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For Two Refugees Going Home to Iran, Persecution Looks Better Than Peter Dutton

This week a husband and wife who had been resettled in Cambodia decided to return to Iran, which they'd initially risked fleeing in a boat.

Last September, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was in Cambodia trying to salvage a refugee resettlement deal.

The $55 million deal was originally set up by Dutton's predecessor Scott Morrison, and with Cambodian officials telling the press that they would no longer be accepting refugees from Nauru, Dutton was on damage control. The already-controversial scheme was seen as something of a joke, with only four refugees volunteering for permanent resettlement.

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This week, two of the original resettled refugees—a husband and wife—elected to return to Iran, the country they had originally fled. Labor's immigration spokesman Richard Marles said that this left only one refugee resettled in Cambodia. One refugee that cost Australia $55 million.

But Dutton's office swooped in to refute this claim. There were, in fact, TWO refugees still there! Spending $55 million to make sure a single person doesn't get to come to Australia is frankly absurd, but $27.5 million? That's a doubling of efficiency right there.

But it is a ridiculous amount of money to spend on keeping refugees away. Especially when you consider that the settlement of 160 Karen refugees in the Victorian town of Nhill was estimated by Deloitte Access Economics to have increased Gross Regional Product by over $40 million. Perhaps that's where Morrison and Dutton got the money from for the two guys in Cambodia.

Why did the couple decide to try their chances back in Iran, rather than stay in Cambodia? Dutton's office has, unsurprisingly, chosen not to disclose those details, only saying: "Refugees can elect to return to their country of origin at any time, which is what an Iranian couple in Cambodia decided to do recently."

If this couple fled Iran in the manner that would cause them to be detained in Nauru—the sort of life-threatening, treacherous sea journey that the government claims its refugee policies are designed to stop—then it's difficult for us to imagine the circumstances under which they would choose to return. Speaking to Fairfax, Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul suggested they might be returning because Cambodia "did not offer them education or work opportunities, language training or potential for family reunion."

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For sure, what we do know is that the Cambodian government isn't wild about refugees in general. Since October 2014, nearly 200 Christian Montagnard asylum seekers have entered Cambodia from Vietnam. The Montagnards are the indigenous people of Vietnam's central highlands, and practice De Ga Protestantism or Ha Mon Catholicism, both of which are considered "evil way" religions by the Vietnamese government. State security forces regularly harass, arrest, and mistreat the Montagnard people. They are, by any reasonable definition, refugees. Nonetheless, Cambodia branded the Montagnards as "illegal economic migrants." Some were deported; others left voluntarily, frustrated by the delays. After a meeting this past January with the UNHCR's representative James Lynch, who likely reminded Cambodia that it signed the UN's 1951 Convention on Refugees, the government announced it would process the claims.

Australia is also a signatory to the 1951 convention, and our behavior has also been found wanting. Exactly one year ago, the United Nations found that Australia's treatment of asylum seekers violated the Convention Against Torture.

This crisis has been dragging out for years, and the most extraordinary thing is that we don't have to go back more than a month to find example after example of Australia behaving in an objectively shameful manner.

A few days back Fairfax revealed that two gay refugees on Nauru had been physically and verbally abused, and were now afraid to go outside for fear of further violence. Peter Dutton is aware of this, that the men have been beaten, had rocks thrown at their heads, and called "human rubbish." His department's response was that the men had the option of resettling in Cambodia.

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One week ago, Dutton ignored pleas to release a 70-year-old woman. The woman has been in detention for three years, and her caseworkers said that the "frequency and scope of her health conditions are such that she cannot be cared for properly in detention." Her son's wish is that his mother does not spend her last days behind fences. She remains in detention.

Last month, a baby girl born in Australia to Nepalese parents was the subject of protests when doctors refused to release her until a safe home could be found. Dutton said that the baby and her parents would be transferred to community detention in Brisbane, and then taken to Nauru if they were deemed not to be legitimate refugees.

"The advice I have received is the doctors from the hospital have said the baby's treatment has concluded and they would be happy for the baby to go out into community detention," Dutton said.

"Happy" is perhaps overselling it. After the doctors and hospital staff engaged in a week-long standoff with the Immigration Department, Dutton was asked why he thought they were so happy to release her. "That's a question for them," he said, "but I understand there are some pressures at the hospital in terms of bed space."

Bed space.

Dutton was quick to blame refugee advocates. "I'm not sure if they are interested in the best interests of the child. I am. I have said to you before I want to get the number of children in detention down to zero," Mr Dutton said in reference to his plan to return a newborn baby to a detention centre.

In the meantime, after facing the Australian government and its treatment of refugees, two people who fled Iran this week decided to return. The good news is that Cambodia just freed up some bed space.

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