AUSTRALIA MIGRANT POLICY SUCCESS: ONE YEAR WITHOUT A ‘SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE SMUGGLING VENTURE’
- Reporting to the United Nations Human Rights Council in March, Juan Mendez, that body’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, said aspects of Australian policy violate the UN Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. On that occasion the Sydney Morning Herald reports Abbott responded:
“I really think Australians are sick of being lectured to by the United Nations, particularly given that we have stopped the boats, and by stopping the boats, we have ended the deaths at sea.”
“The most humanitarian, the most decent, the most compassionate thing you can do is stop these boats because hundreds, we think about 1200 in fact, drowned at sea during the flourishing of the people smuggling trade under the former government.”
Abbott’s 2013 election victory was partly due to his stance on asylum seekers. Talking of those policies he says the best thing the Australian government could do to “uphold the universal decencies of mankind” was to stop boat arrivals, “and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
It is a lesson which Europe’s leaders are yet to learn, but in the light of recent events off Italy they may be forced to do so.
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