Australia on shaky ground over refugees
Australia's High Commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer, had the gall to tell the BBC World News that Australia was correct to hold refugees arriving by boat in detention centres on the Pacific island of Nauru and on Manus island off Papua and New Guine
The former Australian foreign minister was commenting on the unfolding tragedy of shipwrecks and the death by drowning of hundreds of would-be migrants to Europe from Africa and the Middle East in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya..Now it transpires that Australia is trying to offload these unfortunate people on Cambodia under the dubious care of the unsavoury Hun Sen, hardly a shining beacon of democratic government with a proven respect for human rights.
As Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia of Human Rights Watch, commented, “Australia is basically paying blood money to a much poorer, less developed state with a shoddy record of refugee protection to take people that Canberra doesn’t want”.
Edward Duhigg
