Cambodia says it has ‘no plans’ to take more Nauru refugees, but Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop insist Australia has secured ‘important agreement’
Australia’s $55m plan to resettle refugees from Nauru to Cambodia appears finished, with just four refugees moved to the south-east Asian country at a cost of more than $13m per refugee.
Four refugees – an Iranian couple, Iranian man and a Rohingyan man from Burma – were transferred from Nauru to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh in June.
Since then, they’ve lived in relative luxury in an Australian-funded villa, and will remain there indefinitely.
However, Cambodia expects it will take no more from Australia’s resettlement plan.
“We don’t have any plans to import more refugees from Nauru to Cambodia,” interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak told the Cambodia Daily. “I think the less we receive the better.”
But Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop denied the deal was collapsing. “That is not correct. You’re relying on an alleged statement of one official,” she told reporters in Sydney.
Bishop said she had had a positive meeting with her Cambodian counterpart earlier this month and said the southeast Asian country was keen to harness the skills of foreign workers to boost its gross domestic product.
Tony Abbott said Cambodia had been helped by the international community when it was “in trouble some years ago” – a reference to the Khmer Rouge period – but that it was now keen to assist in managing refugee flows.
“This is an important agreement and it’s an agreement which indicates Cambodia’s readiness to be a good international citizen.”
Under
the deal, signed by previous immigration minister Scott Morrison and
Cambodia’s interior minister Sar Kheng last September, Australia
promised an additional $40m in aid to the impoverished south-east Asian
country as well as $15.5m in resettlement, housing, education and integration costs for the refugees.
The deal was not contingent on Cambodia taking a certain number of refugees.
Throughout last year, the Cambodian government sent delegations to Nauru to promote the resettlement plan, but very few refugees even met with the government officials. Those visits have ceased.
Joe Lowry, a spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration, which has managed the four refugees’ resettlement in Cambodia, told the Cambodia Daily the group was doing “fine”.
“They have asked for privacy so we are respecting that,” he said. The group is living in a villa in Phnom Penh, originally intended as temporary housing.
“When they are ready to leave [the villa] they can,” he said. “I don’t think any of them have expressed any desire to go.”
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former battalion commander in the Khmer Rouge, and who has ruled his country for 30 years, will visit Australia in December.
His regime is regarded as one of the most corrupt on earth. Transparency International ranks Cambodia 156th of 175 countries on its index of corruption perception.
Hun Sen, his family, and associates are alleged to have amassed billions of dollars in personal wealth, siphoning off aid money, and through corrupt sales of natural resources and land.
Rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, say Hun Sen’s regime crushes dissent in the country through extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, summary trials, censorship and widespread bans on assembly and association.
A spokesman for immigration minister, Peter Dutton, told Fairfax the government was committed to its policy that no boat arrivals would be settled in Australia.
“The government continues to work with Cambodia and other partners, including source countries, to facilitate the return or placement of people on Nauru and Manus Island,” he said.
Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, called on Dutton to explain the situation.
“This is an expensive joke and once again we are learning about this through comments from ministers in the Cambodian government rather than ministers in our own government,” he told Sky News.
When the Cambodia deal was signed it was condemned by the United Nations, who described it as “a worrying departure from international norms” and said Australia was shirking its responsibility of people fleeing persecution.
“We are seeing record forced displacement globally, with 87% of refugees now being hosted in developing countries. It’s crucial that countries do not shift their refugee responsibilities elsewhere,” the UN’s high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, said.
“International responsibility sharing is the basis on which the whole global refugee system works. I hope that the Australian government will reconsider its approach.”