One of only four refugees sent to Cambodia under Australia’s $55m deal to move refugees from Nauru to the south-east Asian country reportedly now wants to go home to Myanmar.
Speaking in Phnom Penh, a Cambodian interior ministry spokesman, Khieu Sopheak, told the Associated Press that the 25-year-old Rohingyan man had contacted Myanmar’s embassy in Cambodia seeking permission to be allowed to go home.
It is not known why the man wants to return home. The four refugees, who are housed in a villa in the Cambodian capital, are not free to speak to the media. But it is understood he was recently visited by his father, who may have encouraged him to reunite with his family.
The refugee’s repatriation might be problematic, however. Myanmar does not recognise ethnic Rohingyans as citizens and may refuse him travel documents or permission to enter.
Muslim Rohingyans suffer intense persecution in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. They have been described as the “most persecuted people on earth”.
Rohingyans cannot move from their villages without permission, are refused access to education or to work in certain professions, and are subject to communal violence and attacks from security forces. The military-dominated Myanmar government has previously imposed a two-child limit on Rohingyan couples.
The man who wants to go back to Myanmar has been formally recognised as a refugee, meaning he has established he has a “well-founded fear” of persecution in his home country.
Australia’s deal with Cambodia to resettle refugees sent from Australia to detention centre camps on Nauru has attracted fierce criticism. Human rights group such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have argued that impoverished Cambodia, whose government faces a slew of human rights abuse allegations, is an unsuitable countries in which to resettle refugees.
“The Australian government is trying to pay Cambodia to take some refugees off its hands and its conscience,” said HRW’s Australia director, Elaine Pearson. “This isn’t a solution but rather a business deal at the expense of some very vulnerable people.”
In Australia, criticism has centred over the cost to taxpayers. Under the deal, signed last September by the then immigration minister, Scott Morrison, and Cambodia’s interior minister, Sar Kheng, Australia promised an additional $40m in aid to the impoverished country as well as$15.5m in resettlement, housing, education and integration costs for the refugees. The deal was not contingent on Cambodia taking a certain number of refugees.
Last week Sopheak said Cambodia did not want to take any more refugees beyond the four who had arrived in the country in June. “We don’t have any plans to import more refugees from Nauru to Cambodia,” he told the Cambodia Daily. “I think the fewer we receive the better.”
By phone, he clarified to the Associated Press that the agreement between the two countries to resettle refugees remains valid, “but at the moment we want to see the first pilot refugees that have already arrived here integrate into our society before we accept newcomers”.
The four refugees are living in the Phnom Penh villa at Australia’s expense. There is now no plan for them to move into community.
Australian ministers, including the prime minister, Tony Abbott, last week defended the agreement with Cambodia, saying it was ongoing and demonstrated “Cambodia’s readiness to be a good international citizen”.
The opposition’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, described the deal as an “expensive joke”.
