Malaysia too dangerous, says council
By NineMsn, Australia
The Refugee Council says there may be hope in the future to work with Malaysia on asylum seekers, but now is not the time for an agreement with the Asian nation.
The government has introduced legislation to parliament to shore up its deal with Malaysia to transfer 800 boat-arriving asylum seekers for 4000 properly processed refugees.
Council chief Paul Power, who visited Malaysia in July, told a Senate inquiry into the agreement in Canberra on Friday that the government had “misdiagnosed the problem” and he had grave concerns for the safety of people sent to Malaysia.
“The visit confirmed for me that concerns of refugees for their safety and security are soundly based,” Mr Power said.
“Refugees in Malaysia are living in deep poverty with no legal status and forced to break the law in order to earn money to feed themselves.
“Harassment and violence are part of the refugee community’s daily experience and threat of arrest is constant.”
Mr Power said there had been some improvement in recent years, and he hoped that in the long-term Malaysia would improve its human rights record.
“It is now less likely that UN-recognised refugees will get caned than it was two years ago,” he said.
“…But that is hardly sufficient grounds for suggesting now is the time to send asylum seekers who have transited through Malaysia back there.”
Mr Power said the solution lay in closer work between countries in the region.
He said one of the problems was that 15 out of 19 nations in the region were not parties to the UN refugee convention.
“This must change if ever we are to see a change to the current system of refugees and asylum seekers,” he said, adding that the region was now seeing a “mad scramble for people seeking to find minimum levels of protection”.
Commonwealth Ombudsman Allan Asher told the inquiry that while he had been told by the immigration department that Malaysian authorities would only use force as a “very last resort”, he was not satisfied about protection for the people sent there.
“Our point is such agreements, if they are not scrutinised and if they are not operationalised, should not give us any degree of comfort,” Mr Asher said.
He said his office – which oversees Australian and offshore refugee programs – had yet to receive the procedure guide to be used by Malaysian officials.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young asked Mr Asher how his office would be able to monitor what happened in Malaysia, when monitoring Australian facilities was hard enough.
“Within Australia, with all of the openness and access that we have as immigration ombudsman, we make very frequent visits to Christmas Island and other detention centres,” Mr Asher said.
“We urge the government, in the implementation of an offshore agreement, that proportionate degrees of supervision be provided there so that we can at least have the assurances that we have for people in Australia.”
He said asylum seekers were “exceptionally vulnerable individuals”.
“The procedures need to be much more clearly elaborated and published,” he said.
Mr Asher said the documents he had seen relating to the agreement did not appear to address protections for unaccompanied minors.
“The interests of those individuals must be fully protected,” he said.
Ombudsman office immigration complaints director Rohan Anderson told the inquiry there were no binding assurances in the Malaysia agreement that asylum seekers would not be returned to their countries of origin.
“We are not assured that that would be the case,” Mr Anderson said.
“This is a case of an agreement that is not legally binding – it is a reflection of the parties’ commitments and aspirations.”
Mr Anderson said the immigration department had not provided his office with any final costings of the Malaysia deal and he had had to source a figure from media reports.
“Even though we are the immigration ombudsman … we have not been given the basic information,” he said.
