PM and deputy PM have committed to accepting more people who have been held on Nauru, Australia’s immigration minister says

Australia’s immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has met with Cambodian leaders to shore up the government’s $55m deal to resettle refugees from the Australian-run Nauru immigration detention centre in the south-east Asian country.



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Cambodia’s prime minister and deputy prime minister had committed to accepting more refugees processed in the Nauru centre, Dutton said during a visit to Phnom Penh on his way home from European discussions about Syrian refugees.

Last month an official from Cambodia’s interior ministry indicated the country would not take any more than the four refugees it had already accepted from Nauru. But after a meeting between Dutton and the Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen, both countries have appeared to reconfirm a commitment to resettlement, likely in small groups of four or five refugees.

In a statement on Thursday, Dutton said his visit reinforced both nations’ commitment to resettling refugees from Nauru who have agreed to go to Cambodia.

A minister attached to Hun Sen told the Phnom Penh Post more refugees would be resettled. “We are ready to accept more refugees … we will send our officials, a team from the ministry of the interior, to interview them,” Sri Thamrong said. “Both [Hun Sen] and the guest [Dutton] want to have more refugees to come … on a voluntary basis.”

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The multimillion-dollar resettlement deal attracted criticism last month when it was revealed only four refugees had been moved and a senior Cambodian government official said his country did not want any more to come.



“We don’t have any plans to import more refugees from Nauru to Cambodia,” interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak told the Cambodia Daily in August. “I think the fewer we receive the better.”

His comments were dismissed by Australia. Australia agreed to pay Cambodia $40m in return for taking an unspecified number of refugees, as well as contributing $15m in resettlement costs.

The four refugees are still being housed at Australian expense in a Phnom Penh villa. It is reported than one of the four, a Rohingyan man from Myanmar, has requested to go home, despite being recognised as a refugee facing a “well-founded fear of persecution” in his home country.