Rudd rebuked over ‘contentious’ refugee stance
April 14, 2010 09:48 am
Kevin Rudd’s suspension of refugee processing is legally
contentious and flies in the face of his ambition to have
The Prime Minister trumpeted the importance of international
law when it was politically advantageous but was quick to flout it under
election nerves, the
“This is probably the most repugnant refugee policy of any Western country that is a party to the international refugee convention. I know of no precedent of anything approaching a Western democracy doing anything as brutal to refugees as this,” Professor Bagaric said.
Mr Rudd is lobbying for an Australian seat on the UN Security Council, has considered a human rights charter and attacked the previous government for failing to sign up to the international Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
“Ostensibly, at least, the Rudd Government really covets and values international law,” Professor Bagaric said.
Last week, the government announced it would stall
processing for all asylum seekers from
The refugee organisation has since rejected Labor’s claims
that other countries had frozen asylum claims from
Over that period, 854 Afghans and 112 Sri Lankans were found
by the immigration department to be owed
Yesterday, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith said it was a matter for each country to announce its own refugee processing arrangements.
´´”A number of countries have introduced suspensions for the processing of Sri Lankan asylum seekers,” his spokeswoman said.
The decision to suspend processing was made using security information from government, multilateral agencies and non-governmental sources, she said.
“The bulk of this information is not publicly available,” she said.
A former diplomat posted to
“Rudd has a glass jaw,” he said. “He has been prepared to
trash his quest for the UN Security Council just to make sure he is re-elected.
The people in
The Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said the freeze did
not contravene
“It doesn’t diminish people’s rights in any way,” his spokeswoman said yesterday. “This is simply a suspension of the processing of their applications.”
Psychiatrist Jon Jureidini, who has worked with refugees for more than a decade, said delays would heighten anxiety among Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers.
“We know that one of the toxic factors for people in
detention under the previous regime was the uncertainty about their future,” he
said. “Once you build up a core of people who have spent a very long time in
detention, that seems to be a particularly dangerous situation.” – (The Age,