Australian authorities assisted another distressed boat of asylum seekers on July 11, while the ruling Labor Party and opposition Liberal Party deliberate over Australia’s future refugee policy.
The boat had 65 people, according to initial reports from the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA). All were transferred onto Australian vessels and taken to Christmas Island, the usual detainment destination for refugees. The maximum length of detainment in Australia has been seven years, according to Amnesty International.
Another boat with 81 people underwent the same procedure also on Tuesday, although AMSA surveillance aircraft reported seeing “no visible signs of distress,” according to another media statement.
Just two weeks ago, two boats of asylum seekers fatally capsized. The first was carrying as many as 200 passengers and up to 90 drowned; at least four people died on the second boat believed to be carrying 134 people.
Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott remains firm on his tough controversial stance on the treatment of asylum seekers despite the recent tragedies. He says he would do things differently if he were prime minister.
“I appreciate that naval personnel have a difficult job to do, often under highly distressing circumstances. But the fact is the navy has turned boats around before, it’s done it with great professionalism and it can do so again with the right support from government and that’s what I'd be giving them,” he said on Wednesday, according to an interview transcript posted on his website.
Abbott added that the Liberals would keep pushing for “rigorous offshore processing at Nauru [small island near Australia], temporary protection visas to deny the people-smugglers a product to sell, and the option of turning boats around where it is safe to do so.”
Current Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said that officials were going to have to work out a better solution.
“The turn backs policy is dangerous and unworkable,” he said in a statement Monday. He believes that asking Australian maritime personnel to sail refugees back to their countries endangers the personnel’s lives.
In a recent article for The Conversation, a news source for academic analysis and research, criminology professor Sharon Pickering from Monash University in Victoria, writes that several issues are missing from the current debate, including the fate of those denied entry into Australia, and the fact that of 5,732 asylum seekers from Indonesia to Australia, only 24 of them were resettled.
“Preventing or deterring people from coming to Australia does not mean persecution stops. Instead, those being persecuted become some other country’s problem,” she writes.
The Australian government last year signed an agreement with Malaysia under which Australia would send would-be refugees there for processing, in exchange for Australia agreeing to resettle some 4,000 recognized refugees waiting in Malaysia. The deal was blocked, however, by the Australian High Court ruling that there was no guarantee the asylum seekers would be treated safely in Malaysia.
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