UN to intervene in Australian government’s move against refugees

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Refugees
Sydney, Sept. 11, 2017 (dpa/NAN) Human rights groups on Monday condemned the Australian government’s decision to withdraw housing and food support to asylum seekers who are in the country for medical treatment from overseas detention centres.
The group also asked the UN to “urgently intervene.”
Two groups said that the government’s move, which was announced last week, was “an attempt to coerce” asylum seekers “back to harm and danger”.
The move will make asylum seekers “homeless and destitute”, a statement by Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Centre said on Monday.
The centre, along with the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, asked three UN special rapporteurs on housing, poverty and torture to call for the Australian government to halt the move.
The government said all assistance, including food, housing and transport, will be removed until the affected group of asylum seekers is deported back to the Australia-run offshore immigration centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
Local media and rights activists said as many as 400 people, including women sexually assaulted on Nauru and children born in Australia would be affected by the decision.
Daniel Webb, the legal advocacy Director for the Human Rights Law Centre, said: “the government is forcing people to choose between destitution here or danger and abuse elsewhere.”
“Making people destitute to coerce them back to danger are cruel, unlawful and fundamentally wrong.
“We are asking the UN to urgently intervene,” he said.
Lucy McKernan from the Geneva-based organisation GI-ESCR said subjecting vulnerable asylum seekers to “deliberate destitution is morally and legally indefensible.”
“It is also embarrassing to Australia as it trumpets its credentials as a candidate for the UN Human Rights Council.
“Rendering vulnerable people deliberately destitute is a flagrant breach of human rights,” he said.
Australia is seeking election to the UN Human Rights Council in November, which it is likely to achieve since France, one of three candidates for two free seats, dropped out of the race.
The Geneva-based special rapporteurs hold mandates from the UN council to investigate on specific issues and topics, like housing and inhuman treatment.
The request to the UN follows an announcement over the weekend by the premier of Victoria that his government will provide funding for housing as well as financial assistance to the asylums.
This will cover food, clothes, transport and medicine, to those asylum seekers who are in his state.
“(Prime Minister) Malcolm Turnbull might be prepared to stand by and let these families starve while they wait to leave Australia, but we won’t.
“We’re making sure these families will have a roof over their head, clothes on their back and food on the table,’’ Australia Labor politician and currently premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews said.
The UN and many rights groups have consistently criticised Australia’s practice of sending refugees and asylum seekers to offshore detention centres, where more than 1,200 people are currently being held. (dpa/NAN)
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Edited by Celine-Damilola Oyewole/Grace Yussuf