Australia court rules refugee policy legal

Australia’s High Court has paved the way for the government in Canberra to send hundreds of refugees who had been transferred to the country from detention camps in remote islands for medical purposes back to the refugee detention sites.

The High Court on Wednesday rejected a legal test case brought by the Human Rights Law Center (HRLC) against the government over its policy of returning the refugees who had been sent to Australia for medical care to the migration detention camps in the tiny island of Nauru.

The rights group had brought the case on behalf of 260 people, including 37 babies born in Australia and 54 other children, who had been transported to Australia for medical care.

Among the cases is that of an unnamed Bangladeshi woman who was detained in October 2013 and sent to Nauru, but was transferred to Australia for urgent medical treatment during her pregnancy. She gave birth to a girl in 2014 and remained there with her child.

Her lawyers sought a declaration that sending her to Nauru had been unlawful. They also argued that it was illegal for Australia to pay for offshore detention in a third country.

The court, however, ruled that the government’s role in funding and participating in offshore detention does not breach law.

“We’re disappointed with the ruling,” said the HRLC’s director of legal advocacy, Daniel Webb. “We now look to the Prime Minister to step in and let them stay.”

“Ripping kids out of primary school and sending them to be indefinitely warehoused on a tiny remote island is wrong,” he added.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, however, defended the ruling, saying the court had found the existing process “legally and constitutionally valid.”

He said, “Our commitment today is simply this: the people smugglers will not prevail over our sovereignty. Our borders are secure. The line has to be drawn somewhere and it is drawn at our border.”

But the strict controversial policy has brought the administration under fire by human rights groups and the wider international community.

The Australian government denies settlement to refugees attempting to reach the country by boat. Their boats are intercepted and sent to the remote islands of Christmas and Manus in Papua New Guinea and Nauru in the South Pacific, where they are kept in reportedly inhumane conditions.

Even if the detainees are subsequently found to be genuine refugees, they are either settled in those countries or have the option of moving to Cambodia.

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