In amongst all the media and political frenzy regarding the Tamil asylum seekers  refusing to get off some boats in Indonesia, a much greater and more problematic stand-off has been occurring in Thailand.

160 Hmong people, originally from Laos, have been kept in a detention centre in Thailand for the past three years.  Despite the UNHCR saying the people have been recognised as refugees, and four countries – Australia, Canada, the USA and the Netherlands – offering to resettle them, the Thai government considers them to be “economic migrants” and proposes returning them to Laos.

This report from a year ago provides a bigger picture of the sort of long running abuses in Thailand. It details thousands of Hmong refugees who have been locked up for years, agreements being signed between the Thai and Laos governments to return the “economic migrants” and refusals by Thai authorities to allow the UNHCR to enter the detention centres to make refugee assessments and determinations.

It is necessary for the Australian government to continue to work with Indonesia and other countries in our region to find workable compassionate approaches to the large number of asylum seekers in the area.

But Australia must not be complicit in facilitating human rights violations or mistreatment of asylum seekers and refugees (or unauthorised migrants for that matter). We should also get out of the habit of turning a blind eye to what other governments in our region are doing.

The more we know about what happens elsewhere in our region, the more obvious it becomes why refugees would risk their lives and rack up large debts to try to find safety in Australia.

Italy also recently adopted a law making it a crime to enter Italy without authorisation, punishable by a fine of up to 10 000 Euro.  They have also introduced other punitive measures for those refugees and migrants who do manage to be able to stay in the country.

These two articles from the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper provide reports on what life is like for some of the African refugees living in poverty in Italy.  The reporters spent some of their time in the coastal town of Agrigento in Sicily.  They note the irony that

in the central part of the city stands a Catholic church with the figure of a Black priest carved in stone perched high above in the church tower. It is a statue of Saint Calogero, an African priest who came to Sicily around the 14th century and is revered as the town’s patron saint.

A well-known Italian Bishop is said to have remarked that if the saint-priest were to arrive in Agrigento today, he would find himself in similar circumstances as the refugees who are detained and disdained.

All of this isn’t just a reason to beat up on the Italian government, but as a reminder of where policies can end up if an obsession with ‘tough’ treatment of asylum seekers gets out of control.  It mightn’t seem like we need a reminder of that in Australia, but Italy has now gone well past where Australia let itself go in 2001. They don’t even worry about using the pretext of pretending they are targeting people smugglers rather than refugees.

Mr Walgampaya, who speaks of course as a representative of the Sri Lankan government, has publicly stated that the asylum seekers “pose a threat to peace and security of Australia” and that “there must be Tamil terrorists” among them.

There is a mountain of evidence over many years of major human rights abuses by Sri Lankan authorities, including torture, killings and disappearances.  Of course, there were also plenty of grievous human rights abuses by Tamil Tiger leaders, but one hardly excuses the other.  Despite efforts to keep independent observers out, there is also evidence that this is continuing.  A report recently issued by the US State Department makes a strong case that war crimes were committed by Sri Lankan authorities and Tamil Tiger leaders in final months of the civil war earlier this year.

Returning people back to a country with this record when government representatives have already labelled them terrorists and threats to security is simply unthinkable.

It is undoubtedly the opposite of the High Commissioner’s intention, but the more he comments on this matter, the more certain he makes it that Tamil asylum seekers will be recognised as refugee and given permission to stay in Australia.

The future direction of a major aspect of Australia’s asylum seeker policy is in the balance right now, with potentially very significant future impacts for many refugees, as well as for regional relations and the treatment of people moving through the region.  The ‘tough & humane’ mantra of the federal government could end up tipping very heavily towards just one of those words – the key is which one it ends up being.

The Labor government made some significant changes on coming to office. Most important was the scrapping of the cruel and counter-productive temporary protection visa and the closure of the centre on Nauru.  Having done those things, a lot of what is now getting so much public attention about the so-called ‘Indonesia Solution’ is not really very new.

Australian has been cooperating with Indonesia on trying disrupt asylum seeker boats since the Howard era. Funding has also been provided for some time to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to process asylum claims lodged in Indonesia and to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to help with the basic survival for those still there and with possible returns to other countries.

What is new is that people are starting to pay attention and look at what all this entails, both in terms of treatment of asylum seekers and the overall cost. As reported in Crikey last week, independent and committed advocates such as Jessie Taylor and Kaye Bernard have travelled through the region gathering evidence of the conditions asylum seekers are being kept in for long periods.  Their findings are grim.  Some mainstream media journalists are doing the same, as shown in this report in The Australian over the weekend.

The simple fact is that the ‘accommodation’ many asylum seekers have been kept in ranges from adequate to appalling.  The Australian government, having gone on at length about the increasing cooperation with the Indonesian government, cannot now simply sidestep their responsibilities by saying the conditions are the responsibility of the UNHCR and IOM.

It seems we may be about to enter a major irony situation, whether the Coalition will be attacking the Labor government for funding the locking up of children behind razor wire and keeping refugees detained for long periods in terrible conditions with no certainty about their future.

It would be a welcome extra irony if  all of this attention and pressure on  the Australian government and their responsibility for what happens with the detention, processing and resettling of refugees in our region were to lead to a truly regional approach to effectively, efficiently and fairly manage this issue, with corresponding improvements in the way people in detention are treated in Indonesia (and ideally in Malaysia as well, where the treatment of refugee claimants is on the whole much worse again.

Such a result is a long shot, but as it is very unlikely the Australian government will reverse cooperation with other major transit countries in our region, we may as well try to apply maximum scrutiny and pressure about what is done there, and see if the standard can end up being lifted across the region.  Who knows, maybe regional cooperation and a recognition that taking in refugees does no great harm to a country might even lead to a more effective and safer process for assisting asylum seekers!  OK, I know that’s all very unlikely, but it will only be a chance of happening if the public scrutiny continues.

One of the big factors which assisted the Howard government in managing public perceptions under the Pacific Solution was a government in Nauru which was mostly happy to leave the whole thing to the Australian government – in return for various other forms of assistance – and even more importantly, performed the vital role of virtually closing the country off to any lawyers, journalists and other visitors from Australia.  When I first visited the detention centres in Nauru in 2003, the hundreds of refugees still there – including many children – had already been there two years with barely a single visitor from ‘outside’ the progression of Australian government officials.  That can’t and won’t happen in Indonesia.  The key question is whether people will keep paying enough attention long enough to ensure big improvements happen.

In Crikey’s daily email today, I wrote a piece examining some of the rhetoric regarding asylum seekers that various  governments around the world are using.

In short, I was surprised there weren’t ample examples of obnoxious rhetoric from government leaders and Ministers easy to find. No doubt I will now be sent hundreds of examples that I couldn’t find, but the fact one has to search harder for it suggests it is not as widespread as might be assumed.

Either that, or I have been so desensitised by the blatant, calculated demonisation of asylum seekers that came from Australia’s Prime Minister and some of his senior Ministers in the post-Tampa period in 2001 that every thing else seems mild in comparison.

However, examining this matter reminded me that what actually happens to human beings as a result of the policies of turning back refugee claimants is more significant than the rhetoric.  Disturbing details about this are very easy to find and provide much more sobering reading.

I’ve written a bit in the past about some of the practices in other countries. Italy is currently the most notorious, with their recent  deal with the Libya government to push asylum seekers back to that country undoubtedly leading directly to people deaths. Here’s one example of what Libya does:

Investigations by independent journalists and NGOs have shown that, on various occasions, the Libyan and Moroccan authorities have arrested and abandoned large numbers of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the desert, where many die of hunger and thirst.

Reasons why so many people try to flee right out of Africa are also obvious.

The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said Angolan soldiers have raped, beaten and tortured illegal Congolese migrant workers before deporting them across the border.

In 2006 Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said that border security should be stepped up to prevent illegal migrants from destabilising the country.

“We must be mindful about protecting our borders to prevent the entry of foreigners, because the country has become the target of illegal and organised entries that could destabilise it,” said Dos Santos at the swearing-in ceremony of a new interior minister.

Controlling movement of people isn’t just between the western world and the outside either.

The Saudi government has built the Saudi-Yemen barrier,  which is a physical barrier along part of its border with Yemen. “ It consists of a network of sandbags and pipelines, three metres high, filled with concrete and fitted with electronic detection equipment.

Saudi Arabia claims the barrier is “a necessary tool in protecting the kingdom from terrorism” and is “necessary for protecting their borders against an influx of illegal immigrants and against the smuggling of drugs and weapons.”

Those “illegal immigrants” include many Somali and Ethiopian refugees.

It’s a complex problem with no easy or perfect solutions – short of Utopian aims such as achieving world peace – but a baseline has to be that any solutions that involve pushing people back to imprisonment, torture and death are not solutions that should be tolerated.

• In Greece – 200 unaccompanied children in detention:

More than 850 people – including 200 unaccompanied children – are being held in shocking conditions at a detention centre for illegal immigrants on the Greek island of Lesvos, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.  … UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic said commission staff had visited the centre, which has a capacity of 250 to 300, earlier this week. Most detainees were from Afghanistan, he said.

• In Austria – Thousands in immigration detention on hunger strikes

“The way the Austrian authorities implement the current detention system is a breach of human rights,” said Heinz Patzelt, head of Amnesty International in Austria. ….

Rights groups say that although there are clear international guidelines that preventive detention should only be used where completely unavoidable and should not include minors and people with special needs, Austrian authorities interpret the law broadly. They say many migrants are put in detention for lengthy periods, including children and those with special needs.

They also claim that conditions in preventive detention are worse than in normal prisons.  Prof. Manfred Nowak, head of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights in Vienna, said: “The facilities are only police jails, often dating back to the 19th century, and they were originally designed to serve a punitive purpose. They are not suitable as long-term detention centres. Open detention facilities where people have the chance to move around freely and do sports and so on are needed.

• In London / Baghdad (& London again):

Britain deported 50 Iraqi refugees to Iraq, but the Iraqi authorities who boarded the plane allowed only 9 of them to get off, and then sent the rest back to Britain, officials confirmed Saturday.

During the episode on Thursday, the nine refugees allowed to get off the plane were those who agreed to do so voluntarily and who could prove that they came from southern or central Iraq, according to the minister of displacement and migration, Abdul Samad Sultan, in an interview on Saturday. Practically speaking, that meant that Arabs could stay but Kurds could not.

• And in Malaysia

Another six Burmese migrants have died while in detention in Malaysia because of a suspected waterborne disease.

Detention of migrant and refugee children in Malaysia.

Figures provided to the Malaysian Parliament show 2397 children were put in immigration detention in Malaysia last year, including over 800 from Burma.

Cordesman has a busy schedule in Australia, presenting seminars, giving media interviews, and meeting with government departments, as he outlines his support for a “shape, clear, hold and build” strategy in Afghanistan – “shaping” operations to “clear” and “hold” population centres, from where you can “build” better goverance.

Cordesman was scathing about the international aid effort over the past eight years (”Western contractors have often been as corrupt and inefficient as Afghan ones”), about the recent elections (”Karzai chose to turn an election he had already fixed to one modelled more on Iran”), as well as very certain in his conviction that a Taliban victory would also be viewed as a “massive strategic victory” by al-Qaeda. The US is reported to be reviewing their assessment of the links between the two movements, amid signs that the relationship has cooled.

Cordesman, however, maintains that the relationship is still close enough that the Taliban would provide al Qaeda with a sanctuary “if they won”.

The Obama administration is still deciding on forthcoming strategy for Afghanistan. And I’m still deciding on my opinion of the Obama administration…

I can report one US-related development: recent US public affairs seminars have featured a switch in catering, from trays loaded with Krispy Kreme doughnuts, to plates of (unbranded) biscuits and pastries. I thought this might have been a symbol of the age of Obama – he doesn’t look as though he scoffs Krispy Kremes – but apparently, it’s budget-related. Krispy Kremes expensive.

My thoughts about “AfPak” are complicated, long-winded, and still in process. But I can sum up my thoughts on the catering in eight words: Don’t like Krispy Kreme. Prefer the chocolate biscuits.

But as high as my opinion of Obama is, I really can’t understand why he has just been awarded.

There have certainly been some odd winners of this award in the past – Henry Kissinger probably being the most notorious – and in that context Obama looks good in comparison.  Undoubtedly Obama has also made some promising actions – not least his very significant speech in Cairo and his apparent determination to move things forward for Palestine and Israel.

But as much as I hope Obama succeeds in these areas and others such as nuclear disarmament, surely it is far too early to pass out awards on whether his approach will bear positive fruit.

It’s not Obama’s fault that he has been given this award, but it seems to be based on the possibility and promise of peace, rather than looking at the outcomes in the real world.

It is an unfortunate sign of how easily our priorities and perspective can be distorted. The arrival of a few hundred Sri Lankan asylum seekers is seen by some as a serious problem, even though those assessed as not being refugees are being returned.

Yet the Sri Lankan government continues to detain over a quarter of a million men, women and children in over-crowded, unsafe internment camps with barely a concern being voiced.  This piece by Jeff Sparrow notes that the silence about this situation extends to most other western countries too.  The piece also contains some descriptions from The Guardian and elsewhere about the awful conditions in the camps and other human rights breaches.

Human Rights Watch has done their usual thorough job of detailing the situation facing hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Since March 2008, the Sri Lankan government has confined virtually everyone displaced by the war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to detention camps, depriving them of their liberty and freedom of movement in violation of international law. As of September 15, 2009, the government was holding 264,583 internally displaced persons in detention camps and hospitals, according to the UN, while fewer than 12,000 have been released or returned home.

Human Rights Watch also list specific problems such as:

• Arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance;
• Inability to trace missing relatives: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which often traces family members, has been barred from the main camps since mid-July);
• Lack of protection mechanisms in the camps: The military camp administration is preventing humanitarian organizations, including the UN and the ICRC, from undertaking effective monitoring and protection in the camps;
• Conditions in the camps and expected deterioration during the monsoon;
• Lack of access to proper medical care;
• Lack of transparency and information.

But it seems the prospect of a few hundred Sri Lankans arriving in Australia by boat, some of whom are undoubtedly fleeing this situation, is a much bigger problem than the human rights abuses being inflicted on as thousand times as many people in the place they have left.

As Jeff Sparrow said in noting the minimal concern being expressed internationally:

That’s why the situation in Sri Lanka matters so much. It’s not simply because there’s something fundamentally wrong about mass collective punishment. It’s because if the world doesn’t speak out, you can expect see the model put into action elsewhere.

ADDENDUM: Given my comment on the importance of not remaining silent, it is appropriate for me to note a debate in the House of Representatives on this topic back on 1 June 2009.  The debate was to a motion moved by Labor Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke. All of the 9 speakers from both Labor and Liberal provided balanced and non-partisan contributions, with the exception of Don Randall, the Liberal Member for Canning, who basically took the line that all atrocities were the fault of the LTTE, and there is no substance to any allegations of wrong doing by the Sri Lankan government.

Reports continue to appear of dreadful conditions and treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in those same countries, such as Malaysia and Thailand.

Another recent example, reported in the Bangkok-based newspaper, The Nation, detailed here on The Irrawaddy website, is the death of two young Burmese Rohingya ‘migrants’, aged 15 and 19 in a Thai detention camp.  There were among 55 Rohingyas held in the camp.  In a further example of the complete absence of interest in genuinely assisting potential refugees, the UNHCR (the UN refugee agency) is being denied access to the camp.

“We have asked the Thai government many times for access there. We told the Thai government that we are ready to help them [the detained migrants]. We want to know what their protection needs are. But we are not getting access.”

The Bangkok Post later reported that the Rohingya asylum seekers were subsequently shifted to a detention centre in Bangkok.

The article makes it pretty clear that the Thai authorities see this solely as an issue of ‘illegal migration’, not an issue of asylum seekers or human rights.   The photo and reports accompanying the article gives some indication that the facilities the asylum seekers are being kept in is far from satisfactory.

The Australian government has recently started resettling some Burmese Rohingya refugees. The persecution and danger they are subjected to is very well documented, and many of those recently being resettled in Australia have been in refugee camps in Bangladesh for fifteen years or more.

The factors the Australian government has to balance in its efforts to work on this issue with neighbouring countries are difficult and complex.

But the simple fact remains that refugees only use people smugglers when there are no other viable options to reach safety and security from persecution. Cracking down on smugglers while doing nothing to create viable pathways for refugees will just make things more difficult for refugees, including a probable increase in suffering, dangers and cost.

ADDENDUM: According to this report I just found – also from the Irrawaddy:

Eighty Burmese migrants have been released from an immigration detention center near Kuala Lumpur International Airport with the help of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee office (UNHCR).

Yante Ismail, a spokesperson for the UNHCR in Kuala Lumpur, confirmed that the refugees and asylum-seekers were released from the detention facility on Tuesday.

Recently, 28 detainees escaped from the detention center. Six have been rearrested by authorities. The detention center has inadequate food and water, according to sources who asked not to be identified.

There are nearly 7,000 foreigners in immigration detention centers in Malaysia. Burmese detainees number around 2,800, according to the Bangkok Post, an English-language newspaper.

(the vast majority of the Burmese (some of who would have come from living for years in camps in Bangaldesh) would be asylum seekers)

In this photo taken on July 23, children detainees look out through their shelter at the Lenggeng detention center, south of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (Photo:AP)