Minister says 'no' to visa for NZ policeman's family facing Taliban reprisals

The interpreter who is now a New Zealand police officer is pictured with NZDF personnel at their base in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. Photo / Supplied

In just a few days, the visas allowing the family of a Hamilton woman to stay in Iran will expire and they face being handed to the Taliban.

Associate Immigration Minister Phil Twyford has refused to make a special exception for the woman's parents whose exclusion from New Zealand can be traced to a bureaucratic box tick nine years ago.

"If something happens to my family, I'm not going to blame the Taliban because the Taliban's job is killing people," she told the Herald on Sunday.

"I'm going to blame the Minister because the Minister had the power to save my parents' life and he didn't use it."

The Herald on Sunday will not print the woman's name or the city she is from in Afghanistan for fear of pinpointing her family's identity.

Already, the fear they are being targeted has escalated. People from their former neighbourhood have recently reported to her mother that the Taliban has been knocking on the door, asking where the family had gone.

The woman is now 28 and lived in Hamilton with her husband and two children. He was a former NZ Defence Force interpreter who is now a New Zealand police officer.

Their immigration pathway to New Zealand began in 2013 but became quickly tortuous because of bureaucratic decision-making made over three months that year.

In January 2013, her husband was answering questions required for a visa to move to New Zealand when asked if he was single or married. He replied that he was single - a marital status that changed weeks later after being told his family had him lined up to marry the daughter of friends in a different city.

By March, he was no longer "single" but couldn't get his change in status registered, despite efforts to do so.

NZDF on patrol in Bamiyan. Photo / Supplied

It meant that in April 2013, he boarded a plane for New Zealand alone while the other interpreters on the flight travelled with their wives and children.

That single box tick compounded difficulties in keeping their family together in the years that followed. His wife joined a year later on a visa that didn't immediately allow access to integration services afforded to other families.

And in 2017, a decision to allow the families of interpreters to come to New Zealand excluded his wife's family because she didn't make her initial flight here sitting next to her husband.

The application to Twyford as the Associate Minister came as the Taliban grip on Afghanistan tightened. For her family, the connection by marriage to an interpreter for coalition forces was a problem and more so because of roles held by immediate family members in Afghanistan.

In June this year, she received an email saying Twyford would consider the case - and then the months went by.

In that time, her family and her husband's family fled to Iran where an estimated 780,000 Afghans were seeking refuge. Many of those most at risk are, like her and her husband, of the persecuted Hazara ethnic minority.

The Herald on Sunday became involved in early September when the woman and her husband made contact concerned that her parents - and his, who had also fled - had limited time left in which they could legally stay in Iran and nothing had been heard from the Minister.

Even as the countdown turn from months to weeks, there appeared to be steps taking place which could have happened months earlier. After the Herald on Sunday inquired, Twyford's office said it was waiting for more information from the family - and then emailed their lawyer to ask for it.

There were 21 NZDF provincial reconstruction team deployments to Bamiyan in Afghanistan which ended in 2013. Photo / Supplied

The email arrived while their lawyer was away and a week passed with no sign of an attempt to contact the person whose name was on the automated "out of office" reply message. When the Herald on Sunday asked about this, a spokesman for Twyford said: "We have no further comment to provide at this time."

An Official Information Act request was made with support from the family to see how quickly Twyford's office had worked on the case with the law's "urgency" provision cited because time was running out.

Despite the request being made with "urgency", the standard maximum of 20 working days arrived with an extension letter saying another 14 working days would be required to provide the information. A complaint has been lodged with the Chief Ombudsman over the delay.

That will put the potential arrival of critical information beyond the point where her family's legal right to be in Iran expires, making them subject to deportation. Iranian authorities run regular buses to the border where exiles are met by Taliban soldiers.

Ten days ago, she was told that Twyford was not granting a visa that would allow her parents and siblings to travel to New Zealand. She was not given a reason and the Herald on Sunday was told by Twyford's office: "Sorry, the Minister does not comment on individual cases."

The decision not to grant a visa devastated the woman.

"All that weekend I was upset and I couldn't tell my parents what has happened."

When she eventually told her parents, her mother broke down crying and could not stop.

"I cannot sleep. I am always thinking about my family."

Her husband had attempted to console her, she said, saying it would be okay. "But I say, 'how do you know?'."

A spokesman for Twyford said almost 1600 Afghans had been approved a critical purpose visa to travel to New Zealand which included about 200 visas for "Afghan human rights defenders, such as activists, judges, journalists, LGBTQI, NGO workers, and politicians".

Those 1400 who had arrived so far had been the focus of "intensive support for resettlement", he said. New Zealand had also spent $12 million on humanitarian support.

The spokesman said: "The Government's focus is currently on ensuring all the resettled Afghans are sufficiently supported as they settle in New Zealand."