Erin Handley

 

As the ever-controversial Australia-Cambodia refugee deal turned three yesterday, it came under fresh scrutiny thanks to the impending deportation of Montagnard refugees and Cambodia’s downward political spiral.

 

The A$55 million deal, inked on September 26, 2014, to the clinking of champagne glasses, has seen just seven refugees from the island detention centre of Nauru move to Cambodia. Of those, four have since returned to their home countries. The three who remain – a Rohingya Muslim and two Syrian men – can’t go home.

 

Syria continues to be savaged by war, while over the past month, some 400,000 Rohingyas have fled across Myanmar’s border into Bangladesh – an exodus human rights experts say was prompted by widespread violence and a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

 

read more http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/refugee-deal-cambodia-gag-australia

 

-- © Copyright Phenom Pen Post 27/09

 

How come no one here talks or writes anything about Myanmar and Rohinga issue? What's happening at Arakan state in Myanmar is beyond words that can state and it's purely genocide , how they are killing civilians and torching them , starting from 10 years children  to 79 years old  ladies , cutting off their heads , breasts  and killing them mercilessly. The men are beaten to death or fired upon. More than 1.2 million people has crossed the border to Bangladesh taking refugee shelter and living a hard life. Villages after villages are burned down by the barbaric Army. The New York Times made their latest issue covering the event . It's so sad 

 

Its called apathy.  Add to that the fact they are moslems and immediately their plight is totally ignored thanks to the USA propaganda machine.

 

And the Montagnards....such a shame.  Stateless people persecuted in Vietnam because of their helping the USA during the Vietnam war....not recognised for their efforts and this is their reward.  All straight out of the CIA's bag of dirty tricks.....again!

This was an expensive flop by Australia in trying to handle boat arrivals. I am not unsympathetic to retaining control of immigration and I think the world needs to look at the UN Charter on Refugees. This was created after WW2 when the horrors inflicted on Jews & Ors by the Nazis, horrified anyone with a semblance of humanity.  Circumstances are different now and we need new thinking and a revised charter. The people coming by boat were queue jumpers and had the financial means to get on a boat. A quick decision to ban all boat arrivals, to help in an election campaign was not terribly nuanced. I wish I had the answers. Countries have a rifgt to handle their immigration and maybe some form of assistance by richer countries to people in camps in countries next to the troubled ones people are escaping from, could set a model.