Project SafeCom Inc.
Web: http://www.safecom.org.au/
Vietnam war commemorations should include reflections on refugee treatment
Media Release
Saturday April 30 2005 9:30pm WST
For immediate Release
No Embargoes
"This week's events around the 30-year Vietnam war commemorations should include reflections on Australia's role in
refugee resettlement at that time, and an acute awareness amongst all Australians about how we treat Vietnamese refugees
on Christmas Island right now," WA Refugee advocacy group Project SafeCom said today.
"The flood of refugees resulting from the Vietnam war spawned a conscious effort from our nation - especially through
the work of Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, who travelled twice around Australia with his immigration Minister,
and who urged the nation to accept Australia's obligation to the Vietnamese, and as a result Australians jumped to aid
him and help welcome the Vietnamese - just like Australians jumped to assist in last year's earthquake and tsunami
relief."
"Yet in recent years, the former Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock travelled the globe to try and sell Australia's
"refugee warehousing policy", trying to 'promote' what amounts to a policy that seriously damages people and traumatises
them for life."
"During the fall of Saigon, Operation Babylift in April 1975 took care of infants, yet since 2003 we have locked away
children and babies on Christmas Island; while other countries can process refugee families mostly within weeks,
Christmas Island functions by deliberate design as a "remote warehousing centre", with the purpose of keeping refugee
claimants out of view, out of the media, and out of Australians' minds."
Without a single word from the Prime Minister and with a despicable "don't mention the refugees" attitude from
Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, the lives of dozens of Vietnamese are discarded and forgotten on Christmas Island. In the
case of the Hao Kiet refugees on Christmas Island sons, daughters, grandchildren and the widow of a Vietnamese soldier
who fought and died alongside Australians and others in the Vietnam war are deliberately out of the mind of politicians
and the Australian public.
"Both Prime Minister John Howard and Kim Beazley stain their lives and careers in terms of the atrocities of hiding
relatives of Vietnam war heroes, by their deliberate actions and their policies and by their silence and passive
approval about what happens on Christmas Island. Both leaders should be condemned for it."
For more information: Jack H Smit, Project SafeCom Inc. phone 0417 090 130
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