Australians Mark World Refugee Day with Anger

Australians marked World Refugee Day on Wednesday with protests and calls for government intervention on behalf of Australia's growing stateless population.

The refugee issue, particularly those involving people who arrived by boat organized by human smugglers, has become a flashpoint for Australian public opinion with passionate opinions on both sides.

The 2011 Global Trends Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), now simply known as United Nations Refugee Agency, published this week says 17,700 unaccompanied children sought asylum worldwide in 2011.

In an interview with Xinhua, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, Greens' immigration spokesperson, said that none of these children should be in detention and the laws must be changed so children are no longer detained as a matter of first resort.

"We agree with the UNHCR that Australia should do more to work closer with its Southeast Asian neighbors to boost protection options and reduce the need to board dangerous boats," Hanson- Young said.

Last month around 160 unaccompanied children were detained in Australia, prompting activists and refugee supporters to vent their anger and frustration on the Australian government.

Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition, who led a march in Melbourne, told Xinhua that the government has focused its attention on human smugglers and this has elicited strong public opinion against the refugees.

"The hysteria about the role human smugglers played and their supposed business model simply do not fit the facts. At least four boats this year carrying Tamil asylum seekers have come directly from Sri Lanka with no human smugglers involved," Rintoul said.

"Anti-human smuggling laws do nothing but make an already dangerous situation, more dangerous. They were introduced by successive governments for domestic political purposes. That's why these human smuggling laws should be scrapped." Rintoul added.

Over 2,000 protesters took to the streets in Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra on the weekend of June 17.

The rallies highlighted the fact this year is the twentieth anniversary of the introduction of the policy of mandatory detention.

Today thousands of stateless refugees languish in detentions centers across the country, often in extreme conditions, according to refugee advocates. Before 1992, those who arrived in Australia for asylum were assessed without detention.

Marcus Hampson of the Refugee Rights Action Network has said that for the last two decades, there has been a "hate campaign and fear campaign conducted by successive Australian governments against the refugees with the assistance of the commercial media."

"But for those twenty years, we've also had refugee rights advocates and activists fighting against this racism, fighting to uncover the truth, to correct the myths and to smash racism," Hampson told protesters. 

Source : http://english.cri.cn