Four refugees detained by Australia on Nauru volunteer to resettle in Cambodia
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Version 0 of 1. Four more refugees detained by Australia on Nauru have volunteered to be resettled in Cambodia and are to have their bids assessed over the next few weeks. Related: Extended detention worsening depression on Nauru and Manus Island The three Iranians and one Rohingya from Myanmar made their intentions known “a few months ago”, Cambodian interior ministry spokesman general Khieu Sopheak, said. He added plans were now in motion to dispatch officials to the remote South Pacific island where Australia detains hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers. “We have been informed that there are four volunteers to come to Cambodia, and we are gong to send officers to meet them directly on Nauru,” Sopheak said. That delegation, which is expected to depart for the island before the end of the month or early October, would conduct interviews with the volunteers and then send the necessary paperwork on to the interior ministry. Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton spent two days holding “productive” talks in Phnom Penh last week in a bid to salvage the $55m resettlement deal signed a year ago by his predecessor, Scott Morrison. The visit was seen by some refugee advocates as an exercise in damage control, and came after Sopheak was quoted in local media as saying Cambodia had “no plans” to welcome any more refugees from Nauru. Sopheak was quoted this week as saying nearly 200 Christian Montagnard asylum seekers who slipped into Cambodia from Vietnam would have to return of their own volition or risk being forcibly deported. The Montagnard minority, who live mainly in the central highlands of Vietnam, faces systemic persecution from the Vietnamese government, which describes their De Ga and Ha Mon forms of Christianity as “evil way” religions. Related: Ali Jaffari dies after setting himself on fire in Perth detention centre Montagnards are frequently surveilled, harassed, arbitrarily arrested, and mistreated by state security forces, according to rights groups. Thousands have fled over the border into Cambodia. The second batch of refugees are expected to be put up in the same gated villa in southern Phnom Penh where the first four volunteer refugees – also three Iranians and a Rohingya man – have been sequestered since their arrival in June. “I think [they will be] in the same house, because it’s so big,” Sopheak said. The Myanmar man has requested, however, that he be sent back to his own country although other Rohingyas already living in Cambodia told Guardian Australia last week such a move was incredibly dangerous. The Rohingyas are not officially recognised by the Myanmar government and have been subject to persecution that has intensified over the past couple of years. |