Amnesty International responds to Oceanic Viking developments
In relation to developments in the negotiations between the Australian Government and the Sri Lankan asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking, including the disembarkation of 22 people from that vessel, Dr Graham Thom, Refugee Coordinator for Amnesty International Australia said:
“While Amnesty International supports positive outcomes for all 78 asylum seekers who have spent weeks on the Oceanic Viking, including permanent resettlement for those who are found to be refugees, the organisation has significant concerns with the ad hoc manner in which the matter is being treated.
“Amnesty International still believes that Australia, as a signatory to the UN Convention on Refugees, should have brought all 78 asylum seekers to Australia for processing. Although the individuals were rescued in international waters, Australia, as a signatory country, has an international obligation to offer protection to people fleeing persecution. Once these people boarded the Oceanic Viking they came under Australian control, and as such are Australia’s responsibility.
“Australia currently has two programs for accepting refugees - the onshore program, under which asylum seekers are processed in Australian territory by the Department of Immigration, and the offshore program, under which refugees are referred by UNHCR to Australia for permanent resettlement.
“The question must be asked as to what message the current situation is sending about Australia’s onshore and offshore programs. The programs serve separate purposes and should not be confused.
“The UNHCR in Indonesia, as in other countries, recommends refugees for resettlement according to their own independent assessment as to who has the greatest need for this form of protection. This program is not interchangeable with the international obligations Australia has to offer asylum to refugees under our onshore program.
“The asylum seekers on board the Oceanic Viking, as well as those who have already disembarked, should always have been processed in Australia under the onshore program.
“Amnesty International maintains its opposition to the policy of excision. The organisation believes that, in order for Australia to meet its international obligations, all people who seek asylum in Australia should be brought to the mainland to have their claims assessed. As a matter of priority, the Government should immediately remove all children and families from the island and house them appropriately on the mainland.”
Comments
James Fehon | Posted on 24 November 2009, 09:33AM | Report comment
I don’t like this talk of invasion, we’ve established already that boat arrivals made up around only 206 of the some 2,400 on-shore arrivals last year AND that increases in numbers of asylum seekers is due to Push factors ( i.e. wars, violence, persecution) not domestic policy. When the intent is to seek refuge, I don’t see how language such as invasion is in any way helpful, if not simply disingenuous.
We have an obligation to protect, the numbers are small and the argument that we’ll experience a flood if we show compassion simply has no sound basis. I’m sorry that to you it feels like an invasion, but I’d be happy to find some of these people’s stories so you can see what real invasions on a persons life might look like.
Andrew J S | Posted on 24 November 2009, 09:24AM | Report comment
The 45th boat heading our way was intercepted yesterday - that is more than a boat per week this year. Given they will all have ample access to welfare and family reunion when do we concede that we are indeed being invaded and that we have lost any sense of orderly immigration? I am sure this just makes you all feel warm and fuzzy inside given we have vast desserts in need of population (how I don’t know) but there is a tipping point where the whole thing will become utterly unsustainable and I think that tipping point has already been breached. Why is it not legitimate to fear over a boat a week invading our shores? it looks like an invasion and feels like an invasion - why do you call it something else? How many more will it take?
Norman Hunter | Posted on 24 November 2009, 07:43AM | Report comment
Continuing on the cost of processing asylum seekers: I don’t know if Xmas Island D/Centre is airconditioned, but most objective accounts of what it’s like suggest it’s hardly the Indian Ocean Hilton. Surely we can do better than the old Baxter/Woomera desert gulags where people sweltered in 46 degree heat and went slowly crazy?
Also, as I understand it, asylum seekers get no more and no less than normal government benefits. If they were on the mainland, they could get a job in the community (not available on an island with 1000 population) and wouldn’t even need those benefits.
And don’t tell me they’d disappear. These are people who have a vested interest in sticking around to normalise their status and get proper documents. The average visa-ovestaying backpacker is a bigger flight risk.
Norman Hunter | Posted on 24 November 2009, 07:31AM | Report comment
Andrew JS, comment 92: I’m glad you raised the cost of processing asylum seekers.
Write to your MP. If he/she is a Liberal, ask why the Howard gov’t spent a billion dollars (yes, billion with a B) on the Nauru disaster, to process 1700 poor saps, most of whom finished up living here anyway. Do the maths. I make that $588,235 each. You could’ve bought each refugee a flat in Brisbane for that amount. Then ask why they spent $400 million on constructing Xmas Island, when a similar facility on the mainland would cost a quarter of that.
If your MP is Labor, ask why they continue to use Xmas Island, which haemorrages your tax dollar simply because of where it is. Ask why asylum seekers, after the essential health, ASIO and ID checks, can’t work in the community and pay tax while awaiting assessment.
Your (and my) tax dollar relentlessly squandered by both parties for nothing more than political posturing.
Stephanie Cornwall | Posted on 24 November 2009, 06:55AM | Report comment
Mr Ready, your admirable concern for the rights of the homeless seems to have a lot in common with Amnesty’s “Demand Dignity” campaign.
Take a look at http://www.amnesty.org.au/poverty/comments/17142/ then go to the pdf file at http://www.amnestyusa.org/escr/report/report.pdf and do a search for the word “homeless”.
Marilyn | Posted on 24 November 2009, 12:57AM | Report comment
The Humanitarian Program has two important functions:
•It fulfils our international obligations by offering protection to people already in Australia who are found to be refugees according to the Refugees Convention (known as the onshore protection/asylum component)
•It expresses our commitment to refugee protection by going beyond these obligations and offering resettlement to people overseas for whom this is the most appropriate option (known as the offshore resettlement component).
Marilyn | Posted on 24 November 2009, 12:48AM | Report comment
For pete’s sake David. Last year 2378 onshore refugee visas were granted. Only 206 of them to “boat people”.
That means all the rest were given to people who flew here, they are not expected to wait for a generation for a place.
They get here, they apply, they are accepted or not.
How people travel and who they pay is totally irrelevant to anything.
Andrew J S | Posted on 23 November 2009, 11:53PM | Report comment
Norman, re comment 84 - yes there is so much greed and waste in our society. Perhaps we should give the asylum seekers non air conditioned shared ultra basic accomodation without television, telephones and internet, and no sporting equipment either. Money saved could be spent speeding up the determination of asylum status. if they end up being refugees they can then get the newstart allowance - and nothing else - and move into the wider community and take their chances with our unemployed on an equal footing. does this seem fairer to you? or is it greed that makes them demand more than everyone else?
Norman Hunter | Posted on 23 November 2009, 11:23PM | Report comment
David, comment 89: I agree it seems, on the face of it, that those who can afford to pay smugglers are the wealthy and privileged. But most of them say the fee they paid was every last dollar they had (no matter how much that was).
And we rarely hear complaints about those who can afford airfares and front at our airports. Some of them have paid professional forgers to make passports and visas.
Even the ones the government picks for its offshore programme often have more $$ and other resources than others. If we always took the neediest and most deserving, I’d agree queue-jumping was a problem, but the whole process is so random, and so systematically biased anyway, that a few boat people hardly make it tangibly worse.
Norman Hunter | Posted on 23 November 2009, 11:16PM | Report comment
David, you’re right, paying people smugglers is an ugly business, and sailing on leaky boats does endanger kids’ lives. It would be better if it didn’t happen.
But academic researchers who have interviewed refugees in both Indonesia and Australia report that, almost without exception, they all say they HATED the idea of getting on those boats. To them, the boats were always Plan Z, a last resort.
That’s why TPVs (the policy Howard claimed had “stopped the boats”) actually made so many women and children get on boats - and drown.
It’s a vile business, and we ought to do our best to stop it, but if, despite our efforts, some few do arrive (and they will) it seems pointless to punish them for expressing the depths of their desperation.
David Ready | Posted on 23 November 2009, 11:11PM | Report comment
Norman Hunter; I guess the use of the term “queue-jumper” is more colloquial, to describe those short-circuiting “the process” ahead of those others who can’t afford to pay people smugglers.
Norman Hunter | Posted on 23 November 2009, 11:08PM | Report comment
On queue-jumping again: the Australian government, in its offshore resettlement programme, doesn’t necessarily select the people who have been waiting longest. It picks the ones it wants, the ones it feels it can resettle the easiest.
When people arrive here under the offshore humanitarian programme, we wouldn’t even know how near the head of the queue they were.
That’s partially because the total of 42 million (UNHCR’s “people of concern” of all kinds) is too vast to to address as a coherent “queue” or classify by position.
But it’s also partly because, despite the constant politicians’ rhetoric, the Australian government doesn’t really care about a queue.
Hypocritical, eh? Nope. Just realistic.
David Ready | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:59PM | Report comment
Norman Hunter; We seem to be in agreement except for one point, and that’s simply the question of the “boat people”, and how they are processed.
Obviously I am against the way they get here, the queue jumping, the payment of people smugglers, the putting in danger the lives of their wives and children.
Fred Nile was talking the other day about hiring a boat and going over to Indonesia to pickup a few Christian refugees who have been languishing and living under persecution for years. I’d throw in $50000 for that cause.
Norman Hunter | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:52PM | Report comment
David Ready, re queue-jumpers. When we queue (say, at a crowded bar) we assume the queue exists and we can safely find it, that no-one will shoot at us, rape us, or ethnically cleanse us while we wait, that no bribe will be necessary, and that if we wait patiently we will soon get our beer.
None of these neat, orderly assumptions apply in the badlands of refugee world, which is more like a shambolic lottery than a queue. You can wait a decade, in squalid and dangerous conditions, and still not get your turn. Most Australians would last about a week before seeking an alternative way to rebuild their shattered lives and give their children a chance in life.
Besides, isn’t it a bit ironic for us to complain of queue-jumping in a country where people are so hopeless at queueing that supermarket delicatessen counters have to install ticket dispensing machines?
Norman Hunter | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:46PM | Report comment
David Ready, re comment 84. You’re right, our own homeless do deserve a bed, and no-one should wait 12 years for public housing. But resettling a few refugees isn’t preventing us from solving those problems.
We could have used the billions spent on needlessly expensive detention centres. We could have taken some of the bonuses corporate fat cats get while share values plummet on their watch. We could cut down on politicians’ overseas “fact-finding” tours.
Then we might be able to help a few extra refugees AND our own homeless. I don’t see why it has to be an either/or, when there’s so much waste and greed in our society.
David Ready | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:31PM | Report comment
Norman Hunter; You overlook the fact that these boat people are getting preference over those who have been classed as “asylum seekers” and have been waiting in offshore centres for years on end. I don’t think any of us are against taking in refugees, or asylum seekers. What I am against are people jumping the queue at the expense of those who have been waiting and don’t have the means to pay a people smuggler to get here.
Also, with governments in Australia, at all levels, no longer building an significant infrastructure, to support the basics; water, power, road, rail, health etc etc we can’t support who are already here, let alone bringing more and more immigrants in.
I’m happy with the 13200 asylum seeker/refugee resettlements per annum. Until we can support our own, that number should be left as is.
How dare we expect a pensioner to be on the public housing list in NSW for 12 years plus. How dare we not be able to give an old man in Perth a bed for the night.
Peter Edwards | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:29PM | Report comment
Norman Hunter—- You seem to have missed the Seychelles and Madagascar, both of whom are signatories that can start the process of UNHCR resettlement?
David Ready | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:17PM | Report comment
Sandy Beach; Focusing on your post #75.
Australia’s official policy on multiculturalism, called United in Diversity is actually a very very good document, (thanks to John Howard & Philip Ruddock).
The whole policy is summed up in 4 short points. The most significant and important one being point 2, “Respect for each person – subject to the law, all Australians have the right to express their own culture and beliefs and have a reciprocal obligation to respect the right of others to do the same”
So next time you hear of a shopping centre, or a pre-school which refuses to celebrate Christmas, or sing Christmas carols, or tells you Australians don’t have a culture, give them a copy of the document from the Federal Department of Immigration & Citizenship, or do a Google search on united in diversity site:.au and it’s the first listing which comes up. It’s a PDF and only 12 pages.
David Ready | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:08PM | Report comment
Sandy Beach; Everything you say can’t be argued with. You are correct on all counts especially with your statement about Australians already being overburdened. And thanks to KRudd’s Carbon Tax, we are about to be overburdened even more. We are being sold out by our own, be it by those in power or those in the community on the left. Roll on the treason trials.
I fear for our future and I fear for our democracy. Few politicians from either side have seen the text of the Carbon Tax, and probably won’t until Wednesday, and KRudd wants it all passed through both houses by the end of the week. Sheesh! The greatest burden of all times, a tax even bigger than the GST, is being rushed through, and imposed on us so that KRudd can look sexy in Copenhagen.
It’s no wonder we have a boat people problem.
Norman Hunter | Posted on 23 November 2009, 10:06PM | Report comment
Sandy Beach, comment 78, the cost of resettling isn’t huge when taken as a percentage of our entire immigration spend. If we’d taken the entire 12,000 boat people who arrived during the 12 Howard years it would have increased our total immigration by 0.6%.
Most analyses show immigrants as a net economic gain in the long run, not a cost.
We didn’t need to waste $400 million on Xmas Island when we could have built the same on the mainland 75% cheaper.
We didn’t need to waste a billion $$ on the so-called Pacific Solution.
And OK, it may be UN’s fault for prolonging the war (debatable, but possible). Why punish the victims for something they didn’t cause? When you see a car crash, who do you call first, the ambulance or the insurance assessor?