Request ICRC to Evacuate Asylum-seekers

Friends, there had been so many unnecessary deaths on the offshore detention centres [#1]. I am very concerned about the welfare of those detained/enslaved asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru. So therefore, I had written a request letter in December to the International Committee of Red Cross to intervene on the situation [#2]. I ask you to please help write/fax/email to ICRC to evacuate those asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.

Just in last two months, two asylum-seekers had died in Australian run offshore detention facilities in Manus Island and Nauru. One death on Manus Island was a Rohingyan man, named Salim Kyawning, from Burma/Myanmar. Salim couldn't speak a word of English and was known to his detained colleagues as the 'Flower Man' because he spend time collecting wild flowers [#3]. Salim Kyawning, 51, had been suffering from sever epilepsy, which he had never got a chance to be treated during that 5 years detention. He'd thrown himself from a moving bus, indicating there was a great deal of mental anguish that he'd suffered from that day.

The other young man on Nauru, named Fariboz Karami, who was only 26, had reportedly been in a state of sever depression for long times and that, in the last 5 years, he had asked several times to see a psychiatrist. Sadly, he was found dead in his tent at Nauru RPC, where he'd been living in the last 5 years [#4].

Coming from two different countries, what's these two men having in common has been that they are the "stateless persons". Being stateless, in most circumstances, they cannot be returned to their countries of origin. Look at the situations of Rohingyans, for example. Due to historic reasons, the successive Burmese governments had not issued any individual identification papers to persons within this "Rohingya/Bengali" ethnic community. The name "Rohingya" is not recognised -- i.e. for a right reason [#5] -- by the Burmese governments. Therefore, this particular ethnic community in Northern Arakan in Burma had become the "defacto" stateless. Once this kind of stateless persons have left their countries of birth, the governments there will not possibly be able to take them back.

The LNP Leadership in Government is totally clueless about what the statelessness meant, and that they had been pressuring all these offshore asylum-seekers to "Go back to where they came from". In the mean time, of course, the LNP Government had been granting the long-term and lucrative offshore detention contracts to the Transfield Services P/L and Broadspectrum. Such action by LNP Government tantamount to enslavement of these asylum-seekers.

Not only is this LNP Government clueless on refugee issues. The LNP Government is also politically inept to effectively solve the issue of asylum-seekers. The government had no means or plan to solve the offshore refugee problem during its term. The LNP Government is hoping only to hand over this problem once it leaves the office. The LNP Government, then, is hoping itself to move on scot-free. We must not let this to happen. The perpetrators of enslavement must be punished.

But, first and foremost my friends, please help write/fax/email letters to ICRC to arrange a proper evacuation of all asylum-seekers, which Australian Government had detained and enslaved offshore for 5 years.

Please do share this note widely; I am a grassroots refugee rights activist, working independently on this issue. Any of your help in this respect is most appreciated.

Regards, U Ne Oo, NetIPR

[#1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2018/jun/20/deaths-in-offshore-detention-the-faces-of-the-people-who-have-died-in-australias-care

[#2] http://www.aus4iccwitness.org/node/54 (My letter to ICRC)

[#3] https://www.facebook.com/lynne.murphy.148/posts/10155565493051769

[#4] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/20/you-will-be-responsible-a-mothers-warning-is-unheeded-on-nauru

[#5] http://www.rohingya-faqs.org/ ( Rohingya FAQs by NetIPR)