TRUMP CRITICIZES 'DUMB' AUSTRALIA REFUGEE DEAL →

Australia’s efforts to move detained refugees off Nauru and Manus island hit another snag yesterday with reports of US President Donald Trump’s reticence to accept a deal that would see many of the asylum seekers go to America.
 
Officials from both countries claimed the phone call between Mr. Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday went well and reaffirmed both leaders’ commitments to preserving the longstanding relationship between both nations.
 
“The deal specifically deals with 1,250 people, they’re mostly in Papua New Guinea, being held…there will be extreme vetting applied to all of them as part and parcel of the deal that was made,” government spokesman Sean Spicer told the White House press corps earlier this week.
 
“The president, in accordance with that deal to honor what had been agreed upon by the United States government…will go forward.”
 
But yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the call was far from cordial, with Mr. Trump severely criticizing the refugee deal and criticizing Mr. Turnbull.
 
“Do you believe it? The Obama administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter yesterday morning.
 
He had much harsher words for Mr. Turnbull during their call, reportedly telling the Australian prime minister that he “didn’t want these people” and that it was the “worst deal ever.” He slammed Australia for what he said was its attempt to send the “next Boston bombers” to the US, referencing the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that killed three people and injured hundreds.
 
Mr. Turnbull told the Australian press after the call that Mr. Trump had agreed to honor the deal, which was set up by the Obama administration late last year before he left office and would see up to 1,250 refugees moved to the US.
 
But the Washington Post quoted several senior US officials who said it was a “hostile and charged” conversation that ended abruptly after 25 minutes.  
 
Mr. Turnbull allegedly attempted to change the topic of conversation to military efforts in Syria, but Mr. Trump hung up on him. All of Mr. Trump’s calls with other foreign leaders that day had lasted one hour or more. He reportedly told Mr. Turnbull that it was the “worst call by far.”
 
Reports of the call are contrary to Mr. Trump’s previous actions, which included sending US officials to interview refugees on Nauru and Manus island. Mr. Trump even added a clause to his controversial ban on any immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, making an exception for “pre-existing” international agreements in reference to the deal with Australia.
 
However, Mr. Trump allegedly left room for the US to back out of the deal, with senior officials saying he told the Australian leader that it was his “intention” to abide by the deal, a term they said was specifically used to give him leeway.
 
Australia has spent years attempting to offload the refugees being held on the Pacific island nation of Nauru and Manus island in Papua New Guinea and there have been persistent reports of deplorable living conditions, sexual violence and lackluster healthcare at the camps.
 
Almost 1,900 refugees are being held on Nauru and Manus island, with many of them coming from Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan – all countries mentioned in Mr. Trump’s executive order.
 
Australia struck a deal with Cambodia in 2014 to take some of the refugees, but many refused to come. Those who did take up the offer reported poor conditions and widespread mismanagement of the resources they were promised.
 
All but one of the handful of refugees who came to Cambodia returned to the countries they fled and Cambodian immigration officials have refused to comment on reports of three Iranian refugees allegedly slated to come to the kingdom this year.
 
The refugees held on Nauru and Manus island are now stuck in limbo, waiting to see what Mr. Trump will do or say next. Despite the president’s criticism of the deal and tough talk to the Australian prime minister, a US embassy spokesman in Australia told the Guardian that “President Trump’s decision to honor the refugee agreement has not changed.”

This article was printed in Khmer Times on February 3, 2017: https://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/35073/trump-criticizes--dumb--australian-refugee-deal/

LEAKED FILES SHOW REFUGEE ABUSE

The Guardian newspaper’s Australian edition yesterday published a trove of leaked incident reports from the detention centers on the island nation of Nauru, depicting horrifying conditions, an appallingly long list of sexual assaults and blatant mismanagement by the companies contracted to run them.
 

The revelations have forced a number of Cambodian human rights activists to ask how the Kingdom can still involve itself with the controversial refugee deal signed in 2014, which allowed Australia to send refugees here in exchange for $40 million in development aid.
 

The 10,000-person island has served as one of the staging grounds for Australia’s detention centers, where 442 people – 338 men, 55 women and 49 children – have been held against their will for a number of years. The 2,116 leaked incident files depict detention centers full of chaos, where sexual assault, self-harm and abuse are rampant.
 

Yet despite the endemic crime refugees were forced to live around, the people charged with caring for them, Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield Services) and its subcontractor Wilson Security, were shown to have not only refrained from helping refugees, but participated in the abuse. Multiple reports from refugees said security guards at the center were often involved in the abuse and sexual assault that women and children dealt with while detained on Nauru.
 

One harrowing report depicted a woman approaching a Wilson Security employee after being sexually assaulted, only to be berated for bringing the news to him and turned away.  
 

“You have to take it out of your head if you go into Nauru. Then he [the alleged perpetrator] could be your neighbor or if you go to Cambodia, then he could be on the plane next to you,” the employee told the woman.
 

Women and children at the detention center were the focus of most reports despite the overwhelming number of men held there. The conditions, treatment and diminishing hopes of ever making it to Australia led many to attempt suicide in a horrifying variety of ways.
 

When contacted for comment, the Australian embassy in Phnom Penh directed Khmer Times to a statement from the Australian Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
 

In it, they defend their response, even tossing doubt onto the allegations of sexual assault aired by dozens of women detained on the island and claiming that efforts and “significant investment” were constantly being made to upgrade the “health and educational facilities in Nauru, which benefit Nauruans, transferees and refugees living in the Nauruan community.”
 

“The Australian Government continues to support the Nauruan Government to provide for the health, welfare and safety of all transferees and refugees in Nauru,” the statement said. “Many of the incident reports reflect unconfirmed allegations or uncorroborated statements and claims – they are not statements of proven fact.”
 

The statement goes on to say that all criminal incidents reported at the detention centers are sent to the Nauru Police Force and claims to have found no evidence “to suggest that service providers have underreported or misreported incidents in Nauru.”
 

Despite the statement citing a number of Australian laws and initiatives designed to illustrate an effort to specifically protect children detained on the island, the leaked reports show that instances of child abuse increased in 2015.
 

Many in Cambodia have railed against the deal to bring refugees from Nauru to Cambodia, with opposition leader Sam Rainsy saying last year that the Kingdom was being used as a “dumping ground” by Australia.
 

Of the six refugees brought to Cambodia from Nauru, only one remains. Four Iranians and one Rohingya man returned to their home countries after staying in Cambodia for short periods of time.
 

Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said if Australia and Cambodia actually cared about human rights, the deal and the detention centers would never exist.
 

“These latest revelations of the horrors in Nauru’s processing center merely confirm what we have asserted for years – that human rights are completely absent from Australia’s policy towards migrants,” she told Khmer Times.
 

“While the neglect suffered by those refugees under the deal in Cambodia may pale in comparison to the reports of abuse coming from Nauru, the fact remains that many of the refugees have opted to return to the countries from which they fled, suggesting strongly the extent of the neglect they were subject to here.”
 

The money given to Cambodia in the refugee deal should not overshadow the abuse refugees face both on Nauru and in Cambodia, she added.
 

“The less well-known but neglectful treatment of refugees in Cambodia stands in stark contrast to the significant payment Cambodia has received in return. It is a tragedy for both the refugees and the Cambodian people that their human rights do not rank high in the government’s priorities.
 

“Importantly, considerations of humanity must be placed ahead of financial incentive in any strategy going forward.”

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/28337/leaked-files-show-refugee-abuse/

SICK, LONELY AND AFRAID, NAURU REFUGEE REGRETS COMING TO CAMBODIA

The controversial Nauru refugee resettlement deal received another blow when one of the two remaining refugees in Cambodia said he is “unwell and lonely,” in need of medical attention and fears he “will die here.”
 

In an interview with Fairfax Media, 26-year-old Mohammed Rashid complained that he has received only $4,000 of the $8,000 payout promised by the Australian government to persuade him to move from Nauru. He added that the other perks he was promised, such as good healthcare and employment, have not materialized.
 

These revelations are the latest black eye to a $40 million refugee resettlement deal struck between the Australian and Cambodian governments in 2014. Australian opposition politicians are now calling for an audit of the program.
 

“Spending millions of dollars to grease the wheels of a corrupt regime so that the government can dump a handful of people in an impoverished country is unacceptable,” Greens party immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young told Fairfax yesterday. She called for “an independent assessment of value for money.”
 

It is not the first time the Nauru refugee resettlement program has come under fire. Multiple groups have said that Cambodia – with human rights abuses of its own and a weak healthcare system – is ill-equipped to deal with refugees.
 

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) received a hefty $11 million budget to pay for medical healthcare, housing and employment for Mr. Rashid and one other refugee in Phnom Penh. It has spent $1.4 million on the two refugees so far, including hundreds of thousands spent on a luxury villa where Mr. Rashid no longer lives.
 

This controversial refugee deal was signed in 2014 when Australia promised to give Cambodia $40 million in aid in exchange for Cambodia taking refugees from Nauru. In the years since, all but two of the five refugees who came to Cambodia have returned to their home countries, but that did not stop Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton from hailing the deal as a success last week.
 

“The fact that we’ve had no drownings at sea and no successful boat arrivals I think is a pretty good outcome,” Mr. Dutton said in an interview with an Australian radio station.
 

Mr. Rashid was one of the five Nauru refugees who agreed to the resettlement deal. He originally left Indonesia bound for Australia on a boat operated by people smugglers, but was intercepted by Australian authorities and detained on Nauru in 2013. He arrived in Phnom Penh three months ago.
 

He told Fairfax Media that he now regrets the decision to leave Nauru. He suffers from kidney and lung problems as well as asthma, but said IOM has been unresponsive to his requests to be hospitalized. In a particularly harrowing part of his interview, he described having a friend take him to a hospital in Phnom Penh where doctors said he needed to stay at least 10 days for observation. Representatives from IOM spoke to doctors at the hospital and said he was only allowed to stay there for three days despite his illnesses. This, he said, contributed to an overall feeling of abandonment and isolation from the outside world.
 

A spokesman for Mr. Dutton told Fairfax a different story, saying that IOM officials contact Mr. Rashid daily, and added that he has declined offers of better housing and healthcare. “[Mr. Rashid has] so far declined to engage with IOM on their offer of assistance in seeking permanent accommodation options,” the spokesperson told Fairfax.
 

Kem Sarin, a spokesman for the Cambodian refugee department, told Khmer Times that he was surprised to read of Mr. Rashid’s problems. “I was wondering as well regarding that [the report],” he said. “We have more than 60 refugees in Cambodia that have integrated into the community – except him.”
 

Mr. Sarin added that the Cambodian refugee department is not responsible for Mr. Rashid’s wellbeing. “We are responsible for providing legal documents, to provide him a legal stay,” he said, “but for other services the IOM is the one [responsible].” Despite repeated phone calls and emails, IOM could not be reached for comment.
 

Mr. Rashid said he has warned other Nauru refugees against accepting the Australian government’s offer of a home in Cambodia. He said he has been told he cannot return to the island. “If I am going to die, I should have stayed in Nauru and died there,” he told Fairfax Media.

This story ran on March 13, 2016. 

AUSTRALIAN MINISTER STILL DEFENDING CONTROVERSIAL NAURU REFUGEE DEAL

Only $1.4 million of the original $40 million deal with Cambodia has been spent on refugees sent from the island nation of Nauru to Phnom Penh, Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said in a radio interview yesterday morning with a local station.
 

Most of the funds for the deal were to be spent on the National Election Committee (NEC) and other election assistance, landmine clearance and agricultural production, he said. 
 

A total of $11 million was planned for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to help them settle refugees and cover the costs for housing, healthcare and employment.
 

Now that all but two of the refugees have left Cambodia and returned to their home countries, the controversial deal is in jeopardy of falling apart. 
 

Australian ministers have slammed the deal as a waste of money, with the Australian opposition party’s immigration spokesman Richard Marles saying earlier this week: “The inability of this government to secure a meaningful resettlement arrangement with a credible third country is a serious failure.”
 

The revelation is another black eye for the much-maligned deal signed early in 2015. Australia hailed it as a solution to its long-standing issue with refugees. They have refused to accept any refugees arriving by boat, instead detaining them in a facility run partially by IOM on Nauru. 
 

The facilities have also been criticized by human rights advocates, with repeated cases of alleged abuse, rape and malnourishment happening to those detained there, according to an Australian Immigration Ministry report. 
 

Since five refugees arrived in Phnom Penh in June and July last year, two Iranians and one Rohingya from Myanmar have returned to their home countries, citing difficulties with the language and seclusion as the reason behind their decision to leave. Now, only one Iranian and one Rohingya remain in Cambodia.
 

Opposition leader Sam Rainsy spoke harshly about the deal last August, telling an Australian media outlet that Cambodia should not be a “dumping site for refugees.”
 

Cambodia was widely criticized for accepting the deal, with many NGOs and civil society organizations here claiming that Cambodia’s own record with human rights makes it ill-suited to take on the task of caring for refugees. 
 

Kerm Sarin, a spokesman for the General Department of Immigration at the Ministry of Interior, said neither he nor any other government official knew the exact amount Australia spent on the refugees. 
 

The expenses for the refugees are handled by the Australian government and IOM, with Cambodia only involved in providing legal documents for them, he said. 
 

“The resettlement in any country is dependent on the favor of the refugee. If they want to live in Cambodia, we will organize the legal documents or other paperwork for them and facilitate their integration into society,” he said. “Any expense in relation to the resettlement and training courses does not involve Cambodia.” 
 

Mr. Sarin said the refugees who resettled in Cambodia have every right to return home and their decision will not affect the deal. 
 

“Whether they want to live here or go back has no effect on the agreement. They are volunteering to go back to their countries,” he added.
 

But the Australian architects of the deal have hailed it as a success, saying that since detaining most refugees on Nauru and only offering them the chance to reside in Cambodia, they have seen a decrease in the number of boats carrying migrants trying to make it to their shores.
 

“The fact that we’ve had no drownings at sea and no successful boat arrivals I think is a pretty good outcome,” Mr. Dutton said in his interview yesterday.

This story ran on March 10.