Panic mentality consuming Australians

18 November 2009
SBS TV, Australia
Source: AAP

Amnesty International say too much panic over asylum seekers AAP.

Amnesty International says Australia has a panic mentality about asylum seekers which is out of proportion with the problem.

Amnesty International secretary general Irene Khan noted that boat arrivals in Australia were relatively few compared with 30,000 in Europe.

"There's a lot of panic here when you think there are 3000 asylum seekers arriving in Australia," she said.

She praised the Rudd government for getting rid of the "Pacific solution" for asylum seekers and urged it to close down Christmas Island detention centre too.

"We don't believe ... (that) deters asylum seekers from coming," Ms Khan said.

"They come when there are problems in the world, they're pushed out by serious ... war and conflict.

It is not so much the attraction of Australia but the push factors from the countries of origin."

Ms Khan suggested a multilateral approach to deal with the problem, which had worked with the Cambodian and Vietnamese asylum seekers.

Australia has been looking to Indonesia for help to keep asylum seekers away as the number of boat arrivals increases.

Negative attitudes to asylum seekers weren't limited to Australia, however.

"There is a retraction on protection of refugees and asylum seekers across the western world," the head of the international human rights organisation told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

In Europe the navy had been used to keep asylum seekers coming from Africa from reaching European shores.

"We know that hundreds of thousands of asylum actually die in their efforts to get to Europe," she said.