Australia has barred a citizen linked to the Islamic State (IS) group from the country for up to two years.
The person is among the group of 34 Australian women and children who tried to head home after being released from a Syrian camp earlier this week, only to be turned back by Syrian authorities for “technical reasons”.
The ban was issued “on advice from security agencies”, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said on Wednesday, adding that the other 33 people do not meet “required legal thresholds” to be banned.
Canberra has refused to repatriate the group, believed to be made up of the wives, widows and children of IS fighters. There are 23 children among them.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stressed that these families will not receive government support to come back to the country.
“You make your bed, you lie in it,” he told a press conference on Wednesday.
“These are people who chose to go overseas to align themselves with... a brutal, reactionary ideology that seeks to undermine and destroy our way of life.”
However legal experts have warned the government has an obligation to allow citizens the right of return, and, responding to reports the group had valid Australian passports, Albanese said his government would not “breach Australian law”.
This group in the al-Roj camp in northern Syria is among dozens of Australians who have been held in camps and prisons across the country since 2019, when IS was driven from its final foothold in Syria.
Opposition politicians have raised security concerns about the possibility of these Australians’ return.
“How can only one member of this group be deemed a risk and the rest somehow okay?” Liberal Party Senator Jonno Duniam said on Tuesday, offering to help amend laws to bar more of the group.
The al-Roj camp is home to more than 2,000 others from 40 different nationalities, mainly women and children.
Among them is thought to be Shamima Begum, who was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 on national security grounds.
Speaking to ABC, the camp’s director Hakmiyeh Ibrahim made an appeal to all countries that have citizens held in limbo there: “Take your citizens, take these children and women”.
The children especially are growing up surrounded by “dangerous ideas and ideologies” in the camp, she said. “The more time passes, the more complicated the situation becomes.”
Several of these camps have made headlines as the women and children living in them are severely malnourished and lack access to basic resources.
Several other foreign governments - including France, the Netherlands, and the UK - have also refused to repatriate most of their citizens still held in Syria.
Source: BBC
- Agencies
