Sir, - It appears from press reports that the Austrian Minister for Home Affairs has suggested the application of common sense to the matter of asylum and has suggested loosening the bonds of the Geneva Convention. The excited response of the Green Party on the basis of "international law and human rights" seems to be based on ignorance of both the Geneva Convention and of human rights. They appear not to be aware that Article 44 of the Geneva Convention allows a signatory state to withdraw from it on 12 months' notice. So, the right to free oneself from the obligations of the Convention has always existed. Article 9 of the New York Protocol has the same effect.
As regards human rights, we have for so long been told the untruth by "human rights activists" that asylum is a human right that was have forgotten the facts of that too. Any reference work will explain that the right of asylum is the right of the State to give it; not the right of the asylum-seeker to receive it. Here, for example, is the entry from the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
"Asylum, in international law, the protection granted by a state to a foreign citizen against his own state. The person for whom asylum is established, however, has no legal right to demand it, while the sheltering state, which has the legal right to grant asylum, is under no obligation to give it. Asylum is thus a right of the state, not of the individual".
In the light of this, the intent of Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is clearer than it is on a casual reading. It says: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." Note the verbs. If the receiving country were being addressed, one would expect the words "everyone has the right to receive asylum". But, in fact, it is the asylum-seeker's country of origin that is being addressed. Its citizen must be allowed "to seek asylum" and if given it must be allowed to "enjoy" it; i.e. the country of origin has no right to demand the return of its citizen. Because only asylum-lobbyists ever mention these documents their propaganda and untruths in the matter go unchallenged.
In summary, on grounds of both international law and human rights, the Green Party doesn't have a leg to stand on. - Yours, etc., Aine Ni Chonaill, PRO,
Immigration Control Platform, Dublin 2.