Friday, May 16, 2008, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 9, 1429    

US refugee swap deal is scrapped: Australia

Canberra, Australia — Australia has told the United States it will no longer honor a deal to swap refugees who attempt to reach the two countries by boat, the Australian immigration minister said Thursday.
The informal agreement was reached a year ago so that the two allies could refuse to accept such asylum seekers. But no refugee has ever been transferred under the deal, and Australia’s new government has changed policy on the issue.
When the deal was struck, around 90 asylum seekers _ Sri Lankans and Burmese _ who were being held at an Australian-run immigration detention camp on the Pacific island nation of Nauru were eligible to be resettled in the United States if they qualified as genuine refugees.
Australia, in turn, agreed to resettle up to 200 Cubans and Haitians annually from asylum seekers intercepted at sea while trying to reach the United States and held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans said Thursday that Washington had been told that the deal was scrapped after his government came to power in elections last November. He did not say when the United States was notified.
Australia was no longer prepared to accept refugees held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, he said.
“I just made it clear that it’s inappropriate,” Evans told reporters. “We’re not looking for third-country resettlement and swapping our refugees for their refugees _ I never understood the proposal.”
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has dismantled the previous government’s policy of sending asylum seekers intercepted at sea to island detention camps to wait for years until another country agreed to accept them.
Evans said the deal with Washington was part of former Prime Minister John Howard’s plan to prevent these refugees from ever reaching the Australian mainland.
However, most have since been resettled in Australia and the islands camps closed.
The deal had been widely criticized by human rights groups. Doubts were raised about whether presenting Australia as a backdoor to the world’s richest nation would deter asylum seekers from journeying into Australian waters by boat.
An official at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra said Thursday she could not immediately comment.—AP