Letter to the editor: Cambodia 'solution' for asylum seekers is despicable politics

The Sydney Morning Herald

Refugee deal with Cambodia close: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Photo: Supplied

I have spent considerable time in both Cambodia and Malaysia, so I can’t understand how Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison can deem Malaysia an unsafe destination for refugees yet view Cambodia differently ("Cambodian deal to resettle asylum seekers imminent", August 11).

Surely they didn’t oppose the Malaysia solution purely for political reasons in an attempt to keep the boats coming while the Liberals were in opposition?

We are in need of an explanation before the government’s credibility slips even further because anyone who has visited Cambodia knows that at least half the country is already living in absolute poverty.

Peter Newberry Rose Bay

How can any intelligent person possibly think that Cambodia, which had an entire generation wiped out by the Pol Pot regime, has great poverty and whose religion is mainly Buddhist, can possibly assimilate our refugees from Nauru? This absolutely beggars belief. Julie Bishop and Scott Morrison must at least tell us how they will address these huge concerns.

Anne Collier Balmain

So now Australia plans to send refugees to a country which lacks the infrastructure for resettling them, has no government services

to assist them and where half the population lives in poverty. Surely that must take the cake in stupidity and heartlessness even for this morally bereft government. 

John Byrne Randwick

So the Australian government really is intent on perpetrating more cruelty against a group of traumatised asylum seekers fleeing terror in their own countries. Not content with locking them in far-away detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island, wealthy Australia is now dumping them in Cambodia – one of the poorest countries in the world. Ruled by a former commander of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia is notorious for political violence, corruption, forced evictions, and other atrocities. 

How can the Australian government ever again lay claim to compassion or humanity?

Tanya Crothers  Mosman 

I wonder if our government has thought about the opportunity costs of its asylum seeker policies. People making such perilous journeys by boat must surely have an abundance of courage and initiative and I feel miffed that these gifts are being offered to Cambodia and Nauru rather than being used to enrich our own communities.

Then there is the lost opportunity to improve our own psyche: unfortunately, brutalising asylum seekers also brutalises all of us.

Sylvia Florin Lilyfield

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/cambodia-solution-for-asylum-seekers-is-despicable-politics-20140811-102ptd.html#ixzz3AApGuBGB