Tag: asylum seekers

Scott Morrison

Indonesian says Australia has created a burden after decision to cut resettlement intake of asylum seekers

Setting sun in Indonesia

Indonesia says Australia has burdened it with the responsibility of looking after thousands of refugees and asylum seekers, after the Federal Government decided to cut its resettlement intake.

Indonesia’s minister for law and human rights, Yasonna Laoly, said his country could only accommodate 2,000 asylum seekers and refugees.

Mr Laoly said it was a human rights issue and the decision placed a burden on Indonesia.

“It’s Australia’s right, but it becomes a burden for us,” Mr Laoly said.

On last month’s figures, there were 10,500 asylum seekers and refugees registered with the United Nations (UN) in Jakarta.

As Indonesia is not a signatory to the refugee convention, the UNHCR seeks to resettle them in countries like Australia.

Audio: Listen to George Roberts’ report (AM)

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop will not say whether she discussed the policy with her Indonesian counterpart at last weekend’s G20 summit but said Indonesian authorities were briefed on the plan.

“I spent quite some time with the new [Indonesian] foreign minister over the weekend in Brisbane at the G20,” she said.

“We spoke about a whole range of issues including the issue of border protection and asylum seekers policy and we agreed to work closely.

“The Indonesian authorities have been briefed in detail about this.”

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison announced on Tuesday Australia would cut the number of refugees it would resettle from Indonesia and would not accept anyone who had registered in Indonesia after July 1.

Mr Morrison described the decision on Wednesday as “taking the sugar off the table”.

“We’re trying to stop people thinking that it’s OK to come into Indonesia and use that as a waiting ground to get to Australia,” he said.

Mr Morrison said Indonesia, as a transit country, was used by smugglers.

“We’ve had great success in stopping people coming to Australia by boat and for most of that time over the past year, that has seen a significant reduction of people moving into Indonesia,” Mr Morrison said.

“In recent months, we’ve seen a change to that and that’s because people think they can transit and sit in Indonesia and use that as a place to gain access to Australia.”

Indonesia’s foreign ministry said it would monitor the impact of the decision and would consider taking measures to protect Indonesia’s interests.

The ministry’s spokesman did not say what those measures might be.

Changing Rules

Scott Morrison: barring resettlement from Indonesia is ‘taking the sugar off the table’. Morrison sends them back to face death. Now he expects them to stay and face death and be judged on Australian terms not UN as to their status.eath

Rohingya asylum seekers in Aceh, Indonesia, last year.

Immigration minister says measure will help Indonesia, which he calls a ‘transit country’ for asylum seekers

Australia is “taking the sugar off the table” by announcing that asylum seekers registered with the UNHCR in Indonesia will no longer be eligible for resettlement, Scott Morrison has said.

The immigration minister announced on Tuesday that asylum seekers who had registered with the agency on or after 1 July would not come to Australia.

“We’re taking the sugar off the table. We’re trying to stop people thinking they can go to Indonesia and wait around till they get to Australia. Indonesia is not a refugee generating country, it’s a transit country and it’s used by smugglers,” Morrison told ABC radio.

“This is designed to stop people flowing into Indonesia. It will help Indonesia.”

The measure will not reduce Australia’s overall annual refugee intake under its humanitarian program, which currently stands at 13,750. Of those, 11,000 are resettled from overseas. Morrison said the policy would encourage people to stay in countries of first asylum.

Morrison said Australia remained committed to the UN refugee convention, but said the international treaty had been “abused” by people smugglers who picked and chose destination countries.

“The refugee convention wasn’t set up so people can go forum shopping,” he said.

Morrison would not be drawn on whether the matter was discussed when the prime minister, Tony Abbott, met the new Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, at last weekend’s G20 conference. But he acknowledged that “the Indonesian government was fully appraised of this decision prior to it being made”.

Widodo was sworn in as president last month, and warned Australia that navy incursions into Indonesian waters during boat turnbacks would not be accepted, signalling a tougher approach to issues of sovereignty.

Labor has sought an urgent briefing on the matter from the immigration minister’s office and the UNHCR.

“Regional co-operation is critical to having a long-term sustainable solution to the issue of displaced people in south-east Asia. We simply cannot shirk our regional responsibility,” the opposition’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, said.

“Labor believes Australia has an obligation to be a generous and humane country and we need to be working co-operatively with our neighbours to tackle people smuggling.”

Marles said Labor was committed to raising Australia’s refugee intake to 20,000.

The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said barring resettlement from the UNHCR in Indonesia was “exactly the opposite” of what Australia should be doing.

“This flies in the face of any attempt to work with our regional neighbours to find a genuine solution, a genuine approach to asylum seekers and refugees,” she said.

She warned that the move would force asylum seekers to take drastic measures.

“I am very concerned that we will now see people take dangerous boat journeys, and perhaps in fact to places like New Zealand which is an even longer and more dangerous journey.”

Haneef Hussain, Indonesia

We are sending asylum seekers back to Indonesia so they can be . . . beaten

Haneef Hussain (image from smh.com.au)

In Haneef Hussain’s recent article on The AIMN he told us why he and other family members fled their native Pakistan, for Australia and a better life. In Pakistan their people constantly faced torture or murder. As we also reported, they were on the first asylum seeker boat intercepted and returned to Indonesia by the Abbott Government. Hussain has written to us again with this brief yet disturbing letter about his life in Indonesia.

I never accept persecution. I now live in Jakarta, Indonesia for waiting my refugee status. Many journalists are coming here and have met with me and other asylum seekers. I explain with truth and honestly what has happened with me and the others and what forced to us to go by boat to Australia or New Zealand.

After the smugglers see the articles about us we are threatened, beaten, and our money is stolen from us. Here there is no justice and nobody wants to hear us.

Last September 28, 2014 I told the SMH about my tragedy. Now the smugglers who beat me are searching for me again.

Why is everyone who reads our story so silent?

I have made requests to all humanitarian institutions but not one has responded. Now my life is not safe in Jakarta. If the smugglers catch me I will surely meet with an ‘accident’. They will do this because they have already threatened me before. They said; “Why have you told the news about us?”

Where can I go for justice? I want peace around the world.

Because someone heard me tell the media that I don’t want to die because of human smugglers, I continue to be threatened by these people. I could not lie to the media about what I have been witnessing.

Please look at the links to my stories.

Thanking you,

Hussain

Immigration Scott Morrison, SZSCA

The forbidding new test for prospective refugees By Michael Bradley : Immigration’s constant act of blocking asylum was never it’s charter.

SZSCA learned in late 2011 that the Taliban had identified him.

In 2012, an Afghan truckie facing a Taliban death threat was told he didn’t need a protection visa. The High Court yesterday said the decision was made in error, but with new laws on the way, that’s irrelevant, writes Michael Bradley.

The High Court yesterday dealt Scott Morrison yet another defeat in the ongoing battle over the rights of people seeking refugee status in Australia. But, again, the Minister for Immigration will lose neither sleep nor momentum as a result.

The drastic changes to our migration laws currently before Parliament will render the decision meaningless.

The unfortunate person in question, designated SZSCA, is an Afghan Hazara who had lived in Kabul. In 2011, he was employed as a truck driver on a route between Kabul and Jaghori. Mostly he transported construction materials. The Taliban targets this kind of cargo, because of its apparent connection to the Afghan government or foreign organisations.

SZSCA learned in late 2011 that the Taliban had identified him and was circulating a letter calling for him to be executed. He, understandably, fled the country. He arrived in Australia by boat in February 2012 and sought a protection visa. A delegate of then Labor minister Chris Bowen rejected his application, and this was upheld by the Refugee Review Tribunal. Following judgments in SZSCA’s favour in the Federal Circuit Court and Federal Court, the High Court found that the Tribunal’s decision was in error as it had failed to take into account the relevant considerations in determining whether SZSCA was entitled to protection under the Refugee Convention as enshrined in Australia’s Migration Act.

The Tribunal had accepted that SZSCA was justified in fearing that he’d be killed if he returned to driving a truck on his old route. However, it had concluded that he’d be safe if he stayed in Kabul and found employment there instead. Therefore, he was not at risk of persecution if he returned to Afghanistan and, consequently, he was not a refugee.

The globally adopted Convention definition of a “refugee” is that they are a person who, “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”.

The key element is the “well-founded fear” of persecution. Where that fear relates to one part of the person’s home country, but not all of it, then a test of reasonableness comes into play. It may be that a person doesn’t meet the definition of refugee because they could relocate within their country to avoid the problem, but the High Court confirmed that this is only the case where it is reasonable to expect them to do so. In SZSCA’s case, the minister and the Tribunal hadn’t considered this at all. What they’d decided was that it was practically possible for SZSCA to stay in Kabul and be safe, and that was enough. The High Court said they needed to consider all the circumstances and make a positive finding that it was reasonable to expect SZSCA to live in Kabul and not be a truckie anymore.

In a 2003 case, the High Court similarly found that the Tribunal was wrong to send a group of gay men back to Bangladesh on the basis that they wouldn’t be persecuted if they lived discreetly. The proper question was whether their fear of persecution was well-founded, not how they might avoid it.

So, good news for SZSCA, although practically it means he’s back before the Tribunal and it might well still decide that living in Kabul is good enough. More significantly, if the Migration Act is amended as the Government has proposed, then anyone in SZSCA’s position in the future will have no hope of success.

The Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014 makes many fundamental changes to our immigration laws. One of them goes directly to the question of who is a “refugee”.

The Bill will remove most references to the Refugee Convention from the Migration Act. It will replace the Convention definition of a “refugee” with a uniquely Australian definition.

Most relevantly, a person in SZSCA’s situation is currently a refugee entitled to protection if their well-founded fear of persecution is localised to a particular part of their country and it would be unreasonable to expect them to relocate to another part of the country where they do not have a real chance of persecution. The Bill replaces this test with a new one: if it is found that the person can safely and legally access the alternative “safe” area, then they are not a refugee. No question of reasonableness arises.

This is extremely bad news for prospective refugees, because there isn’t likely to be a country on Earth which doesn’t contain at least one small area where it’s safe and legal to be. That might be a desert, a mountain top or a Westfield shopping centre, but as long as you’re not likely to be persecuted there then you won’t be getting a protection visa in Australia.

This is an absolute abrogation of Australia’s international human rights obligations and takes us a lot further down the road towards the status of an impenetrable xenophobic fortress. Which is precisely the Government’s intent.

Economic benefit, Julian Burnside, Tasmania

Tasmania touted as humane, cost-effective, productive asylum seeker solution. The only resource this government sees is political.

Panorama of Hobart, Tasmania

Tasmania would become Australia’s asylum seeker processing centre, with newcomers living and working freely in the community, under a plan developed by local leaders and human rights activists.

The Tasmania Opportunity Leaders Summit in Launceston heard that the case for making the state an asylum seeker processing centre went beyond the natural security it afforded as an island.

Speakers, including human rights lawyer Julian Burnside QC, said Tasmania offered an alternative to the Federal Government’s Sovereign Borders policy, one that was more humane, better value for the Australian taxpayer and of benefit to the local economy.

It would deliver enormous economic benefit to the state in infrastructure spending, education and training and in business opportunities,

Dr David Strong

The proposal included allowing people to live and work in the community, receive Centrelink benefits and live where the Government determined their money would have the greatest benefit for the local economy.

Mr Burnside, who won this year’s Sydney Peace Prize, told the summit the Federal Government spent $5 billion a year on asylum seekers, and that Tasmania was a much more cost-effective option.

“If you can reduce that cost dramatically to one-tenth of what it is at the moment, and in the process avoid doing harm to frightened people and do some good for the Tasmanian economy, that seems a good thing all round,” he said.

Asylum seekers could boost Tasmanian economy

Human rights lawyer Julian Burnside QC Photo: Julian Burnside says asylum seekers should be seen as a resource, not a threat. (By Wendell Teodoro)

Mr Burnside told the summit that asylum seekers should be seen as a resource, not a threat.

“They would be bringing in to the community not only their courage and their initiative but also the income that they can earn,” he said.

He said there were some conditions that should be attached to any planned move to make Tasmania a refugee processing centre.

Asylum seekers would still be detained on arrival for one month only, for health and security screening.

Following that, Mr Burnside said further conditions needed to met under the plan.

These included:

  • The asylum seekers had to stay in touch with the Immigration Department;
  • They should be engaged in education, training and work; and
  • They must live in a region designated by the Government – for example, Tasmania.

A summit co-ordinator, Launceston paediatrician Dr David Strong, said the plan had the potential to be “the biggest, most far-reaching project in Tasmanian history”.

“It would deliver enormous economic benefit to the state in infrastructure spending, education and training and in business opportunities,” he said.

“It would further enhance Tasmania is the eyes of the nation and the world as a welcoming place that warmly embraces those seeking a better life.”

hypocrisy, Scott Morrison

The hypocrisy of Scott Morrison.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Qj2Lvz4gqo4

Immigration to pay

Asylum seekers win appeal over immigration department data breach

asylum seekers stock picture

A group of asylum seekers who took the immigration department to court over the exposure of their personal details in a major data breach have won a federal court appeal, and the immigration minister has been ordered to pay their costs.

In February the immigration department inadvertently exposed the personal details of thousands of asylum seekers in their care by disclosing their details on a file on its public website.

The breach sparked a wave of court actions from asylum seekers, but some had failed in an earlier bid in the federal circuit court to seek orders preventing their deportation and declarations that would require the data breach to be considered when their claims were being processed.

The progress of the cases has been confused because of two different federal circuit court judgments that took different views on how the cases should progress.

Appeals relating to both those matters were heard on Friday by a full bench of the federal court before justices Nye Perram, Jayne Jagot and John Griffiths.

Perram, with the agreement of Jagot and Griffiths, found that for at least two of the asylum seekers before Judge Rolf Driver the earlier decision “miscarried” and the matter sent back to the federal circuit court.

“It seems to me in these circumstances that the appeal should be allowed,” he said.

“The minister should be ordered to pay the costs of this court and the costs below.”

The immigration minister’s counsel also conceded during the hearing that there was no process in place to deal with the asylum seekers’ claims at the time a letter from the department secretary was sent out informing them of the breach.

The letter advised asylum seekers affected by the breach that the department would “assess any implications for you personally as part of its normal processes”.

Morrison’s counsel argued that a new bill before the parliament would put a clear process in place, but the bill has not been passed. On Friday Clive Palmer indicated he had some reservations about its contents.

In one of a series of sharp exchanges, Griffiths said: “So there were no normal processes in place at the time?”

The minister’s counsel responded: “They were in development.”

Griffiths observed: “They still haven’t been developed as of today.”

Perram remarked that the relevant provisions of the Migration Act and the circumstances of the case posed a number of difficulties, describing the act as “a wall of mirrors really”.

He later added: “I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland.”

The matter continues

Andrew Bolt

Why is Bolt calling Italians Fwits

Andrew Bolt abuses the Italian government for declaring asylum seekers legal. Dumb! dumb! dumb! He points to the stupidity of the Italians for allowing their  Navy to rescue two thirds of these economic wasters. E4.3mill a day cost to the tax payers of Italy for no return. At least ISIS sells the women and children it takes hostage. His complaints and accusations are a serious never ending howl,why? He’s paints the picture for us and the situation is daunting without a doubt. He makes no effort to empathise with the Italians. Why they have chosen this path other than

“The policy change, driven by a perverted mix of human decency and political correctness, was pure folly: it has acted as a green light to wannabe boat people.”

Implicitly he is crowing. His blog  is a look ‘at us piece’.The humanitarian government of Australia lead by the defender of the free and civilized world Tony Abbott with Scott Morrison  have solved the issue why can’t you. We’ll send you Scott and show you how it’s done. Like Tony ,Scott can lead the way as we are now an honorary members of NATO  and and after all Tony is a dual citizen. It doesn’t matter how far away you are you are truly in our hearts but only as tourists. Listen carefully.

  • Stop the boats!
  • Tow them back!
  • Off shore processing & detention centers in the harshest places and worst conditions.
  • Make it clear NO EU RESETTLEMENT
  • Contract third world country with a money loving government to resettle them.
  • Most important everything must be done in secret.
  •  Should there be a leak Deny Everything. Use Spin Doctors
  • Read Eichman’s Final Solution. Or go see World War Z and think of us.

Bolt doesn’t really give a shit about Italy he’s scaremongering to say. The Morrison way is the only way.

Maybe it’s time the the first world did something about foreign aid not just 5% of GDP. Really do something about poverty. Really do something about Health, Housing Education,Employment and Wealth . Globalisation has done wonders for China but has it helped Africa and the Middle East all we have done there is grabbed their resources. A cheap take take take is no longer good enough.

Andrew Bolt

BOLT IS SCUM, MALCOLM FRASER IS A LIBERAL, A HUMAN AND SO RIGHT

Bolt is Scum
Quote: “WHY have the Greens — and leftists such as former prime minister Malcolm Fraser — made Sri Lanka their favourite villain?  “Is it so they can now attack Prime Minister Tony Abbott as a criminal for sending back two boats with 200 [alleged] Tamils intercepted a week ago? ”
Basically Bolt is calling Christine Milne MP,  Malcolm Fraser, Retired PM, Chief Justice Alister Nicholson, his mates Steven Harper Canadian PM & his security, David Cameron British PM ,MI5  and a host of other heads of state uninformed liars for condemning  the Sri Lankan government’s record on Human Rights abuses.
Like the misinformed 97% of scientists of Climate Change the UN and the security services of a host of countries are in total error about the Sri Lankan government. There is no chance let alone 51% chance  that current lot of asylum seekers are being handed back like “Jews to the Nazis”.
If as Bolt says they are merely “alleged” Tamils why are they being handed to Sri Lanka anyway? That alone is criminal let alone giving their navy two vessels.
Bolt has been quoted saying his heart is in Aalsmere the small village of his forebears. Infamous for  it’s dark past having elected the most Nazi sympathizing council and mayor in Holland. After WW2 100’s of cases were brought to justice in the sweet little village of Aalsmere.