The Prime Minister’s language is evocative.
In 2013, as asylum-seeking ships appeared on the northern and western horizons of Australia almost every day, then Prime Minister Rudd stated that those who brought them were “absolute scum on earth” and should “rot in hell”.
“Our country has had enough of human smugglers exploiting asylum seekers and watching them drown on the high seas.”
Tony Abbott, the man who will succeed him, was elected with a naked promise to “stop the ship”. He also vowed, “We will take the necessary measures to ensure the security of our country and maintain this evil by unscrupulous means. Trade ceased”.
In the UK in 2021, after the brutal tragedy of 27 lives lost in the cold waters of the English Channel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is particularly familiar to Australians.
“This disaster highlights how dangerous it is to cross the English Channel in this way.
“And this also shows how important it is for us…to use all the power we can and spare no effort to destroy the commercial claims of human traffickers and gangs.”
Australia promotes itself globally as a country with solutions.
The interception and re-entry of ships, handling at sea, and indefinite detention, even for children, is a firm and unwavering policy.
But an examination of the facts of Australia’s asylum policy reveals a harmful price: legal, moral, economic, but most importantly, human.
Eight years, the equivalent of 5 billion pounds. Twelve people died, and thousands of lives were destroyed, destroyed and trapped. Australia’s asylum policy has hardly resolved.
The UK is publicly considering an “Australian-style” offshore processing system in which it assesses the legal obligation of asylum seekers to claim protection under the Refugee Convention-at least to claim-outsourced to somewhere overseas.
Gibraltar, Ascension Island, Papua New Guinea, Moldova, Rwanda: Britain’s list is getting longer and longer, the place is farther and farther, and more and more suspicious. The Falkland Islands have been proposed. Albania angrily rejected the proposal.
But Home Affairs Minister Kevin Foster admitted that no country is currently willing to set up offshore processing centers for people seeking asylum in the UK.
In Australia, offshore processing has not prevented the arrival of ships.
Australia announced in August 2012 that it would resume offshore processing of asylum seekers arriving by boat (those arriving by air are much larger and will not be sent offshore). The first group of asylum seekers was sent to the Pacific island of Nauru in September to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea in November of the same year.
this Government’s own data It is shown that 2013 was the first full year of maritime processing. 300 ships arrived in Australian waters, carrying 20,587 asylum seekers, which was the most ship arrival record in history.
In fact, so many ships arrived that the capacity of the two centers was overwhelmed within three months, and the government was forced to announce that some ships arrived and would stay ashore.
Madeleine Gleason, a senior researcher at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales, said: “Australia’s experience shows that offshore processing has not done what it is supposed to do, and it has not prevented asylum seekers from seeking asylum. Ship”.
“In the first 12 months, we have seen more and more people arrive in Australia by boat to seek asylum, which is more than at any time in history or since.”
In 2014, the number of ships arriving in Australia began to decrease with the implementation of mandatory ship interception, re-entry and recovery.
Most asylum seekers from Indonesia or Sri Lanka are forced to turn around by the Australian Navy-sometimes The captain was bribed by Australian officials go back. Others were dragged back out of Australian waters.Others are still there Put in the lifeboat Use enough fuel to reach the nearest island in Indonesia.
but Turnback raises legal issues Around refoulement-sending people back to harm.
Gleason believes that the return of the ship has “serious legal and humanitarian issues… In fact, we know that people are taken back to their country of origin only to escape again and be recognized as refugees elsewhere.”
“The legal and geographical environment in the United Kingdom is very different from the legal and geographical environment in Australia, so this viable option cannot be adopted there.”
The Australian government believes that this policy is a success.
Defense Secretary Peter Dutton said on Friday that the government has made “the difficult decision necessary to regain control of our sovereignty by protecting our borders and breaking the business model of human smugglers.”
George Brandis, Australian Ambassador to the UK and former Attorney General of the Abbott Government, Tell the Special Committee on the Interior of the House of Commons This year, the deterrence efforts in transit countries such as Indonesia, the return of sea vessels and offshore processing are a collective force: “a set of policies, working together, has the effect of driving population smugglers out of business.”
But Australia’s asylum policy has other major fundamental flaws.
Some of it is illegal: Australia’s largest offshore detention center on Manus Island was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea.this The Australian government was later ordered to pay 70 million Australian dollars [£35m] In compensation Those who are illegally detained by it.
The United Nations says that Australia’s system Violation of the Convention against Torture The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said that offshore indefinite detention is “Cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment“And it is illegal under international law.
This is dangerous: at least 12 people were killed in a concentration camp, Including being Killed by guards, pass through Medical negligence And by suicide.
In 2016, Nauru Archive The Guardian published an article exposing the detention system’s own reports of rape, sexual abuse, self-harm, and child abuse in overseas detention.
The psychiatrist assigned to the camp described the condition as “Inherent toxicity“, similar to “torture.”
It’s also very expensive: the Public Commission heard it cost Australia, conservatively speaking, A$1 billion [£540m] Run its offshore processing system for one year.
Currently, 107 refugees and asylum seekers are being held in Nauru, Australia’s only “durable” offshore processing island. Most people have been there for more than eight years.
Australian taxpayers spend US$358,646 (£193,400) per month on the island, nearly US$12,000 (£6500) per day, or US$4.3 million (£2,320,000) per person per year. Government’s own figures.
Kurdish-Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani was detained on Manus Island for more than seven years and was tortured, beaten and tortured. He was then granted a New Zealand visa, and New Zealand acknowledged his protection requirements. He saw his friends being killed, saw them go into madness, or gave up altogether.
“The Australian government has caused such serious harm to many people, and we have never heard from them,” he told the Guardian. “Even after being released from concentration camps, people who are still suffering, separated families and traumatized children.
“People think that if they commit such cruel behavior to the most vulnerable people, it will only harm refugees, but in reality it will undermine the basic principles of democracy and humanity. The Australian government has deliberately created a tragedy.”
