Why Australia should resettle Asylum seekers in
Australia, not Cambodia.
I’v been living in
Cambodia for almost a year now. In this time I have learnt a lot of the kind of
cliché things that you typically learn as a middle class person from a
developed country living in a less developed country.
I’v realised some
of just how much I take for granted about my safety, money, education and opportunities,
and how much infrastructure and stability, provides and protects the way we
live in Australia.
From this, here
are some reasons why it is such an irresponsible proposal by the Australian
government to send Asylum seekers to resettle in Cambodia.
Cambodia is still
recovering from the damage done by the Khmer rouge when much of Cambodia’s
infrastructure was destroyed and most of the educated population killed. Cambodians
are working hard just to get by, many live in poverty and the country has no
safety net for those who can’t find a way to make a living for themselves.
Cambodia does not have the resources to take in more vulnerable people.
Australia does.
Asylum seekers
arriving in Cambodia will need health care, jobs, and homes. Julia Bishop has
touted Cambodia as being a “safe haven” for Asylum seekers and yet if you look
at the conditions here you will see it is vastly different.
Jobs are hard to
come by with many Cambodians crossing illegally to Thailand to look for work
each day, Risking being shot. Many children cannot attend school as they need
to work to help their family survive. Protests by garment workers earlier this
year ending in four Cambodians being shot dead by police and 21 injured. The
protesters were asking for an increase of their minimum wage to $160/month or
about $5.30/day.
Health care in
Cambodia is poor at best and many do not have the money to access it, chronic
disease goes mostly untreated, and victims of accidents have to pay fee’s for
care that is not guaranteed to be of good quality. I have seen horrific
examples of this such as a woman with two fractured femurs who had paid all she
had to have her femur fixed at another hospital. She came to us, a few hour car
journey, with external fixation that had not realigned the fracture at all, and
the second fracture not even stabilised. I have also attended road side
accidents where young people have obvious fractures and head trauma, but
strongly resist my suggestion that they go to hospital as they don’t have the
money to pay. Currently there isn’t regulation of the standard of care in
Cambodia and unfortunately malpractice is common. Additionally there is little
in the way of mental health services in Cambodia, and these services suffer
similarly from lack of regulation.
Corruption is
still rampant in in Cambodia with the country ranking 160th of 177 corrupt
nations, 177 being the most corrupt and 1 the least, according to Transparency
International. The opposition leader Sam Rainsy recently highlighted the fact
that the undisclosed amount of money Australia is planning to give the
Cambodian government is likely to be siphoned off to various members of the
government and not go to the people who will need it.
A 7:30 report interview
with Rainsy has more detail: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4007692.htm
Cambodia also has
a history of revoking refugee rights. In 2009 Cambodia broke the UN convention
on refugee rights by deporting 20 Uighur Asylum seekers back to China.
There are also the
issues of dangerous roads, insufficient housing, education, and active land
mines.
Australia has previously
been thought of as a multicultural country where many different folks could get
along. More recently however Australia has hit international headlines for all
the wrong reasons appearing as a backward and racist nation, lacking in
compassion and commitment to working as part of the international community to
find solutions to the various issues we currently face.
Australia risks
losing it’s international reputation, and we risk losing our culture and
compassion to a prime minister who wants
to embrace bigotry and keep us quiet by working us harder for longer to pay
more for the things we need.
Let’s resettle
Asylum seekers in Australia.
Relevant links;
Transperancy
International;
ABC interview with
opposition leader Sam Rainsy; http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4007692.htm
