Word: asylum
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...seemed like old times last week when Philip Ruddock stepped forward to defend Australia's immigration stance. Five years ago, as Immigration Minister, he steered into law the so-called Pacific Solution to discourage boatloads of asylum seekers. Now, as acting Immigration Minister, he was championing the latest version of that policy against criticism from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Australia was doing nothing wrong, he insisted. Under the new measures, revealed last month, it "will meet its international refugee protection obligations...
...Geneva, unhcr spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis called the planned change "an unfortunate precedent, being for the first time, to our knowledge, that a country with a fully functioning and credible asylum system, in the absence of anything approximating a mass influx, decides to transfer elsewhere the responsibility to handle claims made actually on the territory of the state." Coming amid tension with Indonesia over the granting of three-year visas to a group of independence activists from West Papua province, the policy shift has brought accusations of appeasement. But it's also raised questions about Australia's commitment...
...emphasized the "need to differentiate between those directly fleeing and those making secondary movements for migration reasons." Under the new policy, Foster says, even those coming directly to Australia will be penalized by indefinite detention on remote islands without the access to courts and independent review tribunals available to asylum seekers in Australia...
...unhcr last week reported that refugee numbers - around 9 million people worldwide - are the smallest in 25 years. But many European governments have watched Australia's offshore processing experiment "with considerable interest," says Christopher McDowell, director of the London-based Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees. When the Pacific Solution was first unveiled, McDowell says, European officials were "clamoring to meet" then Immigration Minister Ruddock "to glean as much as they could about the proposals...
...Afghan Intolerance Re "A Convert's Plight" [april 3], on the case of Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who was prosecuted for converting to Christianity and eventually found asylum in Italy: As a British-born Muslim with royal Afghan ancestry, I find it deeply disturbing that Rahman was treated unfairly because of a corrupt interpretation of Islamic law. Tribal leaders intentionally misinterpret Islamic law to maintain power. No one should be forced to accept Islam, for submitting to coercion is not the same as heartfelt acceptance. Such twisted and extreme misuse of Islamic law affects Muslims as much as it affects...