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‘Scare tactics’: politicians accused over boat people
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| By Damir Govorcin
16 December, 2012 |
Instead of calming unfounded fears in the community that Australia is about to be overwhelmed by hordes of refugees, political leaders from both major parties continue to pander to those fears in the hope of gaining electoral capital, says Jesuit Refugee Service Australia (JRS) director Fr Aloysious Mowe SJ.
“They peddle in lies about people arriving here ‘illegally’ when they well know that the Refugee Convention states clearly that someone’s mode of arrival, or lack of papers, does not take away their legal right to seek asylum,” he said.
“They insist on people coming through ‘regular’ migration mechanisms when they are aware that it is simply not possible for people to apply for migration or for refugee resettlement in many places of conflict.
“The Australian embassy in Afghanistan, for example, has no consular function and does not issue visas; even if it did, an asylum seeker would be hard-pressed to put in an application: if you search the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website, you will discover that the embassy’s location may not be disclosed for security reasons.”
In his keynote address at the Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office’s third annual conference on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne, Fr Mowe said the flow of refugees to Australia is a result of regional conflicts and geography.
“Asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, the two most significant cohorts arriving in Australia by boat, find their way here because there are no other countries between these countries and Australia that are signatories to the Refugee Convention,” he said.
Cambodia, another signatory state in the region, “is possibly as accessible by sea from Malaysia, one of the main transit countries, as Australia; but Cambodia is not perceived to have Australia’s resources”.
Fr Mowe says we are meant to accept asylum seekers and refugees “not because of what they bring to us, but because of their vulnerability and need”.
“The Refugee Convention is not a skilled migration program,” he said.
“To paraphrase John F Kennedy, we should not be asking what asylum seekers and refugees can do for Australia, but what Australia can do for them.”
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