Cambodians protest Australia's asylum plan: "How can Cambodia take refugees better than Australia," asks a protestor on the streets of Phnom Penh, as Scott Morrison firms up the government's deal to send asylum seekers to the poor nation.
Grim life awaits refugees in Cambodia
Sydney Morning Herald | 27 September 2014
Phnom Penh: Since she was 10 years old Srey Kuoch has lived in
a park within sight of the official residence of Australia's ambassador
in Cambodia.
She can't imagine life in the two-storey French-colonial
house behind high grey walls, where the Australian flag hangs limply in
the sticky heat of late afternoon.
On a good day Srey Kuoch earns $5 providing sex for mostly
Khmer men who prowl the park around historic Wat Phnom, a tourist
attraction that for years has also been a centre for sex workers, drug
users and beggars.
Srey Kuoch, a sex worker and drug user, hugs her
young son, Chan Vutha, in Wat Phnom Park, opposite the residence of the
Australian ambassador. Photo: Omar Havana
Now 25 and holding her three year-old son Chan Vutha, who has
no pants, Srey Kuoch says she would like to quit her life as a sex
worker and buy a street cart to sell coffee and soft drinks.
But she points to the needle scars on her arms. "I don't feel
right without heroin … I need to spend the money that way," she says.
A sex worker sits on one of the benches of Wat Phnom Park, situated in central Phnom Penh. Photo: Omar Havana
"I am careful now. When I went with a customer a few months
ago my son was lost for four days," she says. "He was found near a
market with a lacerated leg and bruises all over his body. I don't know
what happened to him but when I got him back he cried all the time."
Sou Sotheavy, a 76-year-old transgender social worker and
survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide, brought Fairfax Media to the park
to meet Srey Kuoch because she is angry that Australia plans to send
refugees to Cambodia, a country where, she says, the government cannot
look after its own people.
She says she empathises with the refugees as she listens to news of Australia's controversial plan on Radio Australia.
Sou Sotheavy was among Cambodians marched from Phnom Penh by the murderous Khmer Rouge in April 1975.
She spent the following three years as a refugee, forced to
move from province to province, singled out because of her effeminate
behaviour and often raped and brutalised.
"I know what it is like to be shunted from place to place as a
refugee," she says. "There is no safety net in Cambodia … no social
welfare, no pensions, no healthcare, little education for most of the
people," she says.
"Most Cambodians struggle to earn a $1 a day. Australia has a safety net and the refugees must be allowed to go to there."
Sou Sotheavy's stand is backed by most of the non-government
organisations in Cambodia, which have issued joint statements condemning
Australia.
A coalition of 21 organisations working to promote human
rights in Cambodia on Friday described the plan as a cynical attempt to
place refugees who had already suffered persecution in their home
countries and harsh detention in Australia into further hardship in
Cambodia.
Amnesty International called the plan a new low in
Australia's inhumane treatment of asylum seekers. The plan is also
opposed by the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, which only has a
small office in Cambodia and was excluded from negotiations that led to
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison signing the agreement in Phnom Penh
on Friday.
"Think about the refugees … they cannot speak Khmer. There
are no jobs for them. They will have no land. They will not understand
the culture," Sou Sotheavy says, adding that if they are given special
treatment that will be unfair to impoverished Cambodians, and could
cause trouble in communities.
Mr Morrison says the refugees who attempted to reach
Australia by boat are "quite innovative and entrepreneurial and I think
there would be opportunities for people with those sorts of skills and
enthusiasms" in Cambodia.
He says "support will be tailored to the needs of those as
part of a package of measures that will go to their resettlement, which
is designed to make them self-reliant as quickly as possible".
Many countries, including Australia, have people like Srey
Kuoch in dire need of help but no-one has to look far in Cambodia to see
chronic disadvantage in the country still recovering from years of
civil war and a genocide where an estimated 1.7 million people died from
starvation, execution and disease.
Families are living in Phnom Penh slums under tarpaulins.
Others scavenge on rubbish dumps. Vulnerable children beg before
tourists on Phnom Penh's riverside.
In rural areas most of the people live a hand-to-mouth
existence and while the country has made economic progress, it still
struggles to provide adequate services in areas such as health and
education.
Cambodia is ruled by a regime considered among the world's
most corrupt despite receiving hundreds of millions in foreign aid,
including an additional $40 million from Australia over the next four
years in return for the country taking refugees.
Cambodia's government, ruled by strongman Hun Sen, has a long
history of playing politics with refugees and using them as bargaining
chips in bilateral relations with countries such as Vietnam and China.
The most prominent case was in December 2009 when Cambodia
forcibly returned 20 UN-recognised Uighur refugees to China and then a
few days later collected a huge aid package from Beijing.
Sixty refugees already in the country want to leave and would
be destitute if they were not receiving support from organisations such
as the Jesuit Refuge Service.
Cambodian officials have made clear that any refugees who
arrive will be forbidden from engaging in politics connected to the
country from which they fled, a violation of refugees' civil and
political rights.
Cambodia has not taken steps to deal with what rights
advocates say is the serious discrimination and deprivation of rights of
ethnic Vietnamese, some of whom have lived in Cambodia for generations
yet are still stateless without access to basic government services.
"The Hun Sen government severely restricts the rights and
freedom of expression, assembly and association and state security
forces routinely commit killings, torture and other abuses with
impunity," Human Rights Watch says. "Those living on the margins –
including refugees and asylum seekers lacking employment, Khmer language
skills and social network – are at particular risk," the New York-based
organisation says.
"For instance, Human Rights Watch has documented the
arbitrary arrest, detention and mistreatment of undesirables housed in
squalid detention centres run by the Social Welfare Ministry, where
beatings, torture and rapes by guards go unpunished."
Defending the decision of his government, Mr Morrison says
Cambodian poverty has fallen from more than 50 per cent to around 20 per
cent. "I mean this is a country that is trying to get on its feet; this
is a country that is making great progress," he says.
Mr Morrison noted that Cambodia's population has doubled from the dark years of the Khmer Rouge period.
He said that rather than keep the country isolated, the rest
of the world should give them a chance to do positive things such as
co-operating with Australia on the resettlement plan.
"We say we should give them a go," he said.
Sou Sotheavy, who is also HIV positive and runs her own
organisation to help sex workers, says she fears the refugees will not
survive long in Cambodia after they receive Australia's initial help to
resettle.
"Australia has abundant resources while we have few … this is difficult for me to understand," she says.
No comments:
Post a Comment