Refugee Action Collective Victoria - Media Release - 13/8/2012The expert panel on asylum seekers and offshore processing has [ignored the opposition to offshore processing in the overwhelming majority of submissions it received and] recommended policies to the government, the vast majority of which undermine refugee rights, and the spirit of the 1951 refugee convention
The expert panel seem to have no conception that people are fleeing for their lives cannot be part of "regular migration pathways". We remind the expert panel that asylum seekers have the right to claim asylum, under both Australian and International law.
The expert panel is recommending stripping existing legal protections from refugees. The report advocates offshoring Australian responsibilities onto poorer countries.
The recommendations include a reopening of offshore detention centres used under John Howard such as on Nauru and Manus Island, with no timelines for processing and no guaranteed resettlement of refugees to Australia. The expert panel has also endorsed the essence of the Malaysia solution.
The endorsement of offshore processing is a blow to the thousands of asylum seekers languishing in Indonesia.
We reject any plans for offshore processing as it contravenes the rights of refugees to seek asylum, no matter the method of arrival.
Both the government and opposition seek to deter refugees from exercising their right to seek asylum rather than save lives. Measures attacking people smuggling and stopping family reunion visas, are likely to mean more lives will be lost at sea.
We call on the Australian government to make arrival into Australia safer and to process refugees in the community, not detention centres.
We also reject any notion that there legitimate and illegitimate means of arrival and support the rights of the asylum seekers arriving by whatever means is necessary.
The recommendation to lift the intake quota, although not until 2016, is designed to delegitimise asylum seekers who arrive by boat. People have a right to seek asylum by boat, Tamils fleeing war and torture from Sri Lanka often have no other means other than to flee by boat, they have no possible 'regular migration pathway'.
Disgracefully the expert panel has not even rejected 'turning back the boats' - this policy under Howard directly led to the deaths of five asylum seekers. The expert panel's recommendations would return us to the Howard years and the Pacific Solution, with all the misery and brutality that entailed.
"We are extremely disappointed, but not surprised by the recommendations of the expert panel," Refugee Action Collective spokesperson Benjamin Solah said, "If the recommendations are adopted by the government, it will mean fewer refugees are able to seek asylum and they will languish in inhumane conditions offshore or will be unable to flee situations of war or persecution."
"We need a refugee policy that doesn't see refugees seeking asylum as a problem, but one that seeks to help refugees seek protection."