson sentenced Desic to an additional two months' imprisonment.
She said: "Over time, he has indeed undergone tremendous changes." "In addition, he showed remorse and remorse by surrendering to the police."
But Atkinson said that for the serious crime of evading custody, there is no choice but imprisonment.
"He chose to take the tools and leave the detention center... I admit he was really worried (if sent to Yugoslavia) what might happen to him."
Desic's sentence will expire on December 29, 2022.
What Desic worries most is what happens outside the prison.
The Australian Border Force has written to tell him that at the end of his sentence, his visa will be cancelled and he will be taken directly from the prison to the immigration detention facility and then deported from Australia.
"He is not a complainer, but he must be under a lot of pressure," his lawyer Paul McGill told the Guardian.
"It's possible to be sent from Australia to a place he doesn't know. You can imagine the feeling-being locked in a small cell and unable to control anything. We are all trying to do our best for him."
His community has united. The locals in North Beach offered him a job, a home, and a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $34,000.
This week, Desik said through his lawyer: "I have been trying to be the best person in the beach community, and I owe all the people in the world who support me.
"I consider myself an Australian, and I hope the government can understand that Sydney is my home, and it is my home almost half of the time."
McGirr has filed a petition with the support of Desic's family and community members seeking clemency for his sentence, hoping to prevent deportation.
He is seeking a commutation of his sentence based on the royal family’s mercy privileges, which is a broad discretionary power that strictly belongs to the governor of New South Wales, who is acting on the advice of her minister.
There are no legal restrictions on the use of power, but government documents insist that it “only be exercised in rare and special circumstances that are necessary for the public interest”.
This is not an appeal route, nor is it an acquittal.
The petition has now been submitted to the state's Attorney General Mark Speakman (Mark Speakman).
His spokesperson confirmed that "the Attorney General will advise the governor on this matter."
The spokesperson said that Desic's visa status is a matter of the federal government.
"This is a unique case," McGill told the Guardian. "Forgiveness is not something we will seek in everything, but the community has tremendous support.
"A 64-year-old man is sitting in a cell, worried about what will happen if he is released, and he will get nothing. This man has been living a crime-free life for 30 years: he does not claim to be perfect , But he leads a good life. He works and contributes, and he helps people in the community.
"At the end of all this, Australia will throw him to a place he doesn't know, a place he has not been to for more than 30 years. This is very unfair and inhumane. That is not the Australia where I grew up. ."
But it was not New South Wales that decided Desic's right to stay in Australia, which had sentenced him for his crimes, but the internal affairs department of the federal government.
When asked about Desik’s situation, the Home Office said it would not comment on individual cases, but said it would take seriously the “responsibility to protect the Australian community from the risk of harm caused by non-citizens who engage in criminal or other acts”. focus on".
A spokesperson said that non-citizens who want to stay in Australia must meet requirements for identity, health, character and safety.
"In Australia, non-citizens who do not have a valid visa will be detained and expelled as soon as practicable, pending the resolution of any ongoing issues."
In the past ten years, the government’s use of “character tests” to cancel visas has escalated dramatically, from 139 in 2012-13 to a peak of 1,278 in 2016-17, a nearly ten-fold increase.
In 2020-21, the visas of 946 people were cancelled, resulting in their detention or deportation from Australia. Drug crime is the most common reason for cancellation (126), followed by assault (109). Ten people had their visas cancelled because they had "connections" with individuals or groups, but they were not charged or convicted of any crimes.
This year, the government tried to deport a man because he was a member of a motorcycle club, which was not banned in the state where he lived: he was never charged or charged with a crime. Another man who was found not guilty also had his visa cancelled.
In both cases, the government was rejected by the courts, but a new law currently under consideration by Parliament will allow the government to use secret evidence to deport immigrants from Australia or detain stateless persons indefinitely, such as Desik.
Legal organizations and rights organizations have stated that the law will establish an "astounding confidentiality system" and prevent people from challenging deportation or indefinite detention based on information that may be wrong, maliciously planted, or misunderstood.
Sangeetha Pillai, a senior researcher at the Kaldor Center for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales, said that the Desic case allowed the government to choose what to do next. With the cancellation of his permanent residency, Desik will become an "illegal non-citizen" under the immigration law and must be detained or deported.
It can't be Yugoslavia, but if a country that has already emerged-possibly Croatia, given his origin-agrees to accept Desić, he may be deported there.
"If there is a place where he can be sent, he will be sent there," Pillay said.
"But if there is no place to agree to take him in, he will face indefinite detention. [The] Al-Kateb [The High Court's judgment on a stateless refugee] said "If it is forever, then it is forever." If it never fails Will appear, there will be a place that will take you there, then you will be detained."
Pillai believes that the continuous legislative changes over the past two decades have greatly expanded the federal government’s power to exclude people from the Australian community, making it easier for non-citizens, including long-term permanent residents, to be deprived of visas for character or safety reasons. Detained or deported from Australia.
"After 9/11, Australian law has become more and more exclusive: it has become more difficult to become a member of the Australian community, and it is easier to be expelled," she wrote.
The "theocracy" held by the Minister of Immigration and Home Affairs-even the former minister called them that, and they are disturbed by their unrestrained ability to determine the trajectory of someone's life-is the most powerful of any minister in Australia One of the powers.
"The discretionary power is very, very broad," Pillay told the Guardian. “If the Minister believes that a person’s past or present, criminal or general conduct indicates that they are behaving badly, and the Minister believes that it is in the national interest, they can cancel the visa and the person will be deported.
"Whether this is a good idea is another question. This guy named Darko Desic seems to be loved by his community, his life is here, and he is part of the Australian community.
"Get rid of this person, a person who has not caused harm in 30 years and made a contribution at that time, what is the real public interest?"