Australia Poised to Resettle Asylum Seekers in Cambodia
Plan to Send Refugees to Impoverished Southeast Asian Nation Faces Criticism From Rights Groups
Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, who is set to visit Cambodia to sign the asylum-seeker pact.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Wall Street Journal | 24 September 2014
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—Cambodia's government Wednesday said it
plans to sign an agreement with Australia on Friday after months of
negotiations to resettle around 1,000 asylum seekers currently detained
at an Australian immigration facility in the tiny South Pacific nation
of Nauru.
The proposed memorandum of understanding, which
Cambodian authorities said would be signed during a planned visit to
Phnom Penh by Australian Immigration Minister
Scott Morrison,
has drawn substantial criticism in both countries.
Representatives
from Mr. Morrison's office said he would be in Cambodia on Friday and
Saturday, without offering further details.
Human-rights
campaigners in Australia, meanwhile, have warned that any agreement
would effectively dump asylum seekers in an impoverished nation with a
questionable record on refugee protection.
Cambodia's government offered few clues as to what the
relocation agreement would comprise. It simply said Mr. Morrison would
sign a memorandum of understanding with Cambodia on the settlement of
refugees in the Southeast Asian nation.
Australia's government has robustly defended its border laws, which require asylum seekers arriving on boats to be detained for long periods in small Pacific nations such as Nauru.
Mr.
Morrison told an inquiry held by the Australian Human Rights Commission
last month that the policy had been successful in deterring asylum
seekers from making the dangerous sea voyage to Australia, despite criticism from the United Nations' refugee agency. He said only one boat had arrived by August, down from 220 in the same eight-month period the year before.
At times, Australian forces have towed boats back out into international waters.
Border protection was among the key issues in the election campaign that brought Prime Minister
Tony Abbott's
center-right government to power last year.
Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com
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