So this is how Australia deals with its human rights obligations

Just how keen is the Australian government to send back hapless refugees to a rogue and illegitimate regime that can’t even maintain security in the capital?

A plan to automatically deport failed Afghan asylum seekers from Australia has been condemned by a coalition of organisations and prominent experts.

The Australian government reached an agreement with Afghan authorities in mid-January under which failed asylum seekers will be sent directly back to the war-torn country.

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen hailed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which formalised the pact as a major breakthrough in tightening Australia’s borders against people smugglers and non-refugees.

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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Regional Representative Richard Towle was also a signatory on the deal.

But the move has been strongly criticised, with leading Australia-based social-justice group, the Edmund Rice Centre, saying there is no reason to believe returned Afghans will be safe.

“Over the past eight years, the Edmund Rice Centre’s research into Australia’s deportations has found that returning asylum seekers to Afghanistan has produced direct and fatal consequences,” the organisation said in a statement on Thursday.

It said the consequences had been felt by the returned asylum seekers themselves and their immediate families.

“Many others have suffered threats and attacks, and today live with the well-founded fear of the very persecution they sought to escape.

“Many Afghan asylum seekers in Australia are members of the Hazara ethnic minority – objects of discrimination and persecution in Afghanistan for decades.

“There is no reason to believe that the ethnic and sectarian factors, fuelling hostility towards them, have dissipated.”

The statement issued by the Edmund Rice Centre was signed by 42 organisations including the Refugee Council of Australia and the Uniting Church in Australia.

More than 14 prominent experts in the fields of social justice, religion and health have also added their names to the statement.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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