Limbo Land
The plight of the West Papuan people has all but been ignored by New Zealand media, much as the situation in East Timor was till it became an internationally fashionable cause in the late 90s.
Keith has just put out a press release asking the New Zealand Government to consider offering homes to some of the 43 West Papuans who braved a 450 kilometre journey to northern Australia to escape persecution in their country.
After arriving safe in Australia, the 43 boat people were interviewed and promptly shipped off to a detention centre on Christmas Island.
If the Australian Government is true to form, it is likely these people will languish here for months, possibly years, before their case is even considered.
New Zealand could easily offer to take some of these people and process them as part of this country’s usual process with asylum seekers. It would be far better than leaving in limbo in a detention camp.
It will be interesting to watch over the next few days whether or not New Zealand’s media consider this an important enough issue to focus on.
January 26th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Excellant idea. Are you going to guarantee they behave when they are in NZ?
January 26th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Are you going to guarantee some of our own citizens “behave” Marshboy ?
January 27th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Hey, I’ve known people who are part-Papuan, living in NZ, and they acclimatised just as well as Fijians, Tongans, Nuians, and any other Melanesian peoples who have come to our post-colonial, pre-multicultural nation…
January 28th, 2006 at 5:36 am
People-smuggling must not be implicity encouraged by NZ in any way, by accepting boat people we will do just that. Thats the hard truth IMHO.
Often these poor people pay their life savings to criminals who dump them, half dead, into Australia, if their boat doesn’t sink first. By making them less likely to succeed, they won’t come, as Australia has realised.
We could consider taking some of them as part of the 700-odd refugees we are obliged to take under the UN guidelines, and aim to repatriate them to their homeland if conditions improve. However in exchange NZ should expect some concessions from Australia, as we did after the Tampa affair.
The problem is NZ has a good quality of life because it has so few people, and as much as I hate Johnny Howard he is correct in his policy towards immigration (IMHO)- It must be managed and well organised, rather than a desparate escape from somewhere.
The situation in SE Asia is crazy- there are quarter of a billion people living there, many in terrible circumstances- but what really can NZ do? It would be nice if we could save the world, but realistically we cannot. Lead a good example and help with humanitarian aid, sure. But accept hundreds of boatpeople as a nice gesture? Not a good policy IMHO.