Australia Cambodia refugee deal

Australia has an arrangement to send asylum seekers it is currently holding in offshore detention camps to Cambodia. Austrialian immigration minister Scott Morrison is scheduled to visit Phnom Penh on Friday to confirm the deal.

"The arrangement is strictly voluntary…Anyone who chooses to go to Cambodia will have chosen themselves to go to Cambodia," Morrison told reporters in the Parliament House in Canberra, acknowledging Cambodian officials' repeated insistence that the refugees would have to be resettled on a voluntary basis.

Morrison said that the refugees would be "afforded all the same rights under Cambodian law and those that exist under the refugee convention," and that there were no limits on what had been discussed as part of the deal. Morrison also said his government would assist refugees to make them self-reliant.

The immigration minister has not yet revealed how much the asylum seekers would be paid under the deal, but details would be clearer after the agreement had been signed, the Associated Press quoted the Cambodian foreign ministry as saying.

Rights groups criticize Australian stance

Australia's "international refugee responsibilities are in question here," United Nations Human Rights Commissioner for Refugees spokeswoman in Bangkok, Vivian Tan told news agency AFP.

Tan expressed concerns that such deals could set a dangerous precedent for refugee protection around the world. She emphasized that the global asylum system depended on countries solving refugee problems themselves and "not by asking others to deal with them."

Human Rights Watch also condemned the agreement, saying that Australia would be "failing to meet the terms of its agreement because Cambodia is not a safe third country."

Australia was offering "one of the most corrupt nations on Earth to be Australia's dumping ground," the Associated Press quoted the Australian Green party senator Sarah Hanson-Young as saying.

Temporary visas for refugees

The agreement was reached after the Australian government formally presented a bill in parliament to reintroduce temporary visas for refugees. Instead of permanent residency, up to 30,000 asylum seekers would be given temporary protection visas for a period of three to five years.

Under Australia's immigration policy, refugees arriving by boat since July 2013 have been sent to camps on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, also an island nation in the Pacific.

Refugees in these camps, however, do not qualify for the temporary visas and are offered resettlement in these countries. Australia and Cambodia have been engaged in discussions to this end.

The arrangement could help the Australian government to clear a backlog of refugees seeking entry into its shores, but the opposition labor spokesman Richard Marles has criticized the temporary visa system saying it puts "people in a permanent state of limbo."

mg/bw (AP, AFP)