I've never been to Nauru but I've spent time on Manus and the adjacent islands in the province and I can attest to the fact that it is an absolutely beautiful place.

It is certainly not hot and mosquito infested.

The only thing that mars Manus is Australia's concentration camp.

Keith - In the Convention on Refugees Article 31, page 29 their illegality is stated both in the official heading namely 'Refugees unlawfully in the country of refugee' and then in Section 1: 'The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their Illegal Entry or presence on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.'

In practice nations accept the proviso at the end of Sect.1 the bit saying 'without delay and and show..........' That is they do not charge the refugee with criminal offence.
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Arthur – It is clear this article refers to refugees who are unlawful, that is those arriving through the use of false or falsified documents, the use of other deception etc or who do not comply with the edict to present themselves without delay. Read more here https://www.unhcr.org/3bcfdf164.pdf

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." Asylum seekers are entitled to non-refoulement as a fundamental principle of international law that forbids a country from returning them to a country in which they would be in likely danger of persecution.

Australia is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, which defines a refugee as a person who has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. The primary obligation under the Convention is that of non-refoulement.

Seeking asylum is not illegal - KJ

Fr Giorgio Licini has written a good analysis for the annual UN Migrant and Refugee Day about the Oz asylum seeker camps on Manus and Nauru.

I smiled when he writes, ‘..very hot, remote and mosquito infested….’

Many asylum seekers on Manus are natives of Afghanistan or Iraq where the temperature can reach 35C or above. As for distance; Kabul to Singapore is 5,154 km and Singapore is 3,357 km to Darwin; Syria is almost 12,000km; while Manus to Darwin is only 2,010 km.

There are travel warnings for visitors to those nations from several travel web-pages to immunise against: Cholera, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis-A and type B; Rabies, Tetanus, Typhoid & Polio. Anti-malarial tablets are needed as there is a chloroquine resistant strain in both countries.

Manus by comparison is less of a health risk and there is adequate rainfall for person cleanliness too. Despite being near the Equator being an island Manus temperatures show a year round range from 22- 30C.

So we should be asking what makes Abdul sit down in his arid remote village in Afghanistan. Is it because despite being an Islamic republic with many fanatical believers in the 5 Pillars of Islam Wikipedia says it has high levels of terrorism, poverty, child malnutrition, and corruption.

We also know that since the USA/UK led 2001 invasion sudden death continues to be a far too common aspect of daily life. Perhaps it is partially from a guilt complex that the USA eventually has received 500 refugees from the Pacific camps while others are still in the USA vetting system with hopefully an undisclosed number possibly going to Canada. Another 800 detainees from Manus have already been repatriated with financial assistance as well as airfares.

In 2010 Australia had liaised with Malaysia to take 800 detainees and in return would accept 4000 already certified genuine asylum seekers from Malaysia into Oz. Sadly in Sept. 2011 the High Court of Australia had ruled this would be a breach of Human Rights. Why was that? Because the Islamic nation had not signed the UN Convention on Refugees. So a sensible humanitarian solution to the boat people crisis had to be scrapped.

That failure to sign the Convention was the reason why Australia could get no help from the World’s largest Islamic nation and its neighbour of Indonesia. I had wondered why Abdul and his religious brothers had possibly paid over $5000 only to sail past PNG’s neighbour trying to get to Darwin etc. Despite their non-ratification Indonesia still has accumulated 15,000 refugees now living in limbo unable to travel any further and existing often in poor conditions. It even has an unknown number living rough on the streets.

Under the Republic’s law the refugees’ status means they are unable to work to support themselves. The UNHCR cannot provide enough cash for them so that some NGOs are trying their best to assist them such as the Benang Sewing Project, Art for Refuge, Indonesia for Refugees and The Learning Farm.

These initiatives are trying to provide training for the impoverished refugees to develop livelihood skills in cuisine, art, soap making, sewing and organic farming.
The same non-signing of the Convention also affects Pakistan but there too that hasn’t stopped over 2.5 million Afghani refugees squatting on their neighbours land. Of that number one million are unregistered and so their children cannot attend state schools, parent cannot not work, buy land or even access healthcare.

In 2019 Kabul and other towns have been experiencing a much heightened level of terror so that the number fleeing must surely increase again after an optimistic 50000 had previously voluntarily returned to the unhappy land.

Bangladesh, once East Pakistan, like it co-religionists has not signed the Convention but has been inundated by the massive Rohingya crisis that has almost overwhelmed it. For this reason On 16 March 2018, the UN and its partners launched a Joint Response Plan seeking US$951 million to continue delivering often lifesaving assistance to the 742000 known refugees for the remainder of that year. Many are housed in camps in the cyclone prone Cox’s Bazaar region of the Bay of Bengal.

So it is simplistic to ask, ‘What are the Christians of all sects denominations doing about the problem? The best question should be, ‘What am I doing about it?’ This arc of Islamic nations north of Australia together with Hindu India also refusing to sign the UN Convention is perhaps the major reasons for the Oz government deciding to prevent any refugee boat from reaching its northern shores.

At its peak in 2013 over 400 boats dangerously attempted to reach that goal. Knowing that this century there had been atleast 1900 known drownings as the Boat People desperately sought a better life and paid smugglers to try and transport them to Australia the Pacific Solution was restarted. The number of Boats has fallen dramatically to just one. From the Government viewpoint its policy had worked.

The exact monetary cost of this exercise is not readily available. In fact we seem to know more about the effect on the humans involved in the Pacific Solution. The number of refugee suicides is claimed to be 12 but this could be offset by the incalculable number of drownings that have been avoided by apparently no boats having causing deaths in Australian or PNG waters. Of course we shall never know what horrible events may have happened on the far longer ocean voyages from the Arabian Basin coasts to the Arafura Sea.

It is easy for observers elsewhere in the world to view Australia’s ‘Stop the Boat People’ exercise to be a post 20th century return to a White Australia policy. Indeed I was just one family unit of the one million white British who arrived in West Australia as a so-called £10 POM.

However the racial multicultural mix shown in the last census is quite revealing: Total Australian-born 17,650,000 with the Total of foreign-born at 7,341,910. British born residents are almost a million followed by China 651000 followed by India & NZ at about 600000 each.

So those figures beg the question why worry about a few thousand caught up in the Pacific Solution. Is it merely a red-flag deterrent to would be voyagers not to use the illegal route to get in? After all how do non-English rural people like Abdul know the backdoor route to Australia? Is it illegal organised crime rings actively canvassing him because visa facilities have been stopped for Afghan peoples and its Asian neighbours. Is that why he is still tempted by the illegal marine route? It surely is not an unsurmountable problem for Australia when one reads the UNHCR claims that in 2017 there were almost 66 million people forcibly displaced worldwide because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations alone.

As supporters of the rule of law most of us would prefer to see all refugees use the legal means of entry to the nation of their choice. I did and it took four months to be approved despite my having a professional position waiting for me. The actual driving force behind illegal entry is not straight forward bureaucracy as mine. It could be any of those reason stated above by the UNHCR but that list failed to mention the major reason is often none of those but a voluntary personal economic factor for a subsistence family wanting to have a better safer, healthier life for the next generation.

Go West was once a slogan. Today it can be South, East or North. The task is for an ethical, equal system of managed immigration for all. Blogger Julie P wrote, 'and when you look at our family trees we are all boat people!'
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Being an asylum seeker is not illegal - KJ

Thankyou to Fr Licini for this clear description of what is being done to the asylum seekers and refugees in PNG, Manus and Nauru by the Australian government. The citizens of PNG are themselves struggling with lack of money and very limited services , yet have had this cruel situation forced upon them. I along with many Australians pray that this torture of helpless refugees and asylum seekers ceases immediately and that those responsible at all levels, from the Prime Minister down , are held to account and punished.

When will Australia address the elephant in the room and free all of us from this bondage?

This issue is essentially an Indonesian problem. It is the Indonesian people smugglers that need to be stopped. There, I said it. Now go to Indonesia and stop them there.

I support Prime Minister Marape's drive to shut down all asylum facilities in PNG and get out of this disgusting Australian agenda. We have been dragged through the mud because Australia continues to pussy foot around Indonesia on major human rights issues. West Papua for one and this asylum thing another.

PNG must not be a willing participant in Australia’s girlish stance towards Indonesian oppression of human beings.

Excellent article. Thank you for publishing. Thank you to Fr Licini for his constant strong stand on the treatment of these men seeking asylum.

So now we must all ask PNG and the Catholic bishops to encourage Jacinta Adern to remake her offer to settle some of these men in New Zealand.

We in Australia are asking our politicians what would it take to accept NZ’s offer? What will happen to these people if we they are not accepted to go to the US?

Pat Rayner
Blue Mountains Support Group
[email protected]