Australia may have a difficult time trying to join the U.N. Human Rights Council, thanks to ongoing controversy over the potentially inhumane way the country treats refugees. A pregnant Somali refugee says she was turned away for an abortion in Australia after she became pregnant from rape, Reuters reports.
In a written statement, a 23-year-old Somalian refugee woman known as Abyan indicated that she had been raped on Nauru, a South Pacific island nation where Australia has been holding asylum seekers who live in prison camps. Abyan had sought out an abortion in Sydney, but was sent back to Nauru without the procedure.
Among other refugees, Australia has taken in about 12,000 Syrians fleeing their home country. At least 850,000 Syrians have fled their country to other countries since the civil war began in 2011.
Australia’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has defended the country’s treatment of Abyan, saying that her lawyers have misrepresented the situation. “We provided a charter flight for this lady to come to Australia, she received medical assistance and made a decision that she didn’t wish to go ahead with the procedure,” Dutton said on Radio National.
“I have never said that I did not want a termination,” Abyan wrote in a letter after she was sent back to Nauru. “I never saw a doctor. I saw a nurse at a clinic but there was no counselling. I saw a nurse at Villawood but there was no interpreter. I asked but was not allowed to talk to my lawyer.”
“Our client has the right to counselling before a termination and to understand the procedure, that is all we have been seeking and to represent her position as a refusal is disingenuous and cruel,” Abyan’s lawyer, George Newhouse, wrote to senior officials at the Department of Immigration and Border Protection on Friday before she was removed from the country. Abyan’s lawyer said that abortions were illegal on Nauru so his client will have to give birth.
Australian immigration officials have accused pregnant asylum seekers like Abyan of running a “racket” to get the federal government to let them stay in Australia. At least six other pregnant women have been denied transfers to Australia.
Abyan’s case highlights just one of the many barriers that refugees are facing to get asylum or some form of humanitarian relief in Australia, which receives mostly asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, or Myanmar (Burma). Since December 2013, Australia adopted a tough policy of intercepting migrant boats and towing them back to Indonesia or sending asylum seekers on inflatable lifeboats, according to the BBC. Prime Minister Tony Abbott boasted of “20 successful turn-back operations,” about 633 asylum seekers, stating that the country would stop the boats “by hook or by crook.”
The U.N. refugee agency reported in June that Australia had paid human smugglers to help turn asylum seekers from Sri Lanka, Bagladesh, and Myanmar who were intercepted by the Indonesian navy. The asylum seekers were transferred to an Indonesian customs vessel for four days before they were sent to Indonesia, CNN reported at the time.
At the time, Dutton insisted, “If people smugglers see ventures getting to Australia successfully — even one venture — that is a green light for the people smugglers to be back in business.”
The tough Australian official response to refugees stands in stark contrast to what some European leaders have been urging since the Syrian civil war, notably a more humane response to the refugee crisis, such as opening their borders and finding an EU-wide solution. Though Germany has since introduced border controls in September, the country expects a total of 800,000 refugees this year. But in Australia, refugees are turned to offshore processing areas in Papua New Guinea and Naura, “with no prospect of durable settlement in Australia,” according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Activists have condemned the living conditions in the Papua New Guinea and Nauru camps, citing “poor hygiene, cramped conditions, unrelenting heat and a lack of facilities,” problems that are leading to “physical and mental health issues among detainees.” At least two Iranian men have died in the camps, one man declared brain dead after a severe foot infection, and another man was beaten to death by guards and local Papua New Guinea residents.
“Our harsh and cruel treatment of asylum seekers and refugees is damaging our international reputation and damaging our ability to advance our national interest, whether it’s through being elected to the Human Rights Council … or in other negotiations,” Hugh de Kretser, the executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, told Reuters.