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.