By Cameron Lucadou-Wells
FORMER Afghanistan foreign minister Abdul Kaliq Fazal doubts whether asylum seekers will be deterred by offshore processing.
Mr Fazal, who heads the Dandenong-based Afghan Australian Association of Victoria, said the findings of last week’s Houston Report recommending indefinite detention of asylum seekers in far-flung Nauru and Manus Island was a “cruel” system.
The federal government will adopt the recommendations in full. Offshore processing laws were passed in parliament last week.
“I personally think it’s not the solution,” Mr Fazal said. “It’s a way of keeping the issue out of the public eye for the time being.”
He said asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were unlikely to receive word of the hardline policy before setting sail from Indonesia, let alone in their home villages.
“These are people escaping war-torn countries and the associated atrocities and insecurity to live with their family and children and find work. I would doubt that half of the communities of these nations living in Australia would get the message. Many are illiterate who don’t understand the news in English and don’t read newspapers or listen to the radio.”
Last week, he offered his expertise to organise a touring party to travel to those countries to spread the word and to put a halt to the circumstances which have resulted in 600 asylum seekers being drowned at sea between Indonesia and Australia since late 2009.
Mr Fazal said Australia’s humanitarian refugee intake should increase from 20,000 to 27,000 a year as an incentive for asylum seekers to apply for visas rather than travel by boat.
