Australia rejects 500 Syrian refugees on security grounds

Australia rejects 500 Syrian refugees on security grounds
Applications for the resettlement of 500 Syrian refugees from camps in the Middle East were rejected by Australia over security concerns, an official said on Thursday.
2 min read
23 March, 2017
As many as 900 of the accepted refugees are members of Syria's Christian minority [AFP]
Five hundred Syrian refugees were rejected by Australia on security grounds, following a more than one year of vetting, AP reported an official saying on Thursday.

Applications for the resettlement of 12,000 refugees from Middle Eastern camps were accepted, Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton said.

The deadly rampage near the UK's parliament on Wednesday, in which a man used a knife and car as weapons to kill four people, showed Australia was right to be cautious on who it accepted, Dutton said.

"The tragic events in London and elsewhere demonstrate the government's approach was prudent and there are people that we'd excluded on national security grounds and people that we do have concerns about that we have not brought to our country and we never will," Dutton told reporters.

Austalia announced in September 2015 that 12,000 refugees from the war in Syria and Iraq would be resettled as quickly as possible.

All 12,000 have now been issued visas and more than 10,000 have already been brought to Australia, the government said on Wednesday.

Dutton said there would have been "significant consequences in our own country" if the government had followed the opposition's advice by bringing all the refugees to Australia quickly.

As many as 900 of the accepted refugees are members of Syria's Christian minority, a newspaper reported, according to AP.