http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3326677.stm
Last Updated: Wednesday, 17 December, 2003, 09:22 GMT
Australia aloof to Nauru protest
Protesters issued photos apparently showing lips stitched together
The Australian Government has refused to get involved in a hunger strike
by asylum seekers at one of its offshore detention centres.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone brushed off calls from refugee
groups and the main opposition party to intervene in the protest, which
is being staged by 24 asylum seekers in a detention centre on the
Pacific island of Nauru.
Ms Vanstone said that the refugees were not on Australian territory, and
that if they did not like it in the Nauru centre they could go home.
Australia has one of the world's strictest immigration policies,
detaining all asylum seekers and illegal workers in high-security camps.
If someone doesn't want to be there, they can go home
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone
Canberra set up detention centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea in 2001,
and deployed its navy to divert all boats carrying asylum seekers to
Australia to those camps.
Ms Vanstone said on Wednesday that detainees in the Nauru camp were not
Canberra's responsibility.
"The centre is being run by the International Organisation for
Migration, they are in charge. It is not in Australian territory, it is
on Nauru and it is being run by other people," she told reporters.
"If someone doesn't want to be there, they can go home," she added.
Four of the protesters are reported to have sewn their lips together,
and the government said that at least nine had been taken to hospital,
some of whom have subsequently been discharged.
Twenty-three of the protesters are from Afghanistan and one is from
Pakistan.
Lawsuit
Human rights lawyers have lodged a lawsuit to get all 192 adults and 93
children who are being held on Nauru released. Their case will be heard
on Thursday.
Australia runs a second offshore detention centre for would-be
immigrants in Papua New Guinea, and it also has five centres within its
own borders.
Those housed on the offshore camps are denied appeal rights in
Australian courts if their asylum applications are refused.
There have been a string of hunger strikes and protests in Australia's
detention camps, which together house about 1,200 people.
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