Refugee intake furtive and shifty says McCully

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

New Zealand will on Thursday take in 136 refugees, some of whom were rescued from a sinking boat by the Norwegian freighter Tampa last year.

They are expected to arrive at Auckland Airport on a charter flight and be transferred to the Mangere Refugee Resettlement Centre.

National's spokesman on immigration, Murray McCully, accused the Government of "furtive and shifty" behaviour for not making an announcement about their imminent arrival.

But a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel last night rejected Mr McCully's criticisms.

"There's no great conspiracy," she said. "Every one of the 136 who are due to arrive here has been mandated as a refugee under the United Nations convention by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and/or Australian Immigration, which have done the processing of the claims."

She said they were part of the quota of 750 refugees New Zealand accepted annually.

The spokeswoman said about 10 of the refugees were from the Tampa. Eighty-seven were coming from Manus, an island of Papua New Guinea, and 49 from Nauru.

Previously from Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries, they were boatpeople who had been sent to Pacific islands to have their refugee claims processed.

Mr McCully said the Government had already acted prematurely over the 131 Afghan asylum seekers accepted last year. He said the UN commission later declined refugee status to most of the 292 Afghan boatpeople left on Nauru.

"At a time the Government is doing nothing to facilitate refugee status to people who are being butchered in Zimbabwe, the public expect better than the furtive and shifty approach being taken by the minister.'

Ms Dalziel said Mr McCully's comments were nonsense.

She said he had a poor understooding of the UN's definition refugee status, because to assert it validly people had to have left the country from which they claimed they were fleeing.

The 136 people arriving on Thursday marked the first time New Zealand had accepted refugees whose claims had been determined by Australia.

"The quality of their determination is equal to our own and the UNHCR. I'm satisfied they are genuine refugees."


Feature: Immigration