AUSTRALIA
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The Salvation Army became embroiled in controversy, including internally, when it agreed in 2012 to accept a $22 million contract from the Australian government in relation to the Manus Island and Nauru immigration detention centres for people who arrived by boat to claim asylum here. By 2013, the contract had risen to $74.9 million for the year to 31st January 2014. The new government has recently announced that the contract will not be renewed after that date.
[This blog does not make any comment on the issue of asylum seeker policy itself, and in the past has done the same with other political issues. While the author may have private opinions on Australia’s immigration policies, that is something for others to argue. What this blog is concerned with is the hypocrisy of the Salvation Army on the issue.]
For the benefit of readers from other countries, Australia has had many people set out from, mainly, Indonesia, in often unseaworthy boats headed for Australia to claim refugee status. Many of those boats have sunk en route, with the loss of at least 1,000 lives. Whether or not to accept these people has become a significant political issue in Australia.
Both of the two major political parties refuse to accept these people as genuine refugees and now detain them in centres on the small Pacific island nation of Nauru, and Manus Island, off the coast of Papua- New Guinea, while their claims are processed. Apparently, this policy will encourage many of them to return to their homeland, or face indefinite detention. Debate on all of this runs hot in the community, on both sides of the argument.
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