Tamil asylum seekers protest detention on boat at Merak seaport in Indonesia. Photo: Mast Irham/EPA

Timor-Leste and New Zealand public opinion is cool on a detention centre scheme designed to deter people smuggling.

Pacific Scoop
Report – By Adrian Hatwell

The Australian government’s proposal for a new regional processing centre to deal with asylum seekers arriving in the Pacific has drawn a chorus of opposition from within nations to be affected by the plan.

Australia’s Prime Minister Julia Gillard last month made public plans to develop a detention centre to detain and process refugee claimants away from Australia’s shores in a bid to deter people smuggling by boat.

Gillard named both Timor-Leste and New Zealand as countries considered fundamental to the Australian proposal but the plan has attracted strong criticism in all three nations.

Advocates for refugee rights in Australia say asylum seekers arriving by boat pose little problem for the country and the government has exaggerated the need for such a centre as a political strategy.

Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition, who has been campaigning for humanitarian treatment of asylum seekers for more than 10 years, says the number of people arriving to Australia by boat is “very tiny”.

“In absolute numbers less than 25,000 have come since 1976,” Rintoul said. “Thousands of refugees have been very successfully resettled in Australia over the last 10 years without any problem.”

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Australia and New Zealand received 6500 asylum claims in 2009. The Australia Parliamentary Library records 1033 asylum seekers arriving by boat.

Political advantage
Rintoul said it has long been the policy of Australian governments to drum up anti-refugee sentiment for political advantage in the hope of appearing strong on immigration.

“The primary reason for the proposal for a new regional processing centre is the Australian election. It is racist and it is xenophobic.

“[Gillard] wants to campaign as being tough on asylum seekers and to be seen to be as determined as the conservative parties to ‘stop the boats’,” said Rintoul.

“It is all about Australia avoiding its responsibility to process asylum seekers and resettle refugees.”

As a signatory of the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, Australia has a responsibility to respect the individual rights of people found to be legitimate refugees and to protect those granted asylum.

Rintoul said Australia has a history of avoiding these responsibilities by recruiting poor Pacific nations not signed to the convention to “mistreat asylum seekers and coerce them into cooperating with the anti-refugee policies”.

Refugee rights advocates fear that the proposal will be another instance of Australia “outsourcing” asylum processing to ”prison-like” facilities in impoverished nations like Nauru and Indonesia.

‘Paying millions’
“Australia has been paying millions of dollars to Indonesia to detain asylum seekers in Indonesia but it has been unwilling to resettle those found to be refugees,” Rintoul said.

One such incident occurred late 2009 when the Indonesian navy intercepted a boat carrying 254 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers heading for Australia.

The boat was marooned in the Javanese port of Merak and the asylum seekers still remain detained onboard, their fate uncertain in a country that does not recognise their rights as refugees.

Activist Sara Nathan visited the boat last year and reported back on poor conditions including unhygienic food, inadequate medical treatment, interrogations, arbitrary detention, no access for the UNHCR, and at least one case of preventable death.

The activist network Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific (ASAP) said the Indonesian authorities had acted under diplomatic pressure from then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. They led a campaign to force Australia to take responsibility for the asylum seekers.

ASAP activist and New Zealand Refugee Council member Priyaksha Pathmanathan has dealt with refugees from both the Merak boat and Nauru’s detention centre, shut down in 2007. She is not confident Gillard’s proposal would improve on either.

“Basic conditions such as clean water and food is better in detention, however the freedom to movement is greater on the boat than in detention centres,” said Pathmanathan.

‘Kids suffer’
“Also on the boat, families were allowed to be together, they are separated in the detention centres, causing the kids to suffer especially.”

A 2004 Australian Human Rights Commission report found mandatory detention to result in high rates of trauma, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and depression in asylum seeker children, often leading to self-harm and suicide.

“A refugee once said that even if they were in a five star hotel, they would still face mental illness because of indefinite detention and the lack of freedom which adds to their already vulnerable state,” Pathmanathan said.

“A regional solution does not mean detention centres.”

This is a sentiment echoed in advice from legal experts who say Australia’s plan could set a dangerous precedent that other nations should be cautious about getting behind.

New Zealand immigration lawyer Richard McLeod says Australia’s “outsourcing” of mandatory detention of asylum seekers is problematic from a legal standpoint and New Zealand should be wary of being labelled a “vital country” in Gillard’s scheme.

With only about 8 percent of asylum seekers from the Oceania region reaching New Zealand according to UNHCR statistics, the country could easily accept more refugees said McLeod.

‘Bullying type’
“Detention shouldn’t be applied unlawfully or arbitrarily and it certainly shouldn’t be demanded in a bullying type fashion of a country’s smaller island neighbours,” McLeod said.

“New Zealand has no need to support the Australian initiative, nor should it have any desire to, unless this country wants to be supportive of a system that is likely to generate very alarming instances of human rights abuse and neglect.”

The lawyer said New Zealand’s existing detention system is a lot looser than Australia’s, granting bail-like conditions to most asylum seekers once they arrive in the country.

He said the nation is also already doing its share to intercept asylum seekers with incorrect documentation or matching specific risk profiles before they board flights to the region, with immigration officials stationed at overseas airports.

Gillard’s proposition has also proved unpopular in Timor-Leste, her first choice of location for the new detention centre.

Timorese President José Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao have both signalled conditional support for the Australian plan but Timor-Leste’s Parliament last month voted unanimously against the idea.

Parliament’s decision reflects concerns that the new, developing nation of Timor-Leste is neither stable enough nor eager to facilitate a detention centre.

Mario Pereira, a Timorese environmental studies student studying in New Zealand on an NZAID scholarship, said the people of Timor-Leste are not ready to take on the burdens of neighbouring nations.

‘Work hard’
“In East Timor, overall, people live in very hard situations, they still work hard just to survive,” Pereira said. “If East Timor accepts the Australian proposal then life will only get harder.”

Since the people of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesian military occupation in 1999 and became the independent nation of Timor-Leste in 2002 the country has struggled with continued armed conflict and severe poverty.

Pereira said the continued presence of New Zealand and Australian forces in his country show that the nation’s situation is still volatile.

“People are still struggling for access to good infrastructure, to improve living conditions… if you put another problem like an asylum processing centre on top of all that I don’t think East Timor can handle it.”

He explains the apparent disagreement between Timor’s governing bodies over Australia’s proposal is an expression of Timor-Leste’s desire to be a good Pacific neighbour but in a way that is suitable for the small, recovering nation.

“Timor is looking for a way they can contribute to the Pacific, but the processing centre is not the way.”

Despite the decision of the Timorese parliament Gillard has said the country is still her focus, rejecting the opposition party’s proposition to instead re-open the Nauru detention centre.

Regional approach
The UNHCR has welcomed the Australian Prime Minister’s decision to take a regional approach to refugee processing but warns that any new system must conform to international protection standards.

UNHCR Canberra spokesperson Ben Farrell said it was still too early to discuss the specifics of Australia’s plans, as not enough detail has been made public but the agency welcomes the opportunity for dialogue among Pacific nations.

“The cornerstone of any asylum system is strong and fully effective national procedures in line with international standards,” Farrell said.

“Bearing in mind that nothing stands in isolation, national procedures are increasingly being complemented by regional comprehensive protection arrangements based on responsibility sharing.”

The UNHCR’s Global Trends 2009 report shows that the number of forcibly displaced refugees last year had risen 1.3 million to reach 43.3 million, the highest level in more than a decade.

As ongoing global conflicts continue to force more people to abandon their homes and seek refuge abroad the need for a cohesive, fair and protective refugee processing system in the Pacific region becomes ever more pressing.

Adrian Hatwell is a postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies student on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course at AUT University.