Nauru Says No To Visas For Lawyers
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday July 11, 2002
Nauru has refused for the second time to grant visas to Australian human rights lawyers trying to visit asylum seekers on the island.
Australian Lawyers for Human Rights was trying to send 20 lawyers with expertise in refugee law, and interpreters, to Nauru to give independent legal advice to some of the 1100 asylum seekers on the island.
The group's president, Simon Rice, said the asylum seekers would have been entitled to the advice had their claims been processed in Australia.
Mr Rice said he received a rejection letter on Friday from the Nauruan Government, after approaches by phone had been refused in April. The Nauruan Government could not be reached for comment yesterday.
A spokesman for the Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, said Nauru was a sovereign nation and Australia would not presume to tell it who it could allow into the country.
The spokesman said asylum seekers on Nauru were being processed under the same conditions as other asylum seekers around the world.
Mr Rice said the Australian Government's comments were disingenuous.
``Refugees around the world may not have access to legal advice, but these refugees would have if they'd not been intercepted and had landed in Australia," he said.
By ``hiding behind Nauru's refusal" the Australian Government was ``compounding" its abandonment of the asylum seekers' rights, he said.
``It's important they have access to lawyers ... because anybody who wants to make claim under complex [refugee convention] legislation needs advice about how to make claims, and people fail because they don't know what criteria to address."
A spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been assessing 529 of the asylum seekers' claims, said the organisation could not provide independent legal advice.
The UNHCR had notified Nauruan authorities on ``several occasions" of its concerns about legal assess, said Ellen Hansen, a UNHCR spokeswoman.
© 2002 Sydney Morning Herald