What Australia owes each and every asylum seeker

One of Australia’s leading human rights lawyers, Julian Burnside, skewers anybody who willfully misrepresents the flow of refugees into the country:

Hazaras from Afghanistan are fleeing because the Taliban are increasing their control in Afghanistan. Tamils from Sri Lanka are fleeing because they face genocide in Sri Lanka, after the collapse of their long-running attempt to establish a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka’s north.

During the final push against the Tamils, the Sri Lankan government bombed hospitals, killing thousands of civilian men, women and children. Since the hostilities ended, more than 100,000 Tamils have been held in crowded camps with hopelessly inadequate facilities. One camp had a single bore to provide water for 2000 people; it had no flushing toilets. Girls who went to wash themselves in the stream in the camp disappeared without a trace. Men who were thought to have been involved in the separatist movement were ”disappeared”; a number of them were executed. Some Australian commentators have suggested that the Tamils could simply go to India, but India is not a signatory to the refugee convention.

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