Australia disowns refugee port

2003-11-05 12:51

Sydney - Australia's conservative government came under attack on Wednesday after it retroactively removed thousands of islands from the country's so-called migration zone in a bid to prevent boat people from seeking asylum on the territories.

The government urgently gazetted the regulations affecting nearly four thousand islands off the northern coast after an Indonesian fishing boat suspected of carrying 14 asylum seekers and a crew of four landed on Tuesday on Melville Island, near the northern city of Darwin.

To prevent the 14 from claiming the right to seek visas, the government made the decision to "excise" Melville and the other islands from the migration zone retroactive to midnight on Monday, 12 hours before the boat people landed.

The 14 asylum-seekers, believed to be Turkish, were forced to anchor off Melville overnight by the navy and immigration officials were due to travel to interview them Wednesday.

Since Melville Island has effectively been declared outside of Australia for immigration purposes, the 14 asylum-seekers could be sent to offshore detention centres in the Pacific for processing, officials said.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone defended the bold move as needed to protect Australia from a flood of refugees travelling through Indonesia.

"These islands are just a stone's throw from Indonesia and a convenient dropping off centre for people smugglers to land their cargo," Vanstone said.

But opposition parties which control the upper house of parliament vowed on Wednesday to reverse the excise order.

"This is a fairly swift and dramatic course of action for only 18 people," said Senator Trish Crossin of the Labour Party. "It's a huge kneejerk reaction on the behalf of the government."

Leaders of the Greens party and the Democrats said they would join Labour in overturning the regulations when the Senate reconvenes on November 24. The Senate has twice rejected government attempts to excise the northern islands by legislation.

In a major crackdown on boat people beginning in late 2001, the Howard government already excised Christmas Island in the northern Indian Ocean from the migration zone and subsequently detained hundreds of would-be asylum-seekers there pending their deportation.

Alice in Wonderland approach

The refugee rights group A Just Australia condemned the government's latest action, notably following a recent report which showed that nine out of 10 boat people detained by Australia were eventually deemed valid refugees.

"Pretending that a boat hasn't really made it to Australia is an Alice in Wonderland approach," said Howard Glenn, the group's national director.

"The nine out of 10 boat arrivals in the last few years proved their refugee status, and yet the government continues to pretend that they can return them to Afghanistan or Iraq," he said.

- AFP