Refugees arrive in Cambodia from Australian detention
First four refugees fly into Phnom Penh after Australia agrees to pay Cambodia $31m in controversial resettlement deal.
Phnom Penh, Cambodia -
The first four refugees involved in a controversial $31m resettlement
deal have been transferred from an offshore Australian detention centre
to their new lives in Cambodia.
The four migrants, who flew into the capital Phnom Penh on Thursday,
had been held in detention on the remote Pacific island of Nauru after
attempting to reach Australia.
Cambodian officials say the migrants include a Rohingya man from Myanmar, two Iranian men and one Iranian woman, all of whom were granted refugee status on Nauru and had agreed to be moved.
The four refugees were whisked from Phnom Penh International Airport
in a minivan, dodging waiting photographers and reporters, after their
plane arrived at around 10:30am (03:30 GMT).
Lieutenant General Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Cambodian
interior ministry, said ahead of the refugees' arrival that they would
be transferred to spacious accommodation in the south of Phnom Penh,
consisting of three buildings within a single compound.
The compound is "even more awesome than my house", Sopheak joked.
Australia signed the four-year resettlement deal with Cambodia in
September to allow those granted refugee status in Nauru to permanently
resettle in Cambodia, one of the poorest nations in Southeast Asia. The
two countries, however, have struggled to find anyone willing to be
resettled.
The UN and rights groups have criticised the deal, saying Australia should not be offloading its refugees to other nations.
No deal for Montagnards
The reception for the four is expected to contrast starkly with the
treatment of about 97 asylum seekers from Vietnam who are currently in
Phnom Penh, but are being denied access to the country's refugee
determination process.
While 13 Montagnards have been recently granted refugee status,
Cambodian government officials have said they have no intention of
extending the same status to the 97 who are currently sheltering in
Phnom Penh.
"It seems sad that four people whom Australia has castoff are getting
VIP treatment while 97 Montagnards who are much more vulnerable are not
even registered," said Denise Coghlan, director of Jesuit Refugee
Service Cambodia.
"But, I am very happy that the Cambodian government will offer
hospitality to the Rohingya and the Iranians [who arrived on Thursday]
and will hopefully offer it to all those who seek asylum here and not
only in Australia," she said.
The Cambodian government's historically close ties with Hanoi have
always weighed upon the treatment of the Montagnards, members of ethnic
minority communities that populate the Central Highlands region of
Vietnam.
Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia
division, said the recent treatment of Montagnards shows Cambodia's true
colours when it comes to meeting its refugee obligations under
international law.
“Cambodia clearly has no will or capacity to integrate refugees permanently into Cambodian society," he said.
"These four refugees [who arrived on Thursday] are essentially human
guinea pigs in an Australian experiment that ignores the fact that
Cambodia has not integrated other refugees."
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