More Boats Mean More Asylum Seekers in Detention in Australia

In the first two months of 2012, 1165 asylum seekers have arrived in Australia by boat. And all of them have been moved to detention centres.

On 16th February two boats carrying more than 130 asylum seekers were stopped off the coast of Christmas Island. Two days later, Australian authorities intercepted another asylum seeker boat with more than 79 asylum seekers on board. And on 21^st February, two more boats were found in Australian waters. One of the boats was carrying 98 people while the other had 96 passengers. The asylum seekers have been taken to the detention centre on Christmas Island, where they will receive initial security, health and identity checks and their reasons for travel will be established.

Both of the major political parties in Australia want to start offshore processing for asylum seekers who arrive by boat again. But they are still fighting over which country asylum seekers should be sent to. The current Government wants to send asylum seekers to Malaysia. The Liberal Party (in opposition) wants to send asylum seekers to Nauru.

Both sets of politicians are blaming each other for the increase in the numbers of people arriving by boat. The Government’s Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, said the latest boat arrivals were because the Liberal Party was refusing to negotiate. “Enough is enough. Australians expect Mr. Abbott to work with the Government to stop people risking their lives at sea,” Mr. Bowen said. The Liberal Party’s immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said the  “Labor [party] has lost control of our borders.”

Without offshore processing, the newest asylum seekers to arrive in Australia are being sent to detention centres. A new report by Amnesty International, however, says that conditions in those detention centres are not good for asylum seekers. In fact, they have said the Australian Government should close the remote detention centres like Curtin immediately.

Amnesty spoke with one asylum seeker who has been on detention for more than two years, waiting for the refugee application to be processed. The asylum seeker told Amnesty, “the only way to pass the time and escape the heat is to rely on medication to sleep the days away.”

Amnesty spokesperson Graham Thom said that there was an “air of hopelessness” among the asylum seekers and that their mental health was “obviously being crushed” by spending up to three years waiting. Amnesty says that asylum seekers should be detained only for a maximum of 30 days once they reach Australia.

There are currently 3031 people in immigration detention centres around Australia. Almost a third have been in detention for more than a year.

Asylum Seekers Stage Hunger Strike in Australia

Five asylum seekers in an Australian immigration detention centre are staging a hunger strike after being held in detention for over a year.

The men have been refusing to eat for over nine days in protest over the time being taken to process their refugee applications. One of the men, a 33-year-old man from Iran, was taken to hospital on his ninth day of the hunger strike. A member of the Refugee Action Collective said the man was returned to the detention centre on the same day but resumed the hunger strike as soon as he was back in detention. “[More] people are willing to join him on the strike. I wouldn't be surprised if it does keep going,” she said. “It’s reaching boiling point.”

Members of the Refugee Action Collective regularly visit the detention centre in Melbourne and say that the lack of information for the detainees about their cases has led to them taking strike action. “There's no communication. No one knows how long they’ll have to wait. The [Australian Government] doesn't have to give a time frame so tensions are reaching quite high.”

The Refugee Action Collective member said men are desperate “They're just waiting and they're getting pushed over the edge.” One of the striking detainees was given refugee status more than five months ago but is still in detention waiting for his security clearance.

A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship said that the men on hunger strike were being watched closely. “Food and water is available to detainees at all times; we encourage them to eat,” he said. The Immigration Department also said the men had access to proper levels of health care and support. He added that “the protest will have no effect on the outcome of their cases.”

The hunger strike comes as concerns are rising about the increasing number of asylum seekers trying to get to Australia from Iran. The number of Iranians trying to reach Australia by boat has increased dramatically in recent months. In 2009-10 Iranians were just 6% of the asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat. By 2010-11 they made up 36%. Recent figures show that asylum seekers from Iran now make up almost 50% of the people arriving by boat in Australia. 1,549 Iranians arrived in 2010-11.

The increase is leading to fears that thousands of Iranians could be denied refugee status but be unable to return to Iran. Immigration Department figures show that most of the Iranian asylum seekers were found not to be refugees in their first application. Normally, people who are not accepted as refugees are sent back to their home country, even if they don’t want to be. But in the case of Iranian asylum seekers, they can’t be returned to Iran because the Iranian Government will not accept them. The result could be thousands of Iranians in Australian detention centres indefinitely.

20 Asylum-seekers die on the way to Australia

At least 20 asylum seekers have drowned when their boat sank off the Indonesian coast on 1^st November 2011.
The asylum seekers were attempting to reach Australia on a small wooden boat.  The boat was carrying around 70 asylum seekers from Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan but it did not have enough equipment.  The boat left from Central Java and was heading for West Java when it sank.
Indonesian authorities said that 52 people were rescued and 8 people were confirmed dead including 4 women and 2 children. Another body was found later and the body of a nine-year-old boy was pulled from the water on Wednesday 2^nd November. At least other 10 people are still missing including three girls aged about two.
The rescue operation has failed to find any more bodies or survivors until now. Injured survivors are being cared for in a hospital and medical centre. The other survivors are understood to be at a police station and navy base.
An Indonesian policeman said "the dead have been identified as being from Afghanistan and Pakistan. The ones survived mostly from Iran. We believe there were at least 59 Iranian, three Afghanis and six from Pakistan. But the number is not supported by documents and there is a language problem too. So, we can't tell exactly the number missing. It's just a rough number."
Indonesia authorities said that bad weather and overcrowding might have contributed to the accident. There are also reports that local fishermen's associations had been warning for days that conditions were too rough to go out in the sea.
One of the survivors is an Iranian widow who had decided to try to start a new life in Australia with her two children, Mahdieh, her 14-year-old daughter, and Mahdi, her nine-year-old boy. “I was feeling sick and I was asleep [on the boat]. They woke me up when it was sinking. I said ‘I can't see my daughter, my people,’” she said. She found a life jacket and jumped into the sea but never saw her children again.
The is the first tragedy since December last year when nearly 50 people died after their boat smashed into rocks off the coast of Christmas Island. There have been many tragic incidents of asylum seekers on the way to Australia in past years, especially during the monsoon season when the weather is bad and the seas become very rough.
Australian authorities are concerned that even more asylum seekers will drown trying to get to Australia on unsafe boats in dangerous waters. The Home Affairs Minister said ''If we do not have the strongest deterrent to prevent people smugglers plying their trade, we will see further disasters ... we do not want to see further tragedies. This really does underline the need for parliament and for all parties involved to put in place the most effective deterrent to stop this awful trade.''
Australian politician Sarah Hanson-Young said the tragedy proved that more needed to be done to create safer options for asylum seekers. “This must include taking more people directly from Indonesia and Malaysia before they set out in unseaworthy vessels,” she said.
The Australian Government continues to look for support for its Malaysia Plan which it believes will break the people smugglers model and deter asylum seekers from risking their lives trying to get to Australia by boat. The Immigration Minister said “this is a terrible tragedy but it is a fact that when you have more boats coming to Australia you will see more deaths. We didn't adopt the Malaysia arrangement because it was politically easy or it was convenient, quite the opposite. We adopted it because we knew that this was the sort of arrangement that was necessary to avoid more deaths at sea.”
The Home Affairs Minister also said the Opposition should support the Malaysia Solution. "This is a tragic event, which underscores the absolutely dire need to put in the strongest possible deterrence to combat people smuggling and to prevent dangerous vessels from embarking on a journey to Australia,'' he said.