Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Friday urged Europe to adopt similar tactics to Australia to stop refugee boats making the dangerous journey to try to reach its shores.
Abbott made the comments after photos of a drowned 3-year-old boy washed up on Turkish shores shocked the world.
“If you want to stop the deaths, if you want to stop the drownings, you have got to stop the boats,” Abbott told the broadcaster ABC.
“We saw yesterday on our screens a very sad, poignant image of children tragically dead at sea in illegal migration.
“Thankfully, we have stopped that in Australia because we have stopped the illegal boats. We have said to the people smugglers: ‘Your trade is closed down.’
“If you want to keep people safe, you have got to stop illegal migration and that’s what we have done.”
Tough measures
Australia’s tough measures to stop asylum-seeker boats reaching Australia include towing them back to Indonesia and using the navy to return them to their country of origin.
Those picked up on the ocean in the past two years have been kept in harsh detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island off Papua New Guinea, some for several years.
The Australian government has imposed broad secrecy over conditions in the detention centres, threatening any worker who speaks out with two years jail.
The government says the asylum seekers in the camps will never be allowed into Australia, but returned to their country of origin or resettled in Cambodia or Papua New Guinea if granted asylum.
The hard-line policy has cut dramatically the number of boat arrivals in the past two years, but prompted international criticism.
DPA
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