Australia
struggles to save refugee agreement after Trump's fury at 'dumb deal'
Malcolm
Turnbull adamant that resettlement of up to 1,250 refugees detained
by Australia will take place, but some officials say privately deal
now ‘can’t survive’
Katharine Murphy in
Canberra and Ben Doherty in Sydney
Thursday 2 February
2017 07.34 GMT
Australia is
scrambling to save its agreement to resettle refugees in the US after
Donald Trump raged publicly at “a dumb deal” and told the
country’s prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in private it was the
“worst deal ever”.
The US president
took to Twitter late night in Washington to condemn the refugee swap
and brand the asylum seekers held in camps on Nauru and Manus Island
“illegal immigrants”.
His intervention
came after the Washington Post reported that Trump had despaired of
the deal when talking to Turnbull on Sunday (Australian time), told
him that the conversation was the worst of his phone calls with world
leaders that day, and then abruptly brought the 25-minute call to a
close.
Trump’s pledge to
“study” the agreement forced a public response from the
Australian prime minister.
Turnbull dug in,
saying emphatically in radio interviews he had a personal commitment
from the president “confirmed several times now by the [US]
government”.
“We have a clear
commitment from the president,” Turnbull told Melbourne radio
station 3AW. “We expect that the commitment will continue.”
But a departmental
source with knowledge of the deal acknowledged: “It’s over. It
can’t survive … it was never going to survive Trump’s
immigration ban.”
Details of the angry
Trump call came only hours after it was reported that a leaked
transcript of a call between the US president and his Mexican
counterpart had Trump saying he could send troops south of the border
to take care of “bad hombres”.
The Associated
Press, which cited the leaked transcript, said Trump told Enrique
Peña Nieto: “You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your
military is scared.”
The hombres (men) in
question are believed to be the drug cartels.
Trump’s fury over
the Australian deal appeared to be mostly directed at the former
president Barack Obama rather than Turnbull. But some US politicians
expressed dismay that the new president was threatening the close
relationship between the two countries.
Trump, according to
the Post report, accused Australia of seeking to export the “next
Boston bombers”.
The report said the
friction between the two leaders “reflected Trump’s anger over
being bound by an agreement reached by the Obama administration to
accept refugees from Australian detention sites even while Trump was
issuing an executive order suspending such arrivals from elsewhere in
the world”.
The Post’s report
said Trump abruptly ended the call with Turnbull but the Australian
prime minister denied that element of the report, saying the
conversation had ended courteously.
While he declined to
be drawn on other details, saying Australia had “very strong
standards” about confidentiality when leaders spoke to other
leaders, and followed diplomatic protocols, revealing only what had
been mutually agreed – Turnbull acknowledged the conversation had
been “frank and forthright”.
The deal brokered
between Obama and Turnbull last November originally forecast the
resettlement of up to 1,250 refugees from Australia’s offshore
detention islands of Manus Island and Nauru.
Both Australian-run
detention camps have been the subject of sustained criticism by the
UN, human rights groups and other nations over systemic sexual and
physical abuse of those detained, including rapes, beatings, and the
murder of one asylum seeker by guards; child sexual abuse; chronic
rates of self-harm and suicide; dangerous levels of sustained mental
illness, harsh conditions and inadequate medical treatment leading to
several deaths.
The majority of the
refugees held on the detention island by Australia – most for more
than three years – are Iranian, one of the nationalities named
under Trump’s sweeping immigration bans announced last weekend.
There are also
significant cohorts of Iraqis, Somalians and Sudanese, also banned
from entering the US.
On the detention
centre island of Manus Island and Nauru, refugees report widespread
disenchantment after more than three years of detention without trial
or charge, and another dashed hope of resettlement.
Following Trump’s
executive order banning refugee intakes from seven Muslim-majority
countries, an Iranian teenage refugee on Nauru attempted to hang
himself at the processing centre on the island. He was taken by
police and held in jail.
One refugee on
Nauru, who did not wish to be named for fear of repercussions, told
the Guardian: “Everyone has the same feeling: tired and
disappointed – no hope and no more patience – for the guys
specially, women and the children.”
On Manus Island,
Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani, a refugee who has been held in
detention for more than three years, said Trump would humiliate
Australia over the deal.
“I wonder how
Australian politicians do not see that Trump cannot accept the deal
because it would hurt himself politically. He cannot because of
ideological reasons. He is building a wall, how can he take the
refugees from Australia?”
The chaotic nature
of Trump’s administration has been revealed in the past few days
with contradictory reports of whether the Republican administration
would honour the deal struck by Obama.
The deal was
confirmed by White House spokesman Sean Spicer, before being walked
back hours later in a phone call from another presidential aide. It
was then confirmed by the state department, and further by the US
embassy in Canberra, before the president’s tweet appeared to end
any hope the deal could progress.
Earlier in the day,
the US state department had insisted the deal was on. “President
Trump’s decision to honour the refugee agreement has not changed,”
a US embassy spokesperson in Canberra said in a statement.
Trump’s use of the
description “illegal immigrants” is loaded and wrong.
It is not illegal to
arrive in a foreign country without a visa or other documents in
order to seek asylum: international law permits it, as does
Australian domestic law.
The vast majority of
the people held on both of Australia’s offshore detention islands
have been found to be refugees – that is they have a well-founded
fear of persecution in their homeland and they are legally owed
protection.
It is unlawful to
forcibly return those people to their home country – the principle
of non-refoulement.
On Manus Island, of
859 people finally assessed, 669 – 78% – have been found to be
refugees, 190 have been found not to have a claim for protection.
On Nauru, of 1,200
refugee status determinations, 983 people, 82%, have been found to be
refugees, while 217 were refused refugee status.
The deal with
Australia does not commit the US to unconditionally accepting any
number of refugees from Australia’s offshore detention islands. The
deal only commits the US to allowing refugees to “express an
interest” in being resettled in America. Any, even all, refugees
may be rejected during the “extreme vetting” process.
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