SYDNEY: Another group of some 30 Sri Lankan asylum seekers who had arrived in Australia by boat have been sent home. Australia's Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the men were “involuntarily” returned to Colombo on a charter flight on Thursday. It brings to 186 the number of Sri Lankan asylum seekers the government has sent home since it embraced its tough new immigration policies in mid-August. Bowen said the men raised no issues that engaged Australia's international obligations. “Without a valid visa they had no legal right to remain in Australia and were removed at the earliest opportunity,” Bowen said in a statement on Thursday. Australia would continue to regularly transfer asylum seekers to Nauru and would shortly start sending people to Manus Island too, the minister said. “And where appropriate, the government will certainly continue to return people where they do not engage Australia's international obligations,” he said. Bowen's announcement came as a boat carrying 35 people was intercepted near the Cocos Islands. More than 750 asylum seekers have arrived on 15 boats in the past 8 days. It also comes as human rights groups are urging Australia to recognize poor conditions in detention centers in the country and a hunger strike begun by Sri Lankan migrants. The hunger strike at the processing center in Nauru has entered its fifth consecutive day by asylum seekers who are demanding better treatment at the facility and more information on their claims, including when they will be processed. At least 10 people have received medical treatment after suffering what the Australia Department of Immigration called “heat exhaustion." The immigration department has tried to downplay the protests, saying more than 300 meals were eaten on Sunday. Refugee Action Coalition's spokesman Ian Rintoul told Pacific Beat the immigration department is “desperate" to pretend the situation on Nauru is not serious. “There's very clearly a hunger strike and a serious situation developing on Nauru and I think the government will be far better addressing that rather than trying to deflect with some idea that the seriousness can be measured by the amounts of meals or whatever that may have been eaten on a particular day," he said. This is not the first time in recent months that Australia has been under fire for their treatment of immigrants in the country. In July, two Indonesian teenagers who had been jailed for more than one year in Australia for allegedly participating in human trafficking reported being sexually abused and forced to ingest drugs while detained in Sydney's Silverwater Prison. In Australia, the report of the two teenagers led to calls for the government there to release other Indonesian youth who remain jailed in the country in an effort to stem any potential diplomatic row between Canberra and Jakarta. “As far as Indonesian minors in Australian jails, there's been a commitment from both countries that it is a priority and should have special attention," a spokesman for Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said on Friday, in comments published by News.com.au. The two boys, now 17- and 18-years old, have returned to Indonesia, but were locked up for more than a year in Australia after they were arrested when asylum seeker boats on which they were crewing were intercepted on the way to Christmas Island. “I was afraid because I was being detained with adult criminals and drug abusers," Susilo told reporters at the Human Rights Working Group headquarters in Jakarta, the Jakarta Post newspaper reported on Friday. “I keep telling the authorities that I was 15-years-old and that I didn't want to stay with those criminals, but they wouldn't listen." Violence and abuse for Indonesian asylum-seekers is not a new revelation in the ongoing debacle between Indonesia and Australia over how to deal with boat people. In Australia, camps have been established where refugees are often held for months, even years, upon arrival in Australia. The two governments are currently working on a new agreement that could see refugees exchanged for immigrants looking to move to Australia, but opposition in Australia remains high to the deal.
