Posted on 7 April 2012 - 04:06pm
Last updated on 7 April 2012 - 09:14pm
MELBOURNE (April 7, 2012): Australia has already started
accepting refugees from Malaysia, mainly people from Myanmar, under a
two-dimension arrangement between the two countries, Miles Kupa, the Australian
High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur said.
It was agreed last year that Australia
would send 8,000 asylum seekers from Christmas Island to Malaysia to
process their claims for refugee status.
In return Australia
would receive 4,000 people certified as refugees by the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) over four years.
But the high court in Australia
blocked the move of asylum seekers to Malaysia and no progress has been
made since, chiefly because the Australian opposition party refuses to
co-operate with the Government.
But Australia is
committed and is receiving refugees based in Malaysia.
"We are in the process of taking this year's component of that
4,000-refugee commitment and those people are now coming to Australia,"
Kupa told ABC Radio.
"So we're living up to that side of the agreement, even though the
other part of it is blocked for the moment," he said.
Kupa said between 500 and 600 refugees had already arrived in Australia.
The Myanmar
group known as the Chin has "the prospect of being very good migrants,
very good members of our community here," Kupa said.
The High Commissioner said Australia's
new Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr remained committed to the asylum seeker
swap plan with Malaysia.
Kupa said the Malaysian authorities, particularly the Home Affairs Minister,
who is the key minister throughout the negotiations has remained committed to
that and working with Australia.
"I should note too that Malaysia and Australia work very closely
together on combating people smuggling, trying to round up the bad guys who
organise this very evil traffic. And that cooperation continues to be very
solid indeed," he said. -- Bernama
No comments:
Post a Comment