EU Referendum


Asylum: irony, inertia and hypocrisy


31/01/2015



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Completely unreported in the British media (and almost everywhere else) is an longstanding confrontation between the governments of Afghanistan and Norway over the expulsion of Afghan asylum seekers (including women and unaccompanied children).

Not only has Afghanistan warned Norway that forcibly returning expulsion of the Afghan refugees will have serious consequences on bilateral relations and cooperation between the two nations, it is also saying that it is no longer prepared to accept forced returns.

A statement from the Afghani Ministry of Foreign affairs further adds "that Afghanistan is a dangerous place to be, the country has huge economic problems, and there is a lack of shelter, jobs and education". The Afghan authorities thus insisted that the return of the Afghan refugees must be voluntary, referring to an agreement between the two nations on repatriation.

This is entirely confirmed by the Norwegian language newspaper Bergens Tildende, which has a copy of the Afghan statement and a full account of the protest, complete with an update from today.

However, no one with any understanding of the wider issues could fail to be struck by the irony of the Norwegian action, in seeking to reduce the large number Afghan refugees who have migrated to Norway and sought to set up home there.

Specifically, it was the Norwegian government back in August 2001 which took such an active part in trying to get the Australian government to accept 438 Afghan refugees who had been picked up by the Norwegian cargo ship, the MV Tampa off Christmas Island to the north-west of the Australian coast.

The Master of the Tampa, Captain Arne Rinnan, had been responding to an emergency message from the Rescue Co-ordination Centre Australia, and had been guided by an Australian Customs aircraft to the 20 metre wooden fishing boat, the Palapa 1, which was carrying the refugees.

But, much to his consternation, when he sought to offload his human cargo on the Australian-owned Christmas Island, the Australian authorities refused him permission to enter Australian waters.

When, after declaring a state of emergency, he defied his instructions, the Australians landed an armed SAS team on board, which sought to force him to leave, the government insisting that no asylum seeker on board the Tampa would set foot on Australian soil.

The ensuring crisis was finally resolved through the intervention of the Australian High Court, and the assistance of Papua New Guinea, and then the island nation of Nauru and New Zealand, with the participation of the Norwegian government, which had lobbied the Australians to allow the Afghans to disembark and be processed as refugees.

The whole affair raised serious questions as to the interpretation and adequacy of international law, many of which remain unresolved. But the one thing the so-called "Tampa affair" did do was trigger the adoption of a new Australian strategy for dealing with what were known as Irregular Maritime Arrivals. This became the "Pacific Solution", defined by then Prime Minister John Howard in terms of him "asserting the right of this country to decide who comes here".

The overt aim of the "Pacific Solution" was to deter future asylum seekers from making the dangerous journey to Australia by boat, on the premise that once would-be asylum-seekers they knew that their trip would probably not end with a legitimate claim for asylum in Australia, there would be dissuaded from attempting to gain entry by this means.

The essence of the policy was to intercept asylum seekers at sea and convey them to detention centres in the territories of third countries, specifically in the island nation of Nauru and Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. 

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Those who then qualified as refugees were offered protection in the territories in which they had been deposited or, in a limited number of cases, resettlement in countries throughout the world, including those in Europe and in the United States. Failed asylum seekers were returned to their countries of origin, or detained indefinitely on the islands.

What has been quietly forgotten, though, is that the elements of this policy were promoted by Tony Blair in March 2003, on the basis of a concept paper produced by the Home Office entitled: "New International Approaches to Asylum Processing and Protection".

Asylum seekers would be sent to "regional protection zones" outside the EU and held in "transit processing centres" while their applications were considered. The centres could be in Russia, the Ukraine or another eastern European country. Albania had also been considered. In the longer term, the Government foresaw the establishment of UN safe havens that would offer protection to refugees in regions close to the main areas of global conflict.

Speaking later, Blair observed that the nature and volume of asylum claims to the UK had changed radically, and the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees had started to show its age.

However, to cut a long story short, the idea was given a lukewarm response by the EU, although it was later picked up by Germany, with the support of Italy, for discussion at EU level. Unfortunately, it was blocked first by Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso, of Melilla and Ceuta fame, on "humanitarian" grounds, and then by France's Dominique de Villepin.

Effectively dead in the water, it was nevertheless resuscitated by the then Conservative leader, Michael Howard, who put immigration and asylum at the heart of the 2005 general election campaign.

What made the plan very different is that Michael Howard, unlike the Australians and Tony Blair, recognised that this could not be done within the framework of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and promised that a new Conservative government would withdraw from it.

With rhetoric remarkably similar to that used by the Australian prime minister four years before (also during an election campaign), Howard declared: "What we ultimately want to do is to say that no one should apply for asylum in Britain. After all, if you think about it, you can only apply for asylum in Britain today if you've entered the country illegally or by deception. It's an invitation to people to break the law".

A future Tory government, he said , would only take genuine refugees via the UNHCR, at a rate of 15,000 people a year. "Then", he said, "we really would be giving sanctuary to those who are fleeing persecution and torture and not those who simply have enough money to pay the people smugglers".

Interestingly, of the Blair version of the plan, Amnesty International had observed that it clearly represented an attempt to circumvent important domestic and international legal instruments, including the Refugee Convention. It also contravened the intent and purpose of the right to seek and enjoy asylum set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Bizarrely, though, when it came to the Howard plan, Blair himself condemned it – even though it was a version of his own. It was, he said, "incoherent babble". The idea of sending asylum seekers to regional processing centres was a "fantasy island" policy.

It was left to Howard to defend the plan. "I'm interested in doing the right thing for the people of this country", he said. "I believe that we have to bring immigration under control, we have to limit the circumstances that people apply for asylum in this country". 

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But, within a month of winning the general election, the new Blair government had formally abandoned the plan, which was actually still on the table after Blair had proposed it. This left the UK government processing a growing number of refugees, while trying desperately and failing to find homes for an increasingly larger number of failed asylum seekers, eventually having to allow them to stay – exactly the problem the Norwegians are now confronting.

As for the Australians, after abandoning their "Pacific Solution" in 2008, the Abbott government launched something very similar under the title Operation Sovereign Borders.

Of dubious legality, if it does not actually contravene the 1951 Convention, it drives a cart and horse through the spirit of the thing, making out the Australians to be the ultimate hypocrites as they pretend to be functioning members of the international community while effectively ignoring international conventions – as indeed they did in the "Tampa affair".

At least our own Michael Howard had the intellectual coherence and the honesty to recognise that a large part of the problem was the UN Convention, one that even Blair conceded was "showing its age". To be consistent, if the Australians are to continue their policy, they should at least do the decent thing and withdraw from it, as indeed we must.

How utterly bizarre can you get, then, when UKIP, in offering 100 reasons to vote for it, has for its 76th item: "Protecting genuine refugees by returning to the UN Convention of Refugees principles".

When the Convention is actually part of the problem, and both Conservatives and Labour have pointed to the need to resolve its limitations, and the Australians effectively have to ignore it in order to construct a halfway effective policy, only amateurs such as Ukip could stand up and support it.

Strangely, though, the party does not seem to support the Australian asylum policy – but then, if it did, it would be trailing in the wake of the Conservative Michael Howard, and that would never do.