Photo: Contributor/IRIN.Hundreds of Sri Lankans took to boats to reach Australia in the first half of 2012
Source: IRIN
BANGKOK, 14 August 2012 (IRIN) - The Australian government’s recent
decision to transfer asylum seekers to Pacific islands to process their
applications will undermine efforts to find a solution to the region’s
asylum seekers and refugees, human right groups and activists warn.
“Policies like offshore processing will see refugees languish on [Papua
New Guinea’s] Nauru [Island] for years, and will not make refugees
safer, but rather undermine prospects for a genuine regional solution
for refugees,” Alex Pagliaro, refugee campaign coordinator in the
Melbourne office of Amnesty International, told IRIN.
The Refugee Council of Australia also warned that sending asylum seekers to the islands placed them at risk of human rights abuses.
On 28 June the Australian government invited a three-member expert panel
to propose recommendations to curb the flow of asylum seekers reaching
Australia by boat from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and elsewhere.
The panel recently released 22 recommendations
that include reopening the processing centres on Nauru and Manus
islands in Papua New Guinea - suspended in 2007 by the previous
government - and urge greater government cooperation with Indonesia to combat people smugglers.
“There are serious questions [as to] whether Nauru or Manus islands can
ensure the human rights of asylum seekers and refugees,” said Ian
Rantoul, a spokesman for the Sydney-based Australian Refugee Action
Coalition, who pointed out that neither island has the resources or the
capacity to process and care for asylum seekers, or those determined to
be refugees.
“Reintroducing offshore processing in places like Nauru is a terrible
step backwards for Australia's refugee policy,” said Pagliaro of Amnesty
International. “We do not believe that this approach will solve
anything. Instead, we know that it will leave vulnerable refugees
languishing in limbo for years.”
Jessie Taylor, a human right activist and lawyer based in Melbourne,
said, “The major problem with the proposal is that it is predicated on
people arriving by boat, and then being moved on to Nauru or Malaysia
after that. It does not give asylum seekers any incentive not to get on a
boat - only a disincentive in the form of a punishment, if and when
they do.”
Other recommendations include an immediate increase in Australia's
humanitarian intake of asylum seekers from 13,500 to 20,000 annually
with the possibility of reaching 27,000 within five years, a move
welcomed by refugee rights groups; restricting the ability of asylum
seekers to sponsor family members; and activation of the Malaysia
Solution, which is still under negotiation.
In July 2011 the Australian government signed a controversial deal to
transfer to Malaysia asylum seekers who reach Australia, in exchange for
refugees with official status from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in
Malaysia.
Under the proposed “Malaysia Solution”, which the Australian high court ruled against because Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, Australia was to exchange the next 800 boat migrants for 4,000 refugees in Malaysia, mostly Burmese.
The Australian government has announced its intention to seek improved
safeguards for asylum seekers from the Malaysian government.
NGOs that submitted recommendations to the expert panel say the
restrictions imposed on family reunions of migrants arriving by sea are
“inhumane”. Under the recommendations, soon to be enacted, reunions
could occur only in terms of the family reunion programme applying to
immigrants, which takes longer than the humanitarian programme.
“Separating people from their families as a matter of deterrence or punishment is ineffective,” said Taylor, the lawyer.
Head of the expert panel, former Australian Defence Force Chief Angus
Houston, defended the recommendations' fairness, as quoted in Australian media.
“We recommend a policy approach that is hard-headed, but not
hard-hearted. This is realistic, not idealistic. [It] is driven by a
sense of humanity as well as fairness.”
A 2012 study
published by the Australian parliament reported that in 2011-2012, 190
boats carrying 7,983 people had arrived in Australia by early July
2012. According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, some 5,800 people were being held in detention centres pending status review on 30 June 2012.
More than half of those people had been in detention for six months or longer, and more than two-thirds had been in detention for at least one year.