The Jakarta Post, 4/13/2006 9:39:25 AM
Australia to send all asylum seekers to island detention centers
CANBERRA (AP): The government has decided to send all asylum seekers arriving
by boat on Australia's mainland to island detention camps to avoid further inflaming
tensions with Indonesia after 42 people from its Papua province were granted refugee
status, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The new rules approved by senior government ministers on Wednesday will deny
appeal rights allowed under Australian law to all asylum seekers arriving by sea, The
Australian newspaper said.
Under a policy introduced in 2001, asylum seekers arriving on outlying Australian
islands were sent to detention camps on impoverished South Pacific neighbors Nauru
and Papua New Guinea and the Australian Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island.
But those who reached the mainland were deemed entitled to Australia's full legal
rights. Now, even those arriving on the mainland by boat will be sent to island
detention camps.
The new policy is designed to discourage asylum seekers coming from the restive
Indonesian province of Papua and mend relations with Indonesia, the newspaper said.
Indonesia's government demanded a review of Australian refugee procedures after the
42 Papuans who arrived on Australia's coast by dugout canoe in January were
accepted as refugees last month.
Peter Costello, deputy leader of the ruling Liberal Party, did not confirm the
newspaper report, but said offshore processing of refugees had proved "very, very
successful in stopping peoplesmugglers."
"This is one of the things that the government will look at in relation to dealing with
these claims," Costello told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio."Australia will decide
how to deal with refugee claims and we'll do it in accordance with the (U.N.) Refugee
Convention," Costello told ABC. "But having said that, of course, we want to maintain
good relations with Indonesia."
"We don't want to let these things sour the relationship in any way and we want to
resume close relations, and continue close relations, that we've made such progress
on in recent years," he added.
Future asylum seekers could be sent to Christmas Island or the Australian-funded
camp on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island for processing, the newspaper said. (**)
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