Mike Steketee: Howard is wrong on refugees
Canberra should stop appeasing Jakarta over the Papuan boatpeople
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April 20, 2006

THIS is the Howard Government's new refugee policy: we will decide who comes and the circumstances in which they come, unless Indonesia would like to do so instead.
The announcement that the Government will go back to the bad old days of the Pacific solution and indefinite mandatory detention of asylum-seekers is a terrible decision made for the wrong reasons in the worst possible circumstances. It is false to suggest the Government faced an irreconcilable conflict between human rights and relations with Indonesia. It is no more a dilemma than Indonesia deciding whether or not it should abolish capital punishment because Australia does not like it being applied to Australian drug runners.

Rather than Australia changing its refugee laws, all it had to do was to impress on Indonesia that they were based on bipartisan policy stretching back more than 50 years to when Australia played a pioneering role in formulating the Refugee Convention. Decisions are made - or at least were before John Howard buckled at the knees to Indonesian complaints - on people's individual circumstances, not the policies of the country they came from, let alone any judgment on the merits of Papuan independence, which both the Government and Opposition oppose.

What the Prime Minister did instead was to compromise Australia's values to accommodate both Indonesian misconceptions and the brutal treatment of some of its citizens. It appears he panicked particularly at the Indonesian threat to no longer co-operate in stopping boats coming to Australia. He should have called Indonesia's bluff. Quite apart from the dramatic fall in refugee flows in recent years, the boats never have been a threat to Australia, with even refugee numbers in the wake of turmoil in Afghanistan and Iraq insignificant compared with those who go to other Western countries.

Howard's decision looks all the more craven because it came only weeks after he resisted a personal appeal from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono not to accept the Papuans. It cancels the measures Howard announced last June to relax Australia's uniquely harsh refugee policy by freeing children from detention, requiring decisions within three months on whether or not applicants qualify as refugees and the same period for appeals to the Refugee Review Tribunal. None of these provisions will apply in Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island, where future asylum-seekers who arrive by boat will be carted.

The Government will accept its obligations under the Refugee Convention to process these cases in only the most grudging way. For fear of offending Indonesia, it will scour the world to try to find other countries to accept refugees. The rest of the world rightly will say that, with Papua on our doorstep, they are our responsibility. If other countries adopted Australia's attitude, the Refugee Convention would collapse.

Judging by the treatment of Afghans and Iraqis under the Pacific non-solution, people will be waiting for up to four years to be released, even if they are accepted as refugees. If we take the precedent of the more than 1300 people who fled East Timor in 1991, it will take 10 years. There will be no appeal rights to the Refugee Review Tribunal or the Australian courts. Access to lawyers will be severely restricted. Already traumatised refugees will be scarred for life by the experience.

The decision betrays Petro Georgiou and his fellow band of Liberal dissidents who extracted last year's concessions from Howard. It leaves Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone high and dry. Only four weeks ago, she was stressing the decisions on the 42 Papuans were based on their individual circumstances, not the feelings of the Indonesian Government or anyone else.

It probably will worsen the already deterioriating human rights situation in Papua, sending a clear signal that this is not a serious concern for Australia. The reality is this is a problem wholly made in Indonesia: if it stopped mistreating its citizens in Papua, they would not be fleeing. The Immigration Department does not give reasons for its decisions in refugee cases but it presumably found legal submissions made for the 42 Papuans by lawyer David Manne persuasive.

One of those submissions argues: "We submit the available country information indicates the applicant will face serious harm in the form of arbitrary arrest and detention, beating, torture or execution at the hands of the TNI [the Indonesian military] and related security forces ..." This was because she had a high profile as an independence activist, has suffered past persecution and had participated in raising the Papuan independence flag in the boat in which she had come to Australia with the other asylum-seekers, a crime in Indonesia for which some of them already had been jailed. The submission referred to a report in Kompas newspaper in January quoting Indonesian Human Rights Commission deputy chairman in Papua, Albert Rumbekwan, saying the families of the asylum-seekers had been "terrorised".

Among the many references it gave, the submission quoted from a 2004 report by the Yale Law School: "The Indonesian military and security forces have engaged in widespread violence and extra-judicial killings in West Papua. They have subjected Papuan men and women to acts of torture, disappearance, rape and sexual violence ..."

The submission also reveals that Indonesia repeatedly sought direct access to the asylum-seekers while they were in detention - which it argued was a breach of both the Refugee and Vienna conventions and an indication that their human rights would be disregarded if they were returned to Indonesia.

The Yale report argued that, "without significant international pressure, the pattern of violent repression in West Papua is likely to continue". Howard has just told Indonesia through a loud hailer that such pressure will not be coming from Australia.

Papuans missing at sea as crisis talks start


By Mark Forbes in Denpasar and Cynthia Banham
April 21, 2006


A BOAT carrying 21 Papuans suspected of being asylum seekers has sunk with one confirmed dead and 18 more missing, Indonesian police say.

Police said they believed some passengers were student supporters of Papuan separatism, and evidence suggested they planned to seek asylum in another country. Two passengers were saved by fishermen yesterday morning after the boat was struck by large waves several kilometres north of Papua's capital, Jayapura. One dead body was sighted, said a police spokesman, Colonel Kartono.

He said the survivors claimed the boat's destination was Papua New Guinea. Police were still searching for other survivors and conducting an investigation into the motives for the trip, which comes in the midst of a diplomatic crisis between Australia and Indonesia.

A Papuan independence flag and pamphlets advocating independence were found near where the boat departed, but it had not been confirmed if they were linked to the voyage, Colonel Kartono said.

The news emerged as the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirajuda, indicated he would demand further concessions from Australia on its decision to grant asylum to 42 Papuans when he meets the secretary of the Foreign Affairs and Trade Department, Michael L'Estrange, today.

Mr Wirajuda said he appreciated that Australia's new hardline stance on asylum, announced last week and to be detailed by Mr L'Estrange, demonstrated that Canberra had considered Indonesia's sensitivity over the Papua issue.

"Adopting a kind of Pacific solution for new flows of boat people or asylum seekers deals with the future problems, but how do we deal with the existing problem of 42 Indonesians of Papuan origin who have been granted asylum?" Mr Wirajuda said.

The changes did not address the conflict between the granting of asylum and Australia's stated support of Indonesia's sovereignty over Papua, he said.

Mr Wirajuda also said he would discuss with Mr L'Estrange what the Australian Government would do to suppress support for Papuan independence.

He said a decision on returning Indonesia's recalled ambassador, Hamzah Thayeb, and a review of co-operation with Australia could only be made after today's meeting in Jakarta.

Mr L'Estrange will also meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's adviser, Dino Djalal, paving the way for follow-up visits by the Prime Minister, John Howard, and the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer.

The already tense trip was last night complicated by reports that Dr Yudhoyono had ordered Mr Wirajuda to mount a "diplomatic push" to get back a Papuan refugee, Anike Wanggai. The four-year-old girl and her father, Yunus Wanggai, were among the 42 Papuans given temporary protection visas by Australia last month.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/papuans-missing-at-sea-as-crisis-talks-start/2006/04/20/1145344222738.html

Australia has failed West Papua. That policy is a BIG unforgivable sin.
Where is the value of humanity that Australia preaches about?

Why bowing down to threats?
How can Australia advance? You sing about advancement but pay no attention to inhuman and debasement of human values by a nation at your back door.

SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME


PNG

a recent survey showed that 3/4 of australians support a free and independant west papua. This survey makes it obvious that this issue will not go away.
So in answer to your question. "Where is the value of humanity that Australia preaches about?" It is in the hearts and minds of the australian public. So while the new government policy is a setback this issue is not dead in australia.

It is really good to hear and see the Australian public's support for a "free West Papua".

Please continue the momemtum and support for our suppressed neighbours.

Don't worry about TNI. PNG Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel's kids will meet them head on here before they ever contemplate crossing the Kokada and Torres Straits.

Melanesian

Australia is scared of Indonesia.fullstop. You ask anyone on the streets here in Australia, they'll tell you, some might try n deny it but you can tell.

Since Australia is so isolated from anyone else, it has to think twice before making any decisions, and might I add png also is scared of indonesia.

Your an expert are you. Well you didn't ask me ar probably anyone else. If Indonesia showed any aggression to australia you can bet the recruitment lines at the armed forces would be a mile long.

Yes mate,
even old buggers like me would have a go, if they landed on our soil.

My mates and I would be too old for the army, but we could take our hunting rifles and go bush. Not only that, but being an engineer, I am good at making bombs and booby-traps. Hopefully we would get a good few of them, before they got us.

That being said, I hope it never happens.

Value freedom too much to be a pacifist......Ralph.