Amnesty calls on Australia to return 153 asylum seekers to shore
Campaign group says it has 'grave concerns' about the conditions in which Tamils are being held on the high seas
Amnesty International has called on the Australian government to return the 153 Tamil asylum seekers detained at sea for three weeks back to shore to have their claims processed.
Court documents have shown that the asylum seekers, around 37 of whom are understood to be children, are being held in harsh conditions on an Australian ship understood to be the customs vessel Ocean Protector.
The claim document, submitted as part of an ongoing high court challenge to the legality of asylum seeker’s detention, revealed they are being held in windowless locked rooms, with no access to translators and with family groups being split up.
“We have grave concerns at reports from lawyers that they must request permission to move from one room to the other and can only leave their rooms in the presence of a guard,” Amnesty International Australia’s refugee campaign co-ordinator Graeme McGregor said.
“Detaining men, women and children on a boat, locked in rooms without windows and severely restricting their communication with the outside world with no access to translators, is inhumane.”
The high court has become the only public mechanism through which to get information about the 153, who left India for Australia more than a month ago before being intercepted. A hearing last week in Melbourne provided the government’s first official acknowledgement of the asylum seekers’ existence.
On Thursday the Australian government again refused to give details on the fate of the 153 but maintained they were in the “good care” of Australian customs.
Under senate questions from Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young, assistant minister for immigration Michaelia Cash said: “As I have stated previously the matter is currently before the high court, and it would not be appropriate to comment any further on the matter.
Hanson-Young, who asked if clean clothes had been given to the children, later said that the conditions revealed in the court documents highlighted the Abbott government had “reached a new low” in its treatment of asylum seekers.
“It’s outrageous that the Abbott government is holding children behind locked doors on a secret prison ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean,” Hanson-Young said.
“Our country’s international reputation is being dragged through the mud by this spectacle. Australia is better than this, but the Liberal Party’s obsession with the cheap politics of fear is having disastrous consequences.
The UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, have voiced “profound concern” at the fate of those on board, with prominent Australian human rights barrister Julian Burnside describing their ongoing detention as an act of piracy.
A directions hearing into the case will start on Friday morning.
