Uniya Newsletter: Autumn 1995, p 6. Sending a Message? Recent Australian responses to boat people from China suggest panic. (Kerry Murphy heads the Jesuit Refugee Service desk at Uniya.) GAIN the Australian Government is attempting to change the rules for asylum seekers retrospectively. Proposed new laws will apply to boat people from China, including those who came fearing abuses in the application of the one-child policy. Sadly, the Opposition has reversed its earlier stand to oppose on principle the retrospective changes. The Coalition now adds its support to legislation that is arguably contrary to basic human rights principles and the rule of law. Moreover, what we are witnessing is legislation by press release, before the asylum seekers' claims are assessed. Official reaction to the arrival of 700 Sino-Vietnamese in late 1994 was panic. Rather than have these people's claims assessed, the Government chose a short cut at the expense of our obligations to potential refugees. The current Sino-Vietnamese arrivals believe they had lost protection from the Chinese authorities, although China accepted them as refugees in the early 1980s. In fact, these Sino-Vietnamese who arrived on boats in mid- 1994 were accepted as refugees by Australian Immigration officers and the independent Refugee Review Tribunal. Now Australia will return people to "a safe third country", in this case China. Yet human rights groups have long been critical of China's human rights record. Political and religious dissent is not tolerated. Australia's own human rights delegation has drawn attention to China's abuses of human rights. Despite this, Australia now deems the country is "safe". Historically, many Sino-Vietnamese were resettled in southern China after the war between China and Vietnam in 1979. There is some uncertainty about their citizenship and about whether China gave these people nationality. If the people in question are in fact stateless, Australia has a double obligation to them, under the Refugee Convention and the Treaty Against Statelessness. In Australia another legislative change prevents any claim for refugee status on the basis of China's one-child policy. One court upheld such claims last year in limited circumstances. Again the government intervened, in effect limiting the possibility of protecting people from human rights abuses. Fear of Asian invasion is an enduring theme of Australian immigration history. An early Act of the first Australian Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act, which developed into the "White Australia Policy". Currently, all over the world people are moving from one country to another. Old concepts of national sovereignty are daily challenged in Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans fled the terrors of their country. Earlier, over a million people fled to Malawi from civil strife in Mozambique. Haitians took to boats in hundreds to escape from the abuses at home. The break-up of the old Soviet Union has left thousands moving around Central Asia looking for a home. Australia has been largely untouched by these forced population movements. True, thousands of people arrive every week by plane, mainly as tourists. Others arrive as migrants, carefully selected in a rigorous process. But the last few months have at last brought Australia into touch with the modern post-Cold-War world. To ignore the phenomenon of major population movements by sending people away without assessing their cases lacks an awareness of one of main causes of movement. Attempts are being made to deny Australia's international legal and moral obligations to asylum seekers by spreading rumours about smuggling gangs and people paying to board a boat. Simply paying money to come here does not lessen one's claim to be a refugee. People-smuggling is an evil trade, but if people are desperate enough to flee they will subject themselves to it. Individuals and groups deserve to have their cases assessed on their merits and to be treated with dignity. If they prove to be refugees, they are eligible for resettlement in Australia like others. If they are not refugees, and there are no humanitarian or other reasons for them to remain, they should be returned to their country of usual residence. Today's movement of peoples requires a comprehensive response. Panic at the sight of a boat arriving certainly sends a message, namely that we in Australia are unable to respond humanely to the complexity of a current world phenomenon. The message, in any case, is beamed more to the Australian electorate than to people in southern China. Our onshore refugee policy needs to be comprehensive and constant. Our response should be based on a sound process for assessing refugees and on a willingness to deal with root causes. Turning a few boats around will not prevent others arriving. Panic only creates calls for more drastic, and unwise, responses.