By Mark O’Brien
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

CANBERRA, Australia — For the twenty-fifth time in the last month, another boatload of asylum seekers arrived on Australian soil Saturday hoping to find refuge.

A total of 32 Sri Lankans, including one girl, were intercepted on their small fishing vessel and taken to Christmas Island.  According to The Australian newspaper, the island has roughly 1,400 asylum seekers in detention facilities.  But the recent surge has the government scrambling to transfer many of them to detention centers on the mainland.

It is also calling into question Australia’s policies on refugees.

“The turn-back-the-boats option is what wee need if we are going to discourage reckless behaviour by people-smugglers and their clients,” said Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in The Australian, affirming his commitment to force asylum-seekers back to Indonesia despite warnings that the policy is dangerous and potentially illegal.

Many in the opposition party blamed Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who they said refused to restore border protection policies.

“Two years ago [Friday], Julia Gillard promised she would break the people smugglers’ business model by building an offshore processing centre on East Timor,” said Scott Morrison, an opposition immigration spokesperson, in a statement.

“Since that time, she has overseen the largest number of illegal boat arrivals under any prime minister, with 206 boats and over 13,600 people arriving on her watch.”

Saturday’s arrival capped a week that saw more than 200 refugees make it to Australia.  On Thursday, the Navy picked up 162 Middle Easterners after they sent a distress signal 50 nautical miles offshore.  On Friday, 38 Iraqis and four Indonesians were transferred to Christmas Island after their asylum boat was intercepted a week earlier.

“[The perception is that] everyday we’re being flooded by boat people who are cheating the system,” said Kon Karapanagiotidis, head of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Australia.

“Everyday the news is reporting another boat has arrived and another boat has arrived,” he added.  “It’s feeding this idea that we’re being flooded.”

Karapanagiotidis said that makes it easy to turn asylum seekers into “scapegoats” and a “political football” without any compassion or understanding for why they are refugees in the first place.

A recent report by the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees identified “a time of rising anti-refugee sentiment in many industrialized” countries.  According to the report, European countries on the Mediterranean Sea saw an 87 percent increase in asylum requests in 2011 compared to the previous year, due in large part to the Arab uprisings at that time.  Australia and New Zealand actually saw a nine percent decrease in 2011.

But as more asylum seekers flock to Australia now, some say the only way to stop the rush of refugees is to be more willing to help.

On Friday, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young warned that more people might be forced to risk their lives on boat trips to Christmas Island unless Australia agrees to share more of the regional asylum burden with Indonesia.

“There is a very real concern from those working on the ground,” she told The Saturday Age, “that unless there is a lot of work put into the relationship, Indonesia is going to get tougher on the asylum seekers and refuges who are here and make life even more unbearable for them, which is going to force people onto boats.”

“Unless we deal with that, there’s no way of stopping people from taking that dangerous journey,” she added.

Her comments came after two days of meetings with asylum seekers, non-government bodies, and Indonesian officials, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.  Unlike the government and opposition, the Greens’ prefer a regional approach that would see Australia take more refugees from countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

“The ALP and the Coalition accuse the Greens of not understanding this issue and being naive,” she said, “but the real naivety is thinking that pushing people anywhere else but Australia will stop them from coming [here].”

For further information, please see:

The Australian — In One Month, 25 Boats Arrive in Australia — 7 July 2012

The Australian — I Will Still Turn Boats Around, Tony Abbott Says — 7 July 2012

The Sydney Morning Herald — Share Refugee Burden, Green Senator Urges — 7 July 2012

CNN — Which Countries Take in Most Refugees?  Not the West — 5 July 2012