Letter to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau

re: Resettlement for refugees on Manus Island of Papua New Guinea

Dear Prime Minister Trudeau: I am U Ne Oo, an Australian Citizen of Burma origin living in Sydney. I am writing to the Hon Prime Minister Trudeau, through the Office of the High Commission of Canada in Canberra, for your kind help in regards to asylum-seekers detained by the Australian Government for past six years. There are approximately about 450 such individuals on Manus Island, who were severely trumatised from the long-term detainment and by the deprivation of personal liberties.

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

These asylum-seekers had tried to enter Australia by boat in 2012 and they were shipped out to the offshore asylum-processing centers located in neighbouring states of Papua New Guinea and Republic of Nauru. Since then, the Government of Australia, on the surface, appeared to have taken a restrictive interpretation for UN Refugee Convention, and refusing to resettle those who found to be genuine refugees. At the same time, a policy of reckless indifference being applied upon those asylum-seekers detained, pressuring them to return to their country of origin. Certain severely ill asylum-seekers who needed medical treatment in Australia had been denied entry -- the Government preventing them accessing the Australian legal systems -- and subsequently were perished. Whilst these human tragedies remain unfold, the Australian Government had kept the private detention companies to run those offshore processing centres at obscene expenses. In sum, the Australian Government have held these asylum-seekers in involuntary servitude, using them as immigration detainees.

I had analysed the overall policy and conducts by the Government of Australia and, in 2017, reported these incidents to the International Criminal Court (ICC). I have also asked for assistance to the International Committee of the Red Cross for intervention (letter and report enclosed).

As a way to ending this humanitarian tragedy, the Government of New Zealand had an ongoing resettlement offer of 150 person par year since 2013. Although the Australian Government, for its part, had yet to taken this offer to date. Nonetheless, along with New Zealand, I would respectfully appeal to the Government of Canada to give similar offer of resettlement for the remainders of those refugees, especially on the Manus Island of Papua New Guinea.

Because the Manus Island of Papua New Guinea has not been within the jurisdiction of ICC, I also ask the Government of Canada, along with His Excellency Ambassador, to use your good offices to help raise this matter at the Multilateral Forums, in particular, on the forth-coming United Nations General Assembly.

I thank you for your kind attention to this matter.

Yours respectfully and sincerely,
Sd. U Ne Oo.

• Letter to President of ICRC and reply, 8-Dec-2017.
  http://www.aus4iccwitness.org/node/54
• Letter to ICC and reply, 30-Jun-2017.
  http://www.aus4iccwitness.org/node/48