“No one has the right to ‘cancel’ another person’s visa, including the visa sponsor. This type of behaviour is a Commonwealth offence and carries a potential 12-year jail term,” Manning said.
Hassani told this masthead that there have been “many, many cases” in Afghan and other migrant communities where men have then taken their wives abroad, never to return to Australia.
Helena Hassani, a human rights advocate, says exit trafficking, domestic servitude and forced marriages are plaguing Australian migrant communities.
“And a lot of Aussie men marry women from Asia, bring them here, but marry them into servitude, or treat them like sex workers.”
The women, including AR’s wife, are only in Australia on partner visas – which means they rely on their husband’s sponsorship to stay in the country.
Male members of some migrant communities discourage women in their families from handling money, going to school or becoming employed because they fear “defiance” and want a “servant”.
“It’s a cultural practice where the less educated women are, the happier men are, because then no one is challenging them, no one is confronting them, and they just live the way they want to live,” Hassani said.
The first exit-trafficking conviction, in 2021, was recorded after a Lidcombe man threatened to murder a woman unless she boarded a flight to India with her infant child.
The anti-human trafficking group Anti Slavery Australia had passed on intelligence to the federal police, who found CCTV at the airport of the distressed woman at the departure gate.
That same year ASA assisted 400 other people trafficked or enslaved in Australia – but they estimate only one in five victims are detected.
An ASA-hosted seminar this week noted exit trafficking often involves women being deceived into travelling out of Australia so they can be forced into marriage.
“You’re expected to marry them so the rest of the family can come here for a better life. It’s very hard to say no to that,” Ayra, a survivor of forced marriage, told this masthead earlier this year.
Hassani’s service, Boland Parwaz, is tasked by the courts with re-educating the perpetrators – men who have forced women and children into marriage, or abused or deprived them of their rights in Australia.
“I am supporting one girl overseas who was forced to marry an Australian citizen,” Hassani said.
“She never got here, though. She was sexually assaulted by her husband’s brother, so her husband flew from Australia to beat her up and divorce her – even though she was the victim.”
‘She was sexually assaulted by her husband’s brother, so her husband flew from Australia to beat her up and divorce her.’
Human rights advocate Helena Hassani
The men in Hassani’s course often defend the practice and claim women use only “half their brains”.
They are unaware Hassani is a UN delegate for Australia, a university researcher, and regularly appears before parliamentary inquiries about human rights. Crucially, she grew up in their community.
“I tell them I am from the same culture and no – this is not happening in my family,” Hassani said.
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“It’s just your belief system.”
Last month Hassani received a medal at the Women Changing the World Awards in London for her advocacy – that same week AR was led away in handcuffs as the third Australian sentenced for exit trafficking.
The AFP urges anyone with information about potential modern slavery or trafficking to contact 131 237
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