have often been refugees themselves<\/a>, motivated by concerns for the safety of their families or asylum seekers from the same country.<\/p>\nTen of 16 people convicted for people smuggling between 2001 and 2006 were indeed refugees themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was also clear that there is no \u2018people smuggling business model\u2019, only desperate asylum seekers who have no other way of getting to safety than to pay to take a boat to Australia,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition. \u201cIt is the government, not people smugglers that \u2018has blood on its hands\u2019. Criminalising people smuggling only makes boat travel to Australia more dangerous.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe result of Australia pressuring Indonesia to systematically detain asylum seekers is that there are hundreds locked up for years in Indonesian detention centres. The February killing of an Hazara asylum seeker in Pontianak is only the most recent shocking abuse suffered in Indonesia\u2019s detention centres.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as Australia refuses to resettle UNHCR refugees out of Indonesia, people will have no alternative but to get on a boat. Only 17 refugees were resettled by Australia from Indonesia in the first three months of 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than \u2018shock-horror\u2019 revelations that arrangements for boats were being made in Australia, Four Corners could have more usefully looked at the useless AFP prosecutions of Australian refugees desperate to get their families to safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust as was the case with temporary protection visas under the Howard government, It is Australian government\u2019s policy of linking the number of protection visas with the family reunion through the Special Humanitarian Program that is driving the families of refugees onto boats. The Department of Immigration are sending letters to refugees seeking family reunion saying that the numbers of Special Humanitarian visas for 2011-2012 will \u2018be the smallest in 30 years\u2019 and as low as 750.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not people smugglers, but the politicians, using asylum seekers as political footballs, who are playing with refugees’ lives.”<\/p>\n
For more information contact Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Four Corners\u2019 people smuggling program has only added to the demonisation that surrounds the media and politicians\u2019 portrayal of people smugglers. Rather than exposing a trans-national criminal network, Four Corners has revealed, what is so often the case, that people arranging boats for asylum seekers to come to Australia have often been refugees themselves, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}