Refugee ‘solution’ shames the region
The champagne has long been drunk, the ink has long been dry and the cheque, presumably, has long been cashed: on Thursday, the first of Australia’s rejected asylum seekers arrived in Cambodia. Knowing they would never be given a home down under and facing the prospect of indefinite detention on the island nation of Nauru, they accepted the sales pitch of a chance at a new life. They were taken from Darwin to Phnom Penh via Kuala Lumpur on a Malaysia Airlines flight, then through the VIP terminal to the villa-style accommodation established by the UN’s International Organisation of Migration. Each will get nearly 400,000 baht, and help assimilating and finding employment. After years of discussion and nine months since an infamous press conference was sealed with a champagne toast, the controversial, multimillion-dollar deal between Australia and Cambodia had finally been realised.
Four people took up the offer. Two Iranian men, one Iranian woman and a Rohingya man from Myanmar are ensconced in UN housing, and reportedly in good spirits as they settle in. But that only four people, from 677 in detention on Nauru, were willing to take part in the 1.4 billion baht programme highlights the depths to which the current Australian government will sink in order to fulfil its mantra of stopping the boats. The Cambodia Solution, as it is known, is clearly anything but.
The Abbott government painted what The Independent called “an absurdly rosy picture of life in Cambodia” in promotional material distributed on Nauru. “It calls the country safe, diverse and democratic, with high-quality health care and almost no violent crime,” the newspaper reported. “The sheet makes no mention of poverty, corruption, human rights abuses or sky-high unemployment.”
Others have pointed out the absurdity of a regional power, the world’s 12th-largest economy, turning to a country with an appalling human rights record as a solution. Predictably, Human Rights Watch deputy director for Asia Phil Robertson has not minced words. “Australia is basically paying blood money to a much poorer, less developed state with a shoddy record of refugee protection to take people that Canberra doesn’t want,” he told AP. “When they get there, the refugees will find huge hurdles to integrate, jobs that are few and far between, and a resentful local population wondering why this group should get a time-limited year of Australian assistance when ordinary Cambodians do not.”