8The deal was inked last September to allow those granted refugee status in Nauru to permanently resettle in Cambodia.
9Under the agreement Cambodia will accept Australia’s unwanted refugees in return for millions of aid over the next four years. Canberra will cover all direct costs of the settlement arrangement and refugees will only be moved to the Southeast Asian nation if they volunteer.
10But the UN has condemned the deal, while refugee advocates said asylum-seek-ers do not want to be sent to Cambodia a country that has been criticized for its own record of helping refugees particularly Vietnamese Montagnards who are often deported and forced to return to their persecutors.
11The mainly Christian ethnic minorities from Vietnam’s Central Highlands cross into Cambodia to escape discrimination.
12Rights groups hit out yesterday at the move to ship the first set of refugees to Cambodia under the deal with Australia.
13.”Cambodia clearly has no will or capacity to integrate refugees permanently into society” Phil Robertson from Human Rights Watch said.
14.”These four refugees are essentially human guinea pigs in an Australian experiment that ignores the fact that Cambodia has not integrated other refugees and has already sent Montagnards and Uighur asylum seekers back into harm’s way in Vietnam China.”
15. Conditions for migrants shipped to Nauru by Australia have also raised alarm bells.
16. Amnesty Intentional Australia said Cambodia’s track record of protecting asylum-seekers was ”poor” and called on Canberra to “cease the transfer of asylum seekers and refugees to third countries where they are not adequately protected from human rights abuses”
17. Asylum-seekers on Nauru live in tents with little privacy and camp staff have made claims of sexual abuse of women and children ther.