SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s immigration minister accused human rights advocates on Tuesday of giving “false hope” to asylum seekers held in offshore detention centers, suggesting that they bore some responsibility for the self-immolations of two such people in recent days.
The minister, Peter Dutton, spoke a day after a 21-year-old Somali woman set fire to herself on the Pacific island nation of Nauru, where hundreds of people who tried to reach Australia by boat are being held indefinitely. The woman, identified by advocates as Hodan Yasin, was flown to the Australian city of Brisbane, where she was hospitalized in critical condition on Tuesday.
On Friday, a 23-year-old Iranian man who had also been held on Nauru died after self-immolating earlier in the week, apparently to protest conditions there and Australia’s zero-tolerance policy toward migrants who try to reach the country by boat.
Mr. Dutton said on Tuesday that those policies would continue. “People who suggest that resisting the government’s policy, that somehow that is going to twist our arm, we are not going to stand for that,” he said. “Advocates should reflect on their message of false hope and misleading portrayal of the situation in Nauru.”
“Their intentions may be honorable and they may be noble in their own minds, but they are causing serious harm and we are not going to tolerate the situation,” Mr. Dutton said.
Australia says that no asylum seeker who tries to reach the country by boat will ever be allowed to settle there, regardless of whether he or she is granted refugee status. Doing so, officials say, would encourage migrants to make the treacherous ocean voyages, often in unseaworthy boats, which have sometimes ended in mass drownings.
Human rights advocates and others have criticized that policy, as well as the conditions at the offshore detention centers where such people are sent, on Nauru and on Manus Island in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. That country’s highest court recently declared the center on Manus Island illegal, and officials from Papua New Guinea and Australia were to meet this week to discuss the fate of the more than 800 men held there.
“This is a policy in free-fall,” said Sarah Hanson-Young, an Australian lawmaker for the opposition Greens party, who said she was “pretty disgusted” by Mr. Dutton’s news conference. “It is a policy that is hurting people, breaking people. Let’s make no mistake about it, that is exactly what it is designed to do.”
On Nauru, an impoverished island nation just eight square miles in size, more than 400 men, women and children live in the camp facilities but are free to travel around the island. Hundreds of others have resettled in the community. But asylum seekers there say their plight is dire, with little meaningful work and no hope of moving forward with their lives, and some single women have said they were attacked.
An Australian lawmaker, Melissa Parke of the opposition Labor Party, said in Parliament on Monday that a young African refugee had been raped on Nauru and flown to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, for an abortion. “Australia bears ultimate responsibility for the plight of this young woman,” she said. “It is time for the government to correct a number of great wrongs and end offshore processing.”
Advocates said that Ms. Yasin had been returned to Nauru against her will last Wednesday, after months in Australia, where she had been treated for a head injury. On Monday, she walked to a bus shelter just outside the Nauru camp, doused herself with an accelerant and set herself on fire, said Pamela Curr, an advocate at the Asylum Seeker Resource Center in Melbourne.
Ms. Yasin had traveled alone from Somalia as a minor, making her way to Indonesia and from there toward Australia, where the boat she was on was intercepted, Ms. Curr said. She was held for a short time on Christmas Island, an Australian territory near Indonesia, before being moved to Nauru in late 2013, Ms. Curr said.
“She has a lively spirit, one that got her halfway around the world, probably on a barely seaworthy boat,” Ms. Curr said. “To then try to take her own life is devastating. When you burn yourself, it is not a cry for help. It is an attempt to take your life.”
Ms. Curr met Ms. Yasin last November, when she was in Brisbane being treated for a serious head injury, possibly after being thrown from a motorcycle. She had been in a coma and had no recollection of what had happened. “She isn’t someone we have a lot of information about,” Ms. Curr said.
“She said to me before she was sent back, ‘I hate this life. It is an unfair life,’ ” Ms. Curr said.
Ian Rintoul, a spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney, said that he had also visited Ms. Yasin in a hospital in Brisbane last year and that two guards had sat at the foot of her bed “the entire time she was treated.”
“It will be the same now,” he said. “And it will be very hard for us to know how she is doing, or offer her support.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/w...ion-centre-refugee-self-immolations.html?_r=0
The minister, Peter Dutton, spoke a day after a 21-year-old Somali woman set fire to herself on the Pacific island nation of Nauru, where hundreds of people who tried to reach Australia by boat are being held indefinitely. The woman, identified by advocates as Hodan Yasin, was flown to the Australian city of Brisbane, where she was hospitalized in critical condition on Tuesday.
On Friday, a 23-year-old Iranian man who had also been held on Nauru died after self-immolating earlier in the week, apparently to protest conditions there and Australia’s zero-tolerance policy toward migrants who try to reach the country by boat.
Mr. Dutton said on Tuesday that those policies would continue. “People who suggest that resisting the government’s policy, that somehow that is going to twist our arm, we are not going to stand for that,” he said. “Advocates should reflect on their message of false hope and misleading portrayal of the situation in Nauru.”
“Their intentions may be honorable and they may be noble in their own minds, but they are causing serious harm and we are not going to tolerate the situation,” Mr. Dutton said.
Australia says that no asylum seeker who tries to reach the country by boat will ever be allowed to settle there, regardless of whether he or she is granted refugee status. Doing so, officials say, would encourage migrants to make the treacherous ocean voyages, often in unseaworthy boats, which have sometimes ended in mass drownings.
Human rights advocates and others have criticized that policy, as well as the conditions at the offshore detention centers where such people are sent, on Nauru and on Manus Island in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. That country’s highest court recently declared the center on Manus Island illegal, and officials from Papua New Guinea and Australia were to meet this week to discuss the fate of the more than 800 men held there.
“This is a policy in free-fall,” said Sarah Hanson-Young, an Australian lawmaker for the opposition Greens party, who said she was “pretty disgusted” by Mr. Dutton’s news conference. “It is a policy that is hurting people, breaking people. Let’s make no mistake about it, that is exactly what it is designed to do.”
On Nauru, an impoverished island nation just eight square miles in size, more than 400 men, women and children live in the camp facilities but are free to travel around the island. Hundreds of others have resettled in the community. But asylum seekers there say their plight is dire, with little meaningful work and no hope of moving forward with their lives, and some single women have said they were attacked.
An Australian lawmaker, Melissa Parke of the opposition Labor Party, said in Parliament on Monday that a young African refugee had been raped on Nauru and flown to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, for an abortion. “Australia bears ultimate responsibility for the plight of this young woman,” she said. “It is time for the government to correct a number of great wrongs and end offshore processing.”
Advocates said that Ms. Yasin had been returned to Nauru against her will last Wednesday, after months in Australia, where she had been treated for a head injury. On Monday, she walked to a bus shelter just outside the Nauru camp, doused herself with an accelerant and set herself on fire, said Pamela Curr, an advocate at the Asylum Seeker Resource Center in Melbourne.
Ms. Yasin had traveled alone from Somalia as a minor, making her way to Indonesia and from there toward Australia, where the boat she was on was intercepted, Ms. Curr said. She was held for a short time on Christmas Island, an Australian territory near Indonesia, before being moved to Nauru in late 2013, Ms. Curr said.
“She has a lively spirit, one that got her halfway around the world, probably on a barely seaworthy boat,” Ms. Curr said. “To then try to take her own life is devastating. When you burn yourself, it is not a cry for help. It is an attempt to take your life.”
Ms. Curr met Ms. Yasin last November, when she was in Brisbane being treated for a serious head injury, possibly after being thrown from a motorcycle. She had been in a coma and had no recollection of what had happened. “She isn’t someone we have a lot of information about,” Ms. Curr said.
“She said to me before she was sent back, ‘I hate this life. It is an unfair life,’ ” Ms. Curr said.
Ian Rintoul, a spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition in Sydney, said that he had also visited Ms. Yasin in a hospital in Brisbane last year and that two guards had sat at the foot of her bed “the entire time she was treated.”
“It will be the same now,” he said. “And it will be very hard for us to know how she is doing, or offer her support.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/w...ion-centre-refugee-self-immolations.html?_r=0
