Heart-breaking images of a Syrian toddler washed up on a Turkish beach were a reminder of the need to stop people-smuggling boats, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said yesterday, as he stood firm on Canberra’s hardline immigration policies.
Photographs of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying dead on the sand as Europe grapples with its worst refugee crisis since World War II showed the “evil” nature of people-smuggling, Abbott said.
Australia’s conservative government introduced a military-led operation to turn back boats carrying asylum seekers attempting to arrive on the mainland after it came to power in September 2013.
“It was an absolutely heart-rending photograph and I don’t think any parent could see that photograph without being devastated,” Abbott told reporters in Wodonga, south of Canberra.
“I know that there has been quite a bit of interest in the policies that Australia has put in place, because if you do stop the people-smuggling trade obviously you end the deaths at sea. The most compassionate thing you can do in the medium and long-term is to close down this evil trade,” he said.
Under Australia’s immigration policy, asylum seekers that arrive are sent to the Pacific islands of Nauru and Papua New Guinea to be processed and denied resettlement in Australia even if they are found to be refugees.
Canberra has declared the policy a success and this month marked a year since the last successful boat arrival. It said that 20 vessels carrying 633 asylum seekers have been turned back since 2013.
Rights groups have said Australia’s policy of sending asylum seekers to offshore camps has been a “disaster” in the two years it has been in place.
Abbott added that a call by Australian Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce to boost the number of Syrian refugees his nation takes in was already in place after Australia last year said it would resettle 2,200 Iraqis and 2,200 Syrians fleeing violence.
“It’s precisely because we have got much better border controls in place, we’ve established much better border security that we are in a position to increase our refugee and humanitarian intake,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia