PHNOM PENH, June 4 (Reuters) - A plane carrying four refugees from an Australian detention centre on Nauru landed in Cambodia on Thursday, airport officials said, the only asylum seekers to take part in a controversial resettlement project between the two countries.
"The plane has just landed, they have not checked out yet," Chuor Kimny, police chief at the Phnom Penh international airport, told Reuters, referring to the refugees.
The deal between Cambodia and Australia, struck last September, has been criticized by rights groups and the political opposition in both countries, who accuse Australia of shirking international obligations by dumping asylum seekers on other countries.
The refugees are three Iranians and one Rohingya, a mostly stateless Muslim minority residing in Myanmar, according to the Refugee Action Coalition in Australia. They were among the 677 detainees held on the Pacific Island of Nauru.
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Australia director of Human Rights Watch Elaine Pearson has criticised the deal, saying the government had thrown "tens of millions of dollars at Cambodia to take these refugees".
"Cambodia clearly has no will or capacity to integrate refugees permanently into Cambodian society," she said.
"These four refugees are essentially human guinea pigs in an Australian experiment that ignores that the fact that Cambodia has not integrated other refugees and has already sent Montagnards and Uighur asylum seekers back into harm’s way in Vietnam and China.”
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