I would like to comment on an article titled "Smuggling rings cast broken spell of hope for immigrants, (The Jakarta Post, Oct. 29). It is not people smuggling. It is refugees getting a ride to safety because they cannot get papers to enter anywhere legally. It is legal under the refugee convention and there are no real people smuggling rings anywhere, because under the protocol against smuggling it is not smuggling.
Confused? Well so are ignorant Australian politicians who ratified the protocol against smuggling which actually forbids punishing refugees for entering without documents or the people who help them. Smuggling is the procurement of migrants, refugees simply make the choice to procure transport.
Australia doesn't jail people for smuggling, they jail poor Indonesian fishermen for not people smuggling. "As has been observed in relation to other cases of this kind, the prisoners were not involved in a *people-smuggling' exercise. There was nothing covert about either operation.
They were transporting the non-citizens to Australia for presentation to Australian authorities. There was no attempt to hide from the authorities or to disguise what they had done." See what a lie it is?
Marilyn Shepherd
Kensington, UK
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