By TIM WATKIN
The Government's refusal to accept 39 Burmese families from a Thai refugee camp just weeks after rescuing Afghan refugees off the MV Tampa is being criticised as inconsistent by refugee workers.
Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel yesterday rejected pleas from Burmese in New Zealand to allow friends and family "in danger of their lives" to come here as refugees.
She said she had to rely on recommendations of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees when deciding the make-up of the refugee quota.
Burmese refugees in NZ and volunteers who support them wrote to the Government last month when they learned that Thai authorities intend to close the Maneeloy refugee camp before the end of the year and send the remaining refugees to camps on the Thai-Burmese border.
The letters warned that the lives of relatives and friends of NZ-based refugees would be in danger if they were sent to the notorious camps.
The NZ-based refugees want the Government to accept a further 39 families from Karen state - 72 adults and 53 children - whose situation, they say, is "absolutely desperate".
Lianne Dalziel replied that the Government had to rely on UNHCR assessments. If it got involved it would be seen as political interference.
David Goold, from the Rawene Centre in Birkenhead, which runs a refugee resettlement programme supporting the Karen refugees, said Ms Dalziel's stance was an inconsistent, knee-jerk reaction.
"They intervened for the Tampa boat people and as far as I know none of them had been given refugee status by the UNHCR.
"It's totally inconsistent and is just following the world spotlight."
The Government won praise for its compassionate response to the boat people, but was treating the Karen appeal differently because "the eyes of the world are not on them".
"They're sinking in a camp rather than a boat," Mr Goold said, but were also in desperate need.
The refugees' failure to get UNHCR resettlement status was not because their plight wasn't serious, he said. It was due to the "complicated political situation" where Thai authorities wanted to wash their hands of the refugees.
New Zealand took in 207 Burmese refugees from Maneeloy this year and Mr Goold said there was an established, active community here willing to support new arrivals.
The Thai Government plans to close Maneeloy, the camp where refugees fleeing the regime in Burma have been held before being resettled in third countries.
Aung Htay Nyan, leader of NZ's Karen community, said around 50 refugees were due to leave for the US but more than 300 others who had been refused resettlement status by the UNHCR would be sent to camps on the Thai-Burmese border.
The Herald visited Maneeloy in February and this week received a letter from Moses Zan, a refugee in the camp, pleading for help.
Mr Zan wrote: "It is an irresponsible act of the UNHCR to classify [those remaining] as border-case refugees. They are genuine refugees under the mandate of the UN convention on refugees."
A recent US Committee for Refugees report reached similar conclusions, saying: "Many convention refugees may have been left unprotected".
Mr Nyan said life in the border camps was extremely dangerous and the refugees, who had fought the Burmese authorities, were in danger of being pushed back into the country.
That had happened before and refugees had "disappeared".
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