VOA慢速英语2015 柬埔寨下个月将接受更多的难民

AS IT IS 2015-09-18 Cambodia to Accept More Refugees Next Month

A mixed group of refugees is set to arrive in Cambodia next month under an agreement with Australia.

Three refugees from Iran and a Rohingya from Myanmar will arrive in October as part of the agreement. Reports say Cambodia will receive as much as $40 million in aid from Australia in exchange for accepting the asylum¹ seekers.

The refugees have been living temporarily on the Pacific island of Nauru. They are second group to go to Cambodia.

Khieu Sopheak is with Cambodia’s Interior Ministry². On Monday he spoke³ about the refugees and their expected arrival time. “The ministry is sending officials to interview them (in Nauru),” he said.

Details of the agreement between Australia and Cambodia have mostly been kept secret. But many human rights groups are critical of the deal. So are religious groups and opponents of the ruling parties in both countries.

Elaine Pearson is the Australia director of the rights group Human Rights Watch. “The reality is Cambodia is both unsafe and [unprepared] to handle large numbers of refugees,” she told the Reuters news service.

This new group of refugees would only be the second group Cambodia would accept under the deal. The first group arrived in June. One member of that four-person group has already asked to return to Myanmar, the country which he fled.

The deal has received increased criticism now that Australia just agreed to accept 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Critics say that Australia is not treating all refugees equally.

The Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association is the country’s oldest human rights group. Ny Chakrya, a rights officer for the group, said, “There should be no discrimination like this. Australia has shown its discrimination.”

Some observers believe that more than 600 refugees and asylum-seekers are living on Nauru. Manus Island in Papua New Guinea is holding hundreds more under a different agreement with Australia. Most of these people are from countries in South Asia and the Middle East.

The United Nations Refugee Agency says the deal between Australia and Cambodia is in conflict with the main ideas of the refugee convention. This international agreement defines who is a refugee and how they should be treated. Both countries signed this treaty in the past.

Words in This Story

spokesman – n. someone who speaks for or represents a person, company, etc.

interview – v. to question or talk with (someone) in order to get information or learn about that person

reality – n. the true situation that exists

discrimination – n. the practice of unfairly treating a person or group of people differently from other people or groups of people

convention – n. a formal agreement between two groups

1 asylum   

n.避难所，庇护所，避难

参考例句：

• The people ask for political asylum.人们请求政治避难。
• Having sought asylum in the West for many years,they were eventually granted it.他们最终获得了在西方寻求多年的避难权。

2 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

3 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。