SYDNEY: Australia will not sign up to a United Nations migration agreement because it would compromise its hard-line immigration policy and endanger national security, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday.
Australia joins the United States, Israel and several Eastern European countries in rejecting the UN Global Compact for Migration, which asks signatories not to detain would-be migrants arbitrarily and to use detention only as a last resort.
Morrison said that would jeopardize national security.
“The global compact on migration would compromise Australia’s interest,” Morrison told 2GB Radio. “It doesn’t distinguish between those who illegally enter Australia and those who come the right way.”
Under Canberra’s tough immigration policy, which has bipartisan support, asylum seekers arriving by boat are told they will never be allowed to settle in Australia.
They are then detained in two detention centers on remote South Pacific islands until they are accepted by another nation or agree to return home. The camps have been widely criticized by the United Nations and human rights groups.
“Australia is a textbook case of how not to treat boat arrivals, by sending them offshore to endure abysmal conditions for years and trying to shirk its international responsibilities onto less-developed countries,” said Elaine Pearson, Human Rights Watch’s Australia director.
Australia’s rejection of the UN pact is the latest move to tighten migration through a series of policies that are likely to form a central element of Morrison’s bid for re-election at a national ballot that must be held by May 2019.
Opinion polls indicate his conservative government is on course for a landslide defeat.
Australia has an annual immigration cap of 190,000 places. Morrison said this week his government would likely reduce that threshold, a policy that is popular with voters.
A Fairfax-Ipsos poll published on Monday found 45 percent of voters wanted immigration reduced, while a little more than 20 percent wanted an increase.
Morrison’s government said in October it would restrict new immigrants from living in Australia’s largest cities — Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane — for up to five years.
Although likely to win favor with voters, critics argued such a policy could lead to labor shortages.
Australia’s central bank governor said in August an influx of new residents had helped to underpin strong economic growth.
Australia rejects UN migration pact, sticks with hard-line asylum-seeker policy
Australia rejects UN migration pact, sticks with hard-line asylum-seeker policy
- Australia joins the United States, Israel and several Eastern European countries in rejecting the UN Global Compact for Migration
- The pact asks signatories not to detain would-be migrants arbitrarily and to use detention only as a last resort
Russia sentences Briton who fought for Ukraine to 13 years in prison camp
- The jailed Briton was named as 30-year-old Hayden Davies by Russia’s Prosecutor General
- State prosecutors released a video of Davies being questioned as he stood behind bars
MOSCOW: A British man who fought for Ukraine against the Russian army has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison camp after being convicted of being a paid mercenary, Russian prosecutors said on Thursday.
The jailed Briton was named as 30-year-old Hayden Davies by Russia’s Prosecutor General which said he had been tried by a court in a part of Russian-controlled Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions which Moscow claimed as its own in 2022 in a move Kyiv and the West rejected an illegal land grab.
State prosecutors released a video of Davies being questioned as he stood behind bars, dressed in a black coat and with a shaven head. He says in the video that he had traveled to Ukraine to join the International Legion which paid him $400-500 per month.
The International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine is a unit of the Ukrainian military made up of foreign volunteers.
Asked if he pleaded guilty to the charge against him, Davies says “yeah” and nods his head.
It was not clear whether Davies was speaking under duress and there was no immediate comment from the British Foreign Office.
London in February said Davies was not a mercenary but a Prisoner of War entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. It also condemned what it called Moscow’s exploitation of prisoners of war “for political and propaganda purposes.”
Russian prosecutors said on Thursday that Davies had arrived in western Ukraine in August 2024, signed a contract to fight for the International Legion, undergone military training, and then fought against the Russian army in Donetsk.
Davies had been captured by Russia in winter 2024 carrying a US-made assault rifle and ammunition, they said.
British media have reported that Davies once served in the British army and is married and originally from Southampton.
A Russian court jailed another British man, James Scott Rhys Anderson, for 19 years in March after finding him guilty of fighting for Ukraine in the Kursk region of western Russia.
