Boundless plains to share?

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 160^th 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;

http://www.transparency.org/country#KHM

ABC interview with opposition leader Sam Rainsy; http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2014/s4007692.htm