Transcript E&OE
3 November 2009
Interview with Tony Jones, ABC Lateline
Subjects: Fiji, Sri Lanka, asylum seekers.
TONY JONES: Well as we said earlier a diplomatic drama is unfolding in Fiji tonight with the military leader Frank Bainimarama expelling Australia's High Commissioner and his New Zealand counterpart from the country. Both men have been given 24 hours to leave. This move comes after Fiji's Chief Justice accused Australia and New Zealand of interfering with the operations of Fiji's judiciary.
Chief Justice Gates claims consular officials told a number of Sri Lankan judges they would be banned from entering Australia or New Zealand if they took up their appointments on the Fiji bench.
Well just a short time ago I caught up with the Foreign Minister Stephen Smith to discuss the situation in Fiji and the issues surrounding the asylum seeker debate.
TONY JONES: Stephen Smith, thanks for joining us.
STEPHEN SMITH: Pleasure Tony.
TONY JONES: Let's start by getting your reaction to the expulsion from Fiji of the Australian and New Zealand High Commissioners.
STEPHEN SMITH: It's very disappointing. It runs the risk of Fiji further isolating itself, not just from Australia and New Zealand and the Pacific but from the international community generally. My advice is that we'll receive formal advice of the expulsion of our High Commissioner tomorrow morning, Fiji time. Once I've received that official and formal notification, then, tomorrow morning, I'll announce what steps Australia is proposing to take.
TONY JONES: Was this, as stated, in retaliation for not allowing Sri Lankan judges to transit through Australia and New Zealand to Fiji or was there something more to this?
STEPHEN SMITH: Well that's a misunderstanding or a mis-statement of the facts. Australian officials made it clear to some Sri Lankan judges who were considering appointment to the Fiji judiciary that if they accepted appointment as members of the Fiji judiciary then Australia's travel bans would apply to them, effectively as officials appointed by the Bainimarama interim regime. If you remember the facts and the history earlier this
year, Commodore Bainimarama abrogated the constitution. As part of the abrogation of the constitution, he effectively withdrew the commission of judges. Some were reappointed. The process for reappointment was effectively at Commodore Bainimarama's wishes rather than a more complete and formal judicial appointment system that they had in the past.
We made it clear to Fiji that if judges were appointed in this manner, that we would regard them as effectively Fiji officials and they would be subject to our travel restrictions, as other regime appointed officials are. That's essentially the reason why Fiji has responded in this way. They've done exactly the same thing with New Zealand because New Zealand has adopted the same position.
We made it clear to Fiji that, as is the case with our travel sanctions and travel bans, we would give consideration on a case-by-case basis to travel. We've waived our bans in the past for humanitarian and other reasons, including medical treatment reasons, but Commodore Bainimarama has chosen to go down this path. It's most regrettable and in a matter of minutes and hours, rather than hours and days, I will announce what Australia's response to this action is. But it's deeply regrettable and we're gravely concerned at Fiji's continual withdrawal from the international community.
TONY JONES: Are we going to see tit for tat expulsion? Is that the sort of thing you're hinting at?
STEPHEN SMITH: If I was going to do it on the basis of tit for tat then I would announce it now on your show. I want to give some thought to it but people should understand that my starting point will be a proportionate response. More often than not in these circumstances, and this will be, for example, the first occasion that a High Commissioner from Australia to Fiji has effectively been shown the door, a proportionate response in these circumstances is often required to reflect the opprobrium, not just of Australia and New Zealand but I think the opprobrium of the international community for the way in which Fiji is conducting itself. I've also of course, as you would expect, been in close contact with my New Zealand counterpart, Foreign Minister McCully, and I'm expecting that New Zealand will announce its response tomorrow as well.
TONY JONES: Okay very briefly because we have other issues to deal with, how serious a severing of relations is this?
STEPHEN SMITH: I'm very worried by it. I had contact with Commodore Bainimarama at the General Assembly in New York in September. In September as well I indicated to Fiji that we would upgrade the status of their acting High Commissioner in Canberra to full status. I was hopeful that things like that would see - and I put it, once the dust had settled from their suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum and their suspension from the Commonwealth - the chance to find a way back into a dialogue.
This is a very substantial and serious setback. But at some point in the cycle Fiji has to engage in a dialogue. We're open to that but at the same time it's a dialogue that can only proceed on the basis of Fiji showing some return to democratic processes. A military dictatorship, effectively appointing at its own whim members of the judiciary, is not a trapping of
democracy, is not a trapping of the sort of democratic modern day state that Fiji should be and so…
TONY JONES: All right, let's move on to the very vexed questions of asylum seekers. What exactly is John McCarthy's mission to Sri Lanka?
STEPHEN SMITH: The Prime Minister and I have appointed former High Commissioner McCarthy as a special representative to Sri Lanka. He will go to Sri Lanka in the near future and have discussions with the Sri Lankan Government about how Australia can be of assistance as Sri Lanka, we hope, moves from the aftermath of civil war back to a fully fledged nation state with all political players participating. They've got a very serious problem so far as displaced people in the camps are concerned.
We've been giving humanitarian assistance to try and help the settlement and resettlement of the displaced persons from those camps and of course as well we have the very difficult issue of people smuggling and human trafficking from Sri Lanka. So John McCarthy, one of our best and most experienced diplomats, will take up this role for us. I'll be meeting with him in the next couple of days, but he will cover the field in terms of the joint issues that we have with Sri Lanka.
TONY JONES: Okay, let me break that down a little bit. Will you be asking him to make an on-the-ground assessment of the conditions in these camps, these displaced peoples camps, or as the Tamils preferred to call them concentration camps because we're hearing some very disturbing stories about the conditions inside those camps and very few international officials are being given access to them.
STEPHEN SMITH: Well that will be a matter for our special representative John McCarthy and the Sri Lankan authorities to resolve. Certainly I would not put that out of contemplation myself and Australia's said from day one that it is important, very important, that the relevant international agencies have access to the camps.
Our humanitarian contribution to Sri Lanka has been both to support circumstances in the camps, but more importantly to try and help move people out of those camps into resettlement and our most recent contribution of $5 million was to that effect.
We've also been very active on the de-mining front because very many of the areas where people need to be resettled of course are subject to landmines that have been laid as a result of the conflict.
But these, all of these issues are open to John McCarthy to have discussions with the Sri Lankan authorities. We've made it clear that the way forward for Sri Lanka is to win the peace, and that can only be done by getting people out of the camps as quickly as possible, but also making sure there is an environment in Sri Lanka where all of the political players regard themselves as having a role in the future, and that includes, in my view, serious consideration being given to semi-autonomy or some concessions for autonomy so far as some of the Tamil areas are concerned in the north.
TONY JONES: Okay. And are you getting reports from Sri Lanka about the conditions in these camps, because what we hear from Amnesty, they're filthy, overcrowded, they're dangerous.
There are reports from The Times in Britain that 1400 people a week are dying in the camps. Unverifiable reports, I might add.
There are claims circulating in the Tamil community here of rapes, of ill-treatment, of people being picked up and disappearing. I mean, are you getting these sort of reports?
STEPHEN SMITH: I've seen reference to those reports. I'm of course not in a position to verify them. But we have made the point to Sri Lanka. I've made it to Foreign Minister Bogollagama, I've made it to the President as well, when I've met with the President that it's essential, in our view, that the relevant international agencies have access to the camps for this very reason. And in the past, of course, some of my counterparts, including Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, has inspected the camps as well, but that was now some time ago.
So access to the relevant agencies is, in our view, very important. As I say, I have in contemplation that John McCarthy will have a discussion with the Sri Lankan authorities about how Australia can assist, and part of that includes consideration of conditions in the camps and how we can be of assistance. We've been very generous amongst the international community trying to assist in this matter and we will continue to do so.
TONY JONES: It was reported and this is, again, an unverified report, that the boat which has sunk in the Indian Ocean near the Cocos Islands, resulting in quite a few deaths - we don't know exactly how many, I don't think at this time, actually had come full of Sri Lankan asylum seekers from Sri Lanka. Have you confirmed that?
STEPHEN SMITH: It's a terrible tragedy. What I can confirm is that on the basis of the advice that we're getting from the master of the liquefied natural gas vessel, the LNG Pioneer on the site, that people now on the LNG Pioneer are saying that there were 39 people on the boat. We've recovered 27. That means 12 are not accounted for. But regrettably, there is one body on board the LNG Pioneer, so there could be as many as 12 fatalities and that's terrible. Search efforts continue, but the prospects are now beginning to dwindle.
We're told that they're Sri Lankans. I don't know whether they're Tamils or Sinhalese, and we have no advice on whether they're proposing to claim asylum. But it has been agreed that the sensible thing to do, from a search and rescue point of view, is to, once the rescue is completed, to take them to Christmas Island.
If they claim asylum, then that's obviously the appropriate place for processing to occur. But given that the LNG Pioneer was, effectively, en route to the north-west of Western Australia, it's also a convenient place for the master of that ship to offload the 27, and, we hope, more. But as I say, as each minute goes, the prospects of further recovery dwindle, so it is a terrible tragedy.
TONY JONES: Okay. Well, let's turn to the stand-off off the Indonesian coast. Now, a senior Indonesian Foreign Ministry official was quoted yesterday as saying, it may be time to look for an Australian solution to the stand-off over the 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking. Do you have any idea at all what an Australian solution might look like?
STEPHEN SMITH: Well, there's no such thing as an individual nation solution to this difficult problem. If I can just deal with two issues.
Firstly, so far as the general issue of people smugglers or asylum seekers…
TONY JONES: No-one in your government - I must say - just to interrupt you there, no-one in your government shied away from the term, Indonesian solution, when it was first proposed. I know you didn't say it originally…
STEPHEN SMITH: Well, that's not, that's not true, Tony. I think, if you check the transcript, you'll recall that when we last had a conversation, I made the point to you advisedly that it was a regional solution. This is not a one nation solution for any nation. This is a substantial regional problem where we see large movements of people from Afghanistan, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and, more recently from Sri Lanka.
That's why, for example, earlier this year, Indonesia and Australia resuscitated the Bali Process, which is the regional institution that we use to deal with these matters. And those conversations through the Bali Process are ongoing. For example, in the middle of December, officials will get together to talk about the difficult issue of Sri Lanka, so these discussions are ongoing. Previous experience, as well as our current experience tells us…
TONY JONES: In relation to those discussions - can I just interrupt you for a minute - are you considering increasing the regional intake of refugees? In other words, taking a larger proportion of the refugees who have been - have gone through the UNHCR process and who are stuck in a limbo in Indonesia. And if you did that - if you made that sort of commitment, would it be possible you could persuade the people on board the Oceanic Viking that they could be part of an orderly process and not just caught in a limbo in Indonesia. Would that, in fact, be an Australian solution?
STEPHEN SMITH: Let me deal with the outstanding issues from your earlier questions and then deal with that. So we've got two separate issues here. One is the general issue of asylum seekers and people smuggling, which we're seeking to deal with in a regional way, and we're in close cooperation and consultation with Indonesia as a part of that. And officials are in Jakarta, as we speak, dealing not just with the Oceanic Viking matter but the more general framework under the Lombok Treaty, under the Bali Process. As I've said earlier, we hope that officials will be able to report progress to the Prime Minister and President Yudhoyono in the APEC meeting in Singapore in a few weeks time.
Discussions on the Oceanic Viking with the asylum seekers on board and with Indonesian officials continue. We remain of the view that if we are calm and patient, that we will be in a position to persuade the asylum seekers to come off the boat. That will enable their processing to commence, and that is certainly the advice we have been giving them.
So far as settlement or resettlement from Indonesia is concerned, of course there are a number of nations who, together with the UN, or in conjunction with the UNHCR, have been dealing with settlement or re-settlement of asylum seekers from Indonesia for a period of time. They include not just Australia, but Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Norway and other countries.
TONY JONES: … so we're - I'm interrupting because we're running out of time. I'm sorry to do that but there are only several thousand who've actually gone through the refugee process in Indonesia. In order to take the burden off the Indonesians, would Australia be willing to increase its intake of regional refugees, particularly from Indonesia, as part of the solution to this problem?
STEPHEN SMITH: We already provide very generous humanitarian categories so far as refugees and asylum seekers are concerned. Anyone who comes within Australia or Australian territorial waters who makes a claim, they are processed, and if they are accorded refugee status in accordance with the convention, then they are either settled in Australia or settled elsewhere in accordance with our agreements with the UNHCR. And we have a generous onshore program where people in consultation with the…
TONY JONES: But now - but it's a very specific question really. It's a question about those refugees, now classified as refugees caught in limbo in Indonesia. Would you be prepared to take more of them, and would that be part of the solution?
STEPHEN SMITH: Let me make this point, Tony, we already provide generous numbers. That's the first point. We're not going to be giving consideration to an expansion of that to deal with the Oceanic Viking matter. We've got an agreement with Indonesia that those people will be dealt with in Indonesia. We're in discussions with the asylum seekers and with Indonesia to calmly and peaceably have the people come off the boat, so that the UNHCR can start their processes in Indonesia.
The sensible thing for those people to do is to come off the boat so that their processing can start.
If they're accorded refugee status, then they'll be settled or resettled in accordance with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' arrangements so far as Indonesia is concerned.
Australia is one country that cooperates in that respect, but there are others including New Zealand and Canada, as I've referred to earlier.
TONY JONES: Unfortunately, we'll have to leave you there. We thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us tonight.
STEPHEN SMITH: Thanks Tony. Thanks very much.
[END]
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