SYDNEY, Australia — The United Nations said Friday that it was “troubled” by Australia’s new policy to stem the tide of people undertaking dangerous boat journeys to seek asylum there, the latest in a series of public criticisms of the government’s tough new deterrence-based approach.
The majority of asylum seekers are people from Iran, Afghanistan and Sri
Lanka who set out in crowded, often unsafe vessels for Christmas
Island, a remote territory in the Indian Ocean that is Australia’s
closest point to Indonesia.
Under the new system, announced a week ago
by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, those arriving in Australia by boat – a
number that is now in the thousands annually – are to be sent to
refugee-processing centers in nearby Papua New Guinea. If they are found
to be entitled to refugee status under the United Nations convention on
refugees, they will be resettled there, but they forfeit any right to
seek asylum in Australia.
The issue of asylum seekers is among the most contentious in Australian
politics, and Mr. Rudd is facing a tough road to re-election in a
national vote to be held within weeks.
In a statement released Friday, the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees said that it recognized Australia was operating in an
environment made difficult by the sheer volume of new boat arrivals and
the need to prevent the resulting spike in deaths at sea. Still, it said
that it was “troubled by the current absence of adequate protection
standards and safeguards” for asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea, and
that its own review of Australia’s policy had found “significant
shortcomings.”
“These include a lack of national capacity and expertise in processing,
and poor physical conditions within open-ended, mandatory and arbitrary
detention settings,” the statement said. “This can be harmful to the
physical and psychosocial well-being of transferees, particularly
families and children.”
Those concerns are likely to carry added resonance in light of
allegations of abuse at an Australian-run detention center on Manus
Island in Papua New Guinea, which were broadcast this week on
“Dateline,” a program on the Australian television network SBS.
A former detention center employee, who resigned in April, described to
“Dateline” what he said were the rape and torture of detainees at the
center.
In its statement Friday, the United Nations agency said that the
mistreatment of foreign refugees would continue to be a major problem in
Papua New Guinea once they entered into the community.
“It is clear that sustainable integration of non-Melanesian refugees in
the socioeconomic and cultural life of P.N.G. will raise formidable
challenges and protection questions,” it said.
In a statement, the Rudd government pledged to work with the United Nations to resolve concerns about the program.
“The government is committed to working constructively with the UNHCR on
making the comprehensive regional approach work,” the statement said.
The policy is also facing criticism for the limited effect it appears to
be having on the number of people attempting the journey by sea. On
Thursday, the number of people known to have died earlier this week when
a boat packed with more than 200 asylum seekers capsized in heavy seas near Indonesia rose to nine from three, according to the Indonesian Navy.
A decade ago, under Prime Minister John Howard, asylum seekers were
taken to nearby island nations for a lengthy processing intended to
remove the incentive for claiming asylum on Australia’s shores. Mr. Rudd
abandoned that policy when he became prime minister for the first time
in 2007, which led to a surge in the number of arrivals.
In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard opened new offshore detention centers
in Nauru and on Manus Island, but they lacked the capacity to handle
the deluge of arrivals and did little to discourage them.