Aussie parliament condemns Malaysia refugee deal (AP)

CANBERRA, Australia – Prime Minister Julia Gillard said her government will forge ahead with a proposed refugee swap deal with Malaysia despite the Australian parliament condemning the policy in a rare show of defiance Thursday.

Australia wants to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in return for Australia resettling 4,000 registered refugees from among the 93,000 languishing in that Southeast Asian nation, which has not signed the U.N. Convention on Refugees and has been criticized for their harsh treatment.

The aim is to deter asylum seekers from coming to Australia by boat.

A motion condemning the policy was passed by the House of Representatives with the support of two key lawmakers whose support Gillard's Labor Party relies on to stay in power. The Senate passed the same motion in May.

The Greens party lawmaker Adam Bandt, who proposed the motion Thursday, said it is the first time in the 110-year history of Australia's federal parliament that both chambers have condemned a government policy. That claim could not be immediately verified Thursday.

But while embarrassing for the government, the motion does not force the government to change it plans.

Gillard's government commands a single-seat majority in the House of Representatives with the support of Bandt and three independent lawmakers. But her fragile government does not need to pass laws to implement the deal with Malaysia so does not need the parliament's endorsement of the plan.

Gillard said the policy was necessary to stop an increasing number of asylum seekers from paying people smugglers to bring them by boat from transit points in Malaysia and Indonesia.

"I intend pursuing the discussions of the Malaysia agreement to finality and then I intend to implement it because I intend to break the business model of the people smugglers," she told Parliament.

The plan, first announced last month, has been criticized by rights advocates including the U.N. human rights commissioner.

The government has promised that the deal will have the endorsement of the U.N. refugee agency UNHRC.

Australia has sent a delegation to Geneva to discuss details of the plan with UNHCR officials.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen played down media suggestions that the visit could indicate that UNHCR support for the deal is collapsing.

"It's singularly unsurprising that there might be a meeting in Geneva as well as a meeting in Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere as we sort out finer details," Bowen told Sky News television on Thursday.

Yahoo! News

Australia assures UN on Malaysia plan (AFP)

SYDNEY (AFP) – Australia vowed Saturday to work closely with the United Nations to ensure unaccompanied asylum seeker children sent to Malaysia were protected after the world body withdrew support for the scheme.

The UN's refugee agency UNHCR criticised Canberra's plan to send 800 boatpeople to Malaysia after it emerged that the group would include lone children, saying it breached safeguards required for vulnerable groups.

The plan, under which Australia will accept 4,000 registered refugees from the Southeast Asian nation, has drawn heavy criticism from human rights advocates including Amnesty International and the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF.

Activists argue that Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN refugee convention and say asylum seekers could be mistreated there.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the government would work closely with the UN to ensure processes were in place to protect the children, some of whom were girls as young as 12, but vowed to push ahead with the controversial plan.

"(The UNHCR) indicate that they want to see protections in place for vulnerable unaccompanied minors, and I agree with them," Bowen told reporters.

"They also say that it shouldn?t be difficult and would not be difficult to incorporate those, and I agree with them."

"We?ve been in close consultation and discussions with them and we?ll continue to do that. We?re all on the same page," he added.

Bowen said the "operational detail" about how to best protect individuals -- to be decided on a "case by case basis" -- was yet to be ironed out, but anyone considered vulnerable would be afforded "particular care" under the plan.

"We will consider, in those cases, if it is appropriate to transfer those people to Malaysia or to make other arrangements, and if they are transferred to Malaysia, what care and support needs to be put in place," he said.

"We?re in discussions with other countries around the region as well, and there would be options as to how to deal with these issues."

Bowen urged against a blanket rule excluding unaccompanied minors from the swap.

"It sends a message to people smugglers and asylum seekers that the way to get re-settlement to Australia is to send children who would then be accepted and then allow those children to sponsor the rest of the family," Bowen said.

The 18,000 refugee children currently living in Malaysia would be "heavily represented" in the 4,000 accepted by Australia, he added.

UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards said in Geneva Friday that the agency was "not able to lend our support to the text as it currently stands because of the absence of the operating protection safeguards we have been calling for".

"UNHCR has always stipulated that one of our specific requirements with regard to the transfers is that protection safeguards are in place to protect vulnerable groups, especially unaccompanied children," he added.

Refugees are a sensitive issue in Australia, where a record 6,900 illegal immigrants arrived by boat in 2010, mostly on rickety vessels from Indonesia and usually hailing from strife-torn Iraq, Afghanistan or Sri Lanka.

Canberra's plan to ship arrivals to Malaysia has been likened by some commentators to the previous government's "Pacific Solution" -- under which boatpeople were held on remote Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus island.

Branded "inhumane" by human rights groups, the harsh policy was repealed by Prime Minister Julia Gillard's centre-left Labor Party in 2007.

Yahoo! News

Free Malaysia Today Blog Latest Malaysia News

Comments 0

Free Malaysia Today aims to give readers news that is different from the rest of the pack. Our goal is to get hold of truth and drag it out for all to see. In pursuit of truth, we spare no effort to get our facts right, our acts correct, our mission going.

We sense there is a yearning for reliable information that is sorely lacking in the traditional media outlets. People become restless when momentous events in the country do not get reported truthfully. Or when the flow is all one way. That’s why today they turn to other sources to fill the gap.

The gap is huge. Thus, we feel Free Malaysia Today can come in and bridge the great divide. For this purpose, we have assembled an experienced and dedicated team whose task is get down to the ground and listen to the voice of the people. And tell the story as it is to the world at large.

Though largely a news portal on politics, we realise it is only one aspect of life. So, we have other fields of interest to titillate and inform the mind. In short, we give variety and balance.

View the Original article