A boatload of asylum-seekers
arrives at Christmas Island yesterday amid warnings the UN Refugee
Convention is failing Australian border protection.
Source: The Australian
The Australian
Monday, June 17, 2013
PEOPLE-SMUGGLERS in Kenya and Somalia are telling Somalis seeking asylum they can easily get them to Australia through Malaysia and Indonesia. Australian Somali Association president Abdullahi Farah said he had been expecting an influx of Somalis arriving by boat as the message of an Australian option grew.
It comes as a woman was found dead on an asylum-seeker boat carrying about 60 Africans and people from the Middle East after it was stopped by HMAS Warramunga east-northeast of Christmas Island on Saturday.
The Australian Federal Police is investigating and will prepare a report for the West Australian Coroner.
The woman's body was brought to Christmas Island at approximately 1am yesterday. Her husband and three-year-old child were transferred ashore five hours later and offered counselling.
Mr Farah, who is based in Sydney, said brokers for people-smugglers in Nairobi were selling Australia as an alternative to the traditional route to asylum across the Sahara desert to Libya and across the Mediterranean Sea to Italy and Europe.
They were targeting Somalis who had crossed the border from Somalia
and were living in and around the Kenyan refugee camps of Dadaab, which
shelter more than 350,000 people."Smugglers are selling this
message to people that they can come to Indonesia from Malaysia with a
Somali passport and they can come here by boat. We were expecting this,"
Mr Farah told The Australian.
"Before, the people-smugglers with
Somalis were going to Europe, to Italy through Libya. And a lot of
people are dead and a lot of people are stranded, I think in Malta. It's
interesting now they are coming this way. There's more people maybe
coming."
As of last Friday, 11,819 asylum-seekers had arrived in
Australia on 175 boats this year. They included 102 Somalis. Last year,
excluding crew, there were 17,202 asylum-seekers on 278 boats. No
figures were kept on Somalis.
Somalis started fleeing their
country on the Horn of Africa after a civil war broke out in 1991 and
most who have come to Australia, mainly to Melbourne, settled as
refugees under the humanitarian program.
Refugee Action Collective
spokesman Ian Rintoul said the fact most Somalis were Muslims made it
easier for them to travel to Malaysia and Indonesia.
"When people
haven't got the possibility of getting the safety they need through
official channels, and that's true of a large number of the African
asylum-seekers, then they find other ways of doing it, whether that's a
leaky boat across the Mediterranean or a leaky boat to Australia," he
said.
"Once there's the beginnings of a community then you find
that it's one of the things that drives the numbers of particularly
families and children that are coming at the moment . . . for family
reunion.
"Very often their relatives have no alternative either than to try and find a way of getting here."
Immigration
Minister Brendan O'Connor said "irrespective of where people come from
they are subject to transfer to a regional processing centre and
returned to their country of origin if found not to be a genuine
refugee".
"The Gillard government is committed to deterring all
people from taking dangerous journeys by boat and stopping those
people-smugglers who profit from this evil trade," he said.
Opposition
Immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said: "The mere presence of
African asylum-seekers on boats shows just how far and wide the call has
gone out that Australia's borders are open."
A Customs and Border
protection spokesman said the woman on the asylum-seeker boat was
already dead when crew from the Warramunga boarded but he would not
speculate on the cause of death.
Others on the boat included
African women dressed with headscarves, parents holding small babies or
accompanying older children, and a woman put in a wheelchair once she
arrived on land.