(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed that Australia will sign a refugee resettlement deal with Cambodia.
But even before any details of the plan have been released, it's been slammed by human rights groups as violating Australia's international obligations.
Van Nguyen reports.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
The agreement with Cambodia is expected to cover people who had been in detention on Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea before being found to be refugees.
It would allow some of those refugees to voluntarily choose to be resettled in Cambodia.
Former Chief Justice of the Family Court, Alastair Nicholson, is spokesperson for a coalition, which includes UNICEF Australia, Save the Children and World Vision.
He says it's wrong to be sending refugee children and their families to a country that relies heavily on the support of international donors for its own social and welfare needs.
"The reality is that I think it's quite unsuitable. I don't think that Cambodia is a proper place to send asylum seekers at any time. It's a country that offers no employment. About 120,000 of its citizens have to leave every year to go work elsewhere. It's got enormous problems with its justice system, with the care of children, health, education. It's just a thoroughly unsuitable place."
Hong Lim is a Victorian Labor Party MP who is a refugee from Cambodia.
He believes the Abbott government needs to rethink the deal.
"Cambodia is not in a fit position to take any asylum seeker. This is one of the most corrupted countries, one of the poorest countries, and for Australia to go down to level, stoop that low, lie down with this corrupt regime because they only want the money. I don't think they are going to look after the asylum seekers. They have no record of refugee settlement. In fact, they are creating refugees in their own country."
Mr Lim says he's concerned that refugees sent to Cambodia could face religious discrimination.
"These people are Muslim, most of them. Why don't they try to resettle them even in Indonesia, talk to the Indonesians and try to sort it out there? Why send them to a Buddhist country? I mean, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia itself, have a long history of persecuting Muslims."
President of the Cambodian Association of Victoria, Youhorn Chea, also came to Australia as a refugee from Cambodia.
He says sending refugees to Cambodia defeats the purpose of why they left their country in the first place.
"We have freedom and democracy as well. We have freedom of speech, freedom of the people can do the rally or demonstration and so on. Most of the refugee people, as you know, really want to find a place that has peace, and to have freedom, and to have democracy. All the refugees just escaped from the country who has no democracy at all, no freedom at all and always has war."
Youhorn Chea says instead of sending them to other countries, Australia should be accepting more refugees for resettlement itself.
"We have plenty of land that those people can live like in the north and so on. Or in the west, improvements so on. We have plenty of space, even in Victoria we still have space that fit to the refugee people as well."
The coalition of groups opposed to the Cambodia resettlement deal have vowed to continue to campaign against it, following its formal announcement.
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