After weeks of rumours and slip-ups from Ministers, this week the Australian Government struck a bizarre deal.
It was announced that our government has come to an agreement that Cambodia will take in a yet-to-be-decided number of refugees who are currently being detained by Australia on Nauru and Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.
The two countries haven’t released any details of the deal – such as
how much Australia is paying Cambodia to make this happen – but the
problems with the agreement are already obvious.
Cambodia's record
Richard Bennett, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director said on Friday,"Cambodia has only limited capacity to process asylum seeker claims and
is still struggling to respect and protect the rights of its own
citizens."
Even Australia has been heavily critical of Cambodia’s current human rights abuses.
A violent crackdown by security forces on striking workers and
activists in January 2014 saw at least four people killed, scores
injured and one boy left missing. Crackdowns have continued. Peaceful
assemblies by workers, land activists, human rights defenders and
opposition party supporters have been broken up or denied altogether.
After erecting barbed wire around the famous Freedom Park in Phnom
Penh, Cambodian security forces broke up peaceful May Day
demonstrations,
attacking and beating people including journalists, leaving at least five needing medical treatment for their injuries.
Australia reacted in the Senate and at the UN, expressing
condemnation of Cambodia’s "restrictions on freedom of assembly and
association, particularly recent disproportionate violence against
protesters, including detention without trial."
But Australia thinks this is a suitable new home for the refugees it refuses to protect.
Violent clash between protestors and municipal police in Freedom Park, Phnom Penh, Cambodia © Flickr / Luc ForsythAsylum seekers in Cambodia
In 2009, Cambodia violated the most fundamental principle of the
Refugee Convention by returning 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers,
including a pregnant woman and two children, to the People’s Republic of
China.
China publicly thanked Cambodia for their crime.
Complicit in cruelty
Amnesty International has been heavily critical of Australia’s asylumseeker policies. Australia’s offshore detention centres on Nauru and
Manus Island, PNG, are places of legal limbo, where asylum seekers,
including vulnerable
adults, disabled people, pregnant women and children, languish in uncertainty
in deliberately harsh, humiliating conditions.
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tangled up in Australia’s human rights abuses, which have received
widespread condemnation from the international community, including the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.
The detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island are a human rights
disaster. For Australia to then send refugees to Cambodia is like
building a third floor on a crumbling building.
Cambodia should get out while it still can.
And instead of digging itself deeper into disrepute, Australia should
be seeking humane, practical solutions to protecting asylum seekers and
refugees.
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