Media Release
Tuesday April 19, 2010 7:30am WST
For Immediate Release
No Embargoes

• Laws delete inclusion of central "for profit" criterion from UN Protocol
• Self-organising refugees: 'no-smuggler' leaders will be jailed as smugglers
• Prominent Vietnamese Australians would now be jailed for up to 20 years
• Laws further destroy hundreds of impoverished Indonesian fishermen
• Australian refugees and advocates supporting families in Indonesia will be jailed

"With a substantive submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, in response to its call for comments about the recently tabled Anti-people Smuggling legislation, we have made it abundantly clear that the laws are no excuse to legislate that any arrival of refugees and refugee groups by boat is illegal, and that legislation cannot include stealthy clauses which undermine core definitions in the United Nations People Smuggling Protocol," WA Human Rights group Project SafeCom said this morning.

Download the document:

• People Smuggling: Project SafeCom Submission to 2010 Senate Inquiry -The laws are a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate the limitations imposed on signatory states through the United Nations definition of what constitutes people smuggling. They complete a development where the priest who smuggled the Von Trapp family across the Alps, as well as Oskar Schindler, will now be jailed as people smugglers by Australia. (PDF file 288Kb)

• Laws delete inclusion of central "for profit" criterion from UN Protocol
• Self-organising refugees: 'no-smuggler' leaders will be jailed as smugglers

"The laws are a thinly veiled attempt to manipulate the limitations imposed on signatory states through the United Nations definition of what constitutes people smuggling," spokesman Jack H Smit (who undertakes post-graduate university research into Australia's people smuggling laws) said. "The legislation proposes to eliminate from Australia's Criminal Code clauses that include the smuggling to have occurred "for material benefit", the central clause in the nature of people smuggling under the United Nations Convention for the Smuggling of Migrants and its attached Smuggling Protocol."

"As a result of this proposed change, any group of refugees that organises their own voyage through an organiser, whether a smuggler or not, will have their leaders prosecuted, because the laws will say that they have smuggled people into Australia." This change amounts to a brazen attempt to criminalise the entry into Australia of anyone arriving by boat."

"These disgraceful laws complete the development - in line with comments regularly made by advocates - where the priest who smuggled the Von Trapp family across the Alps, as well as Oskar Schindler, will now be jailed as people smugglers by Australia."

• Prominent Vietnamese Australians would now be jailed for up to 20 years

"I have told the Senate Inquiry about the voyage of Mr Nguyen Van Minh, who organised the coming together of 98 of his family members, in the process collecting 103 ounces of gold to build the boat and bribe Vietnamese officials. This collective effort by the 98 Vietnamese made fleeing from Vietnam following the fall of Saigon a reality," Mr Smit said, "but under the proposed laws, Mr Van Minh would be arrested and jailed for up to 20 years for coming to Australia."

The story first appeared in the West Australian newspaper, and later (October 8, 1981, p. 12) in the Canberra Times.

• Laws further destroy hundreds of impoverished Indonesian fishermen

"While it is already far-fetched to call impoverished Indonesian fishermen "people smugglers", Australia under Gough Whitlam started destroying the Indonesian fishing communities around Roti Island in 1974, when under a secret agreement with former Indonesian President Sukarno it stole their fishing grounds, including Ashmore Reef, where they had fished for centuries," Mr Smit said. "The Opposition spokesman for Immigration, Mr Scott Morrison, has also made similar comments about the Indonesian fishermen in a doorstop interview on February 24 this year."

"It was Australia, who after stealing the livelihood from the Indonesians, became guilty of 'training the bus drivers for the bus company'. We prepared their desperation so they could be used by the smugglers," Mr Smit said.

• Australian refugee families and advocates supporting families in Indonesia will be prosecuted

"It is not a crime to use a people smuggler, and it has never been a crime. Under the new laws, criminal prosecutions will take place for those who "provide material support for people smuggling". There is no clarity in the laws that safeguards the sending of money for support and food to family members or friends in Indonesia, also to those who may want to use smugglers to travel from Indonesia to Australia. Under the laws, anyone with links to refugees in Indonesia is going to be monitored and may be prosecuted. These laws may see academics, lawyers, NGOs, advocates and refugee families in Australia prosecuted and jailed, Mr Smit said.

"All these parties may now have their phones bugged, their homes raided under the secrecy of ASIO, and they may be arrested by Australia's questionable spy agency that will carry out their dirty work under the new laws."

"There's just one appropriate location for the proposed laws," Mr Smit said, "and that's the rubbish bin. There is not a single item in the legislation that does not breach the United Nations Convention for the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol, or the 'United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime' and its attached 'Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Air and Sea', commonly known as the Smuggling Protocol."

Jack H Smit
Project SafeCom Inc.
[phone number posted]