First refugees from Nauru land in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH – Four refugees transferred from the Nauru detention centre have arrived in Cambodia and were taken away in a van with curtains covering the windows.

Two Iranian men, an Iranian woman and a Rohingya man from Myanmar arrived in Phnom Penh on a commercial flight. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) then took them to their villa at a secret location.

The refugees did not speak to the media, with Australian immigration officials saying the four did not want to jeopardise the safety of their families.

In a statement, the IOM said the group were being taken to temporary accommodation in the Cambodian capital to undergo language training as well as “cultural and social orientation”.

“They’re here, they’re healthy and we ask for privacy for them,” IOM regional spokesman Joe Lowry said.

The four are the first refugees to be transferred from Nauru as part of Australia’s offshore processing policy.

As part of the deal Australia is giving the Cambodian government $40 million in aid and giving the IOM $15.5 million to support all refugees transferred there for a year.

“Cambodia clearly has no will or capacity to integrate refugees permanently into Cambodian society,” Phil Robertson from Human Rights Watch said following the transfer.

“These four refugees are essentially human guinea pigs in an Australian experiment that ignores the fact that Cambodia has not integrated other refugees and has already sent Montagnards and Uighur asylum seekers back into harm’s way in Vietnam and China.”

In a statement, Amnesty International Australia said Cambodia’s track record of protecting asylum-seekers was “poor” and called on Canberra to “cease the transfer of asylum seekers and refugees to third countries where they are not adequately protected from human rights abuses”.

A spokesman for Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he would not be commenting on the transfer.

The transfer came as Amnesty released a report that reveals the Cambodian government’s violent repression of some of the largest demonstrations in the nation’s history during 2014.

Amnesty’s research director for Southeast Asia, Rupert Abbott, says its report documents how victims of serious human rights violations by security forces have been left without justice and effective remedies, while those responsible continue to walk free.

He says the findings bolstered concerns that refugees transferred to Cambodia may not be protected from human rights abuses.

Amnesty has called on the Australian government to honour its responsibilities under international law and cease the transfer of asylum seekers and refugees to third countries where they were not adequately protected from human rights abuses.

Under the Abbott government’s hardline immigration policy, asylum seekers who arrive by boat are denied resettlement in Australia.

They are instead sent to detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

The deal with Cambodia, signed last September, allows those granted refugee status in Nauru to permanently resettle in Cambodia.

The United Nations has condemned the deal, while refugee advocates say asylum seekers do not want to be sent to Cambodia.