Dear asylum seekers…
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10 Comments
What was Rudd saying about not doing any deals with the asylum seekers? I think Rudd needs to buy some new hats, he has spoken a hole through is last set.
I’m going to hold my breath until Kevin Rudd gives me a million dollars.
Hopefully they translated it before giving it to them..
Don’t be such pathetic snivellers. Let’s look instead at why they don’t actually trust the words of Australian embassy officials.
1. It was under Ruddock that the rounding up of refugee claimants was started with the promise that if they go to the UNHCR and register they could come to Australia. The Afghans and Iraqis we sent back in 2001 have only just been accepted after 8 years of illegal incarceration in a jail supported and funded by Australia by paying off a mercenary organisation who provide nothing but steal our funds.
2. It would appear this group fell for the yarn years ago and have lost all their money, their legal rights, their right to work, the rights of their kids to go to school ever, more and more years of waiting - remember Australia is paying to keep them illegally in Indonesia and yet last year we only accepted 35 from our illegal jails.
3. As 37 of them are already refugees we have no right in the world to detain them, tell them where to go, who they can live with or anything else and we certainly have no right to lock them up in a prison where Afghan babies are behind razor wire and bars and are beaten to a pulp by guards paid for by us.
4. What went wrong here is actually not Rudd’s fault in the first instance - the rescue was fine. It was the assumption that the people had sailed direct from Sri Lanka and had not been assessed that was wrong and should have been corrected by the crew on the Viking. Someone lied, that’s what went wrong. I applaud the government for rescuing refugees instead of letting them drown.
5. Rudd should have simply had the ambassador on the docks with papers for the already accepted refugees to apply to come here, or with bridging visas to enter.
6. With our manipulations we have made the refugees stateless, unable to apply to any other country and in limbo in a nation that does not accept or recognise refugees.
7. In short it was always Australia in the wrong here, not the refugees.
Shepherdmarilyn, almost all the Afghan asylum seekers ended up in Australia or New Zealand. You have an incredible capacity to distort the situation.
We should ideally not be accepting any asylum seekers who come via boat. Those granted asylum on Christmas Island should be resettled in other countries in exchange for those accepted as refugees in other countries. If they choose to circumvent the normal refugee channels then they should have NO say in where they are resettled.
The “37 …already accepted as refugees” have no right to remain on the Oceanic Viking. Their behaviour is disgraceful. The have forfeited the right to settlement in Australia.
If Indonesia will not allow them to be forcibly removed, we should negotiate with Sri Lanka to allow their safe repatriation to that country and guarantees of safe treatment there. They should then be offered the choice: get off in Indonesia or be returned to Sri Lanka.
Australia carries far less culpability on this issue than Sri Lanka, which made them refugees; Indonesia, which refused to honour its rescue at sea obligations, so endangering future rescues; and the refugees themselves, who have sought to blackmail our government and also compromised future sea rescues.
Few ship captains will bother diverting for sea rescues in the Indonesian rescue zone.
Bruce don’t talk utter twaddle. The rules state that signatory countries provide refuge to those who are owed our protection.
You idea is to play pass the bloody parcel all over the frigging world and we do enough of that already.
And the 37 on the Oceanic Viking have broken no law, it is Australia who has broken the laws of refoulement by sending them to a place that is dangerous to them.
If you can’t learn anything about the law how about just shutting up?
And Indonesia has no ability to rescue anyone from international waters, we do. It is our ship, who the hell are we to invade Indonesia in this way?
You are so arse about it is almost hysterical if it wasn’t so serious.
@Jean - It has been over four hours, hope you have received your money or I fear for your well being.
I am also a tad concerned that Sri Lankan boat people (Tamils? supposedly the bottom of the cast system) have out manoeuvered our best political minds. Kev and the gang have come up with a suburban leaflet drop, advertising an unmissable offer. Perhaps they should have included “10c a litre off petrol” vouchers and the latest ALDI catalogue to entice them further.
Let them in Kev they beat ya fair and square.
the whole episode has been a dogs breakfast and butter fingers Rudd has lost alot of credibility in the process.
Where’s the bit about being checked out by Sri Lankan police for fugitive status? Is that included in the UNHCR processing?
Shepherdmarilyn, I’ll refrain from the hysterical ad hominem arguments you appear to relish in. It seems to be the recourse of people with no substantial arguments to make.
The various international regulations relating to rescue at sea and refugees require that each state take responsibility for people rescued in that state’s area of responsibility:
“The government responsible for the SAR region in which survivors were recovered is responsible for providing a place of safety or ensuring that such a place of safety is provided.”
http://www.marisec.org/rescueatsea.pdf
These refugees were rescued in Indonesia’s area of responsibility. The “Law of the Sea” applies to Indonesia as much as any other nation. the refugees are now in a “place of safety” as defined under the law. Indonesia is not meeting its obligations here.
The primary reason they are refugees in the first place is due to a civil war in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government is not meeting its obligations here. The Australian government certainly can seek to change this. It is much better that the refugees be peacefully resettled in Sri Lanka, or would your rather see all 2 million Tamils forced to flee.
The refugees are refusing to disembark from the Oceanic Viking. I have no idea what the maritime equivalent of trespass is, but the sea laws say, “…States [are to] co-ordinate and co-operate to ensure that masters of ships providing assistance by embarking persons in distress at sea are released from their obligations with minimum further deviation from the ship’s intended voyage…”
These laws only work if ALL parties play their role. This is a P&O owned vessel under Australian government contract. Captains of vessels without that flexibility will be giving serious thought to ignoring distress calls in Indonesia’s area of responsibility. This is a real problem, not “twaddle”.
I note your solution is simply to censor anyone who disagrees with you:
“If you can’t learn anything about the law how about just shutting up?”
There is a real “pull” factor that draws economic migrants as well as genuine refugees (not just here, but elsewhere). Genuine refugees will be less concerned where they are resettled. They will simply be happy to be alive, fed, free from persecution and reasonably accommodated. I’m not advocating we take fewer refugees - more would be appropriate - but an effective block to economic migrants and people smugglers would be resettle those that “jump the queue” - including arrivals by air - somewhere else.