Australia detains Indonesian asylum seekers

Australia detains Indonesian asylum seekers

Rod McGuirk, Associated Press/Canberra

Seven Indonesians who became the first asylum seekers to reach
Australia by boat in more than two years have been sent to a
detention camp on an island near Indonesia, a government official
said on Monday.

The four men, one woman and two infants who say they are from
West Timor arrived in a small fishing boat on the remote
northwest coast of Australia on Nov. 5 and asked locals for
directions to the nearest city.

Authorities took them to the northern city of Darwin then flew
them to Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian
Ocean 500 kilometers south of Jakarta, last week after they asked
for permission to stay as refugees, immigration department
spokesman Phil Allan said.

"They were transferred to Christmas Island .... last Thursday
while their claims for protection are assessed," Allan said.

Allan said the children would be released with their parents
to homes on the island within two weeks while the three single
men in the group would remain in the detention center while their
refugee claims are assessed. The government has a policy of
removing children from detention camps.

The Christmas Island camp had been closed since July when the
last of a group of Vietnamese asylum seekers left.

A fishing boat carrying 27 men, 17 women and nine children
from Vietnam that arrived in July 2003 was the last boatload of
asylum seekers to reach Australia.

Van Hoa Nguyen -- a Vietnamese-born Australian citizen -- was
sentenced in May last year in the west coast city of Perth to
five years' imprisonment for organizing their trip to flee
persecution under Vietnam's communist regime.

The government initially rejected the Vietnamese claims for
asylum, but they appealed and all succeeded in gaining refugee
visas in June and July, Allan said.