By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Dec 23 2007 (IPS)

While advocates of asylum seekers have supported the new Australian government’s plan to wind down part of the so-called ‘Pacific Solution’ for processing claims for asylum, they argue that the government should go further.

”I think the reaction of the Refugee Council and many other groups is that the Pacific Solution was a completely unnecessary and dehumanising way of responding to the situation of people arriving by boat and seeking asylum in Australia,” says Paul Power, chief of the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA), who welcomed the Rudd government’s announcement to scale back the controversial program.

The ‘Pacific Solution’ was introduced under the Howard Government in 2001 in order to stem what it regarded as an influx of illegal arrivals to Australia by boat. The ‘solution’ involved sending asylum seekers to offshore detention centres – where people would sometimes languish for years – on the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru and on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

Under the deal, the Pacific nations involved are believed to have received financial aid from Australia, which also covered all costs for the running of the camps.

Kon Karapanagiotidis, chief of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ACRC) – a provider of aid, advocacy and health services to asylum seekers – describes the ‘Pacific Solution’ as “appalling”.

“The human consequence and damage caused to all those people that have rotted away on those little island prison camps; it’s one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen done in Australian politics,” Karapanagiotidis told IPS.

During the campaign for November’s federal election, Kevin Rudd’s Labour Party pledged to bring an end to the ‘Pacific Solution’. Earlier this month, Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, announced that the seven Burmese asylum seekers being held in a camp in Nauru would be granted refugee status, thereby allowing them to be settled in Australia.

The detention centre on Manus Island is already empty, yet some 80 Sri Lankan asylum seekers remain on Nauru. The government says that it intends to resolve their cases quickly.

With the imminent closure of these offshore detention centres, mainstream Australian media has been quick to announce the end of the ‘Pacific Solution’. But while the government has signalled the beginning of the end for the system of detaining asylum seekers in foreign countries, other aspects of the ‘Pacific Solution’ remain.

As part of the ‘solution’, Australia enacted laws in 2001 which removed some offshore territories – including the Cocos Islands and Ashmore Reef – from the country’s migration zone in an attempt to deter refugees from seeking a safe haven in the world’s largest island.

This excising of Australia’s migration zone meant that asylum seekers who landed in these excised territories lost rights that they would otherwise have been entitled to. The laws meant that asylum seekers could not automatically apply for refugee status and enabled Australia to move them to a third country while their applications were processed.

These excised migration zones will remain under the Rudd Government, but a spokesman for Minister Evans told IPS last week that the government will review this in 2008.

Karapanagiotidis argues that the excising of Australia’s migration zone was part of an attempt to undermine the refugee convention – a United Nations agreement setting out the rights of refugees and the responsibilities of countries providing asylum to those seeking protection – a charge that the Howard government consistently denied.

“The idea of basically trying to circumvent and destroy the refugee convention (and) undermine one of the most critical human rights treaties on the face of the earth, all for political expediency and for self-interest is base politics at its worst,” says Karapanagiotidis.

Christmas Island – located in the Indian Ocean some 2600km northwest of Perth and 500 km south of Jakarta – excised from the country’s migration zone, was also used by the Howard Government as a detention centre for asylum seekers.

Despite telling IPS that the Rudd government is indeed ending the ‘Pacific Solution’, Evans’ spokesman says that asylum seekers will still be detained on Christmas Island.

Karapanagiotidis argues that the government should reverse the excising of the migration zones that occurred under the Howard government and close the Christmas Island detention centre. “It’s not good enough that they’re doing away with the ‘Pacific Solution’ but not Christmas Island,” he says.

“If we’re committed to our refugee obligations under the treaty, that would involve doing away with excised borders and processing people onshore,” Karapanagiotidis told IPS.

Paul Power says that the Refugee Council will also be advocating for the migration zones to be restored. Additionally, he believes that “one of the few things the Rudd government needs to look at doing is just calming down the shrill voices in the Australian population who see people seeking protection from persecution as somehow a threat.”

Both advocates want the new government to end the controversial mandatory detention of asylum seekers – a policy begun under the Paul Keating-led Labour government in 1992 – but given the potential electoral fallout that such a policy change could generate, Karapanagiotidis is far from confident of a successful campaign.

“They’re never going to do away with mandatory detention. I don’t think any government is going to have the political courage to do that,” he says.

Karapanagiotidis told IPS that he wants mandatory detention to be a last resort. “Unless there is a compelling public concern for our safety, let people out, do not detain them,” he argues.

Power says the ‘Pacific Solution’ impacted negatively on Australia’s reputation. “It was really sad that the politicians chose to focus on some of the world’s most vulnerable people – people seeking protection from persecution and conflict – to create what they saw as political mileage,” he told IPS.

Karapanagiotidis agrees, arguing that the ‘solution’ “did massive damage to our international standing”. But he is hopeful that the Rudd government can bring about real change.

“They’ve been making the right sounds, but we need to now see some action to follow it through,” he says.

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