Sydney (Australia), Nov 5 (EFE).- The Australian Government rejected 70% of the visa applications of Palestinians who have fled Gaza since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out, a measure that defenders of the human rights denounced this Tuesday as “systematic discrimination.”
Between October 7, 2023, the date of the conflict in Gaza, and October 15, 2024, Australia granted visas to 3,041 Palestinians, while rejecting 7,252 applications, Australian Home Affairs officials said in a hearing the day before. before a committee of the Canberra Parliament.
Officials also reported yesterday the detention of a Palestinian in mid-September in an Australian detention center after his temporary visa was revoked over security concerns, which has revived opposition calls for greater scrutiny of this collective.
“The debate around refugees is poisoned,” Ian Rintoul, representative of the Refugee Action Coalition, told EFE, noting that it seems “very clear to him that people who want to come from Gaza are systematically discriminated against” in Australia. .
Rintoul also said, in a virtual appearance before the Foreign Press Association in Australia, that currently many of the Palestinians who fled Gaza face “enormous problems” to extend their temporary visas in the southern country.
The activist explained that, on the other hand, Ukrainians who have arrived in the country after the Russian invasion of their country in 2022 have a type of visa that allows them to “stay permanently.”
The representative of the Refugee Action Coalition also noted that the debate surrounding the Palestinians’ potential links with the Islamic group Hamas has diverted attention from “humanitarian concerns about the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.” and Australia’s obligation to protect them.
For his part, in the same event with the foreign press, the Kurdish journalist and writer Behrouz Boochani, who spent more than four years detained in an Australian detention center in Papua New Guinea and currently lives in New Zealand, accused Australia of ” dehumanize and criminalize refugees.
The conflict in Gaza, which has caused more than 43,000 deaths, more than 101,000 injuries and almost two million displaced people, has generated pro-Palestinian protests and divisions in Australian society, which has forced the government of Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese , to appoint representatives to fight against the growing anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the country. EFE
