ECAJ Asylum policy released
THE Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has issued a resolution on asylum seekers after consultation with Jewish groups over its draft policy yielded 13 detailed submissions.
THE Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) has issued a resolution on asylum seekers after consultation with Jewish groups over its draft policy yielded 13 detailed submissions.
The final policy states the PNG/Nauru resettlement arrangements raise human-rights concerns which the ECAJ should voice, but the plan should not be rejected until more is known, said ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim.
Wertheim said submissions were in five broad categories, ranging from rejecting new arrivals, to calling for abolition of offshore processing. The only significant change in the final policy was deleting a reference to security concerns about boat arrivals, which some respondents felt could be misconstrued as anti-Muslim.
The policy now voices “uncertainty as to how the Australian government’s policy will be applied”, predicts “serious problems … as a result of the increasing activity of criminals arranging unauthorised boat passages to Australia”, and states “it is legitimate for the Australian government … to prevent loss of life by measures which include appropriate regional arrangements”, provided these do not breach Australia’s obligations under international refugee agreements.
“Opinion within the Jewish community is as divided on this issue as it is in the wider community … A more liberal approach to unauthorised maritime arrivals might seem superficially to be the most humane policy. But the trading in human misery and the drownings at sea which a more liberal approach has encouraged, and the delays this has caused to other refugees languishing in camps who have applied via the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, suggests it may not be very humane at all,” Wertheim said.
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council chairman Mark Leibler, who criticised ECAJ for not taking a stand when the issue first arose, said, “Both iterations of the policy clearly recognise the fundamental concerns of the Australian Jewish community and articulate the need for compassion and humanity. These sentiments could and should have been conveyed immediately by the ECAJ when comments were requested by the media.”
He added: “The decision to promote a bureaucratic process to deal with a pressing issue of morality was not appropriate … The ECAJ was elected to lead, not to engage in community wide consultations before responding publicly on issues of concern to our community.”
PETER KOHN
ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim.
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