Confusion and disarray

“We don’t know what Scott Morrison is doing,” the refugee said. “Sometimes he gives us [Temporary Protection Visas] and sometimes he deals us [to] Cambodia.”

A senior ruling Cambodian People’s Party official, Chheang Vun, on Thursday said Australia was “bored” of accepting refugees.

If the pilot is considered a success, Morrison said there would be “no cap” on the number of refugees arriving in Cambodia – a country ranked as second only to North Korea in East Asia in terms of public sector corruption last year and behind only Iran and Afghanistan in terms of susceptibility to money laundering.

Refugees are now doubly devastated to learn that not only are they ineligible to be considered for TPVs, but that they are to be shipped out yet again … to a new place characterised by harsh conditions and without any clarity about their future.”

Morrisson’s preping the refugees on a Voluntary Decision

“We are living in a camp in the jungle. This is where they ‘resettled’ us. This is no place to live. If we are refugees why are we not living in [the] community? We have no neighbours here. Our ‘neighbours’, our ‘relatives’ are mosquitoes and flies and dogs,” they said in a statement at the time.

Marc Isaacs, who has spent a considerable amount of time with the refugees, describes the camp’s conditions as “purposefully underprepared” in his book, The Undesirables. He claims that the shoddy conditions played a part in Australia’s “No Advantage” policy, which, along with the Abbott administration’s “Sovereign Borders” policy, seeks to deter asylum seekers, who arrive on overcrowded boats in Australia’s territorial waters, by processing them in Pacific island detention centres run by private security firms with a history of abuse.

“Cambodia – one of the poorest countries in our region with one of the worst human rights records – is a completely unsuitable place to resettle refugees. It’s a country that can barely meet the needs of its own population, let alone the basic needs of refugees,” he added.

“You know, we are [the Australian governments’] animals. In the words of Scott Morrison, he wants to sell us – sometimes to one country, sometimes to another country. But no one is ready to [welcome] us,” the Pakistani refugee on Nauru said. “In our country [the] Taliban can come kill us; they will cut my throat and I will die quickly. But Australia [is] killing us day by day. We don’t know about Cambodia, but we need to [escape] this torture.”