australia releases children from detention camps

Australia releases children from detention camps
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By Paul Tait
REUTERS

4:57 a.m. July 28, 2005

SYDNEY – Australia on Thursday began releasing the last 42 children from razor-wire immigration detention camps, as it softens its strict policy against illegal arrivals.

Australia's conservative government has been embarrassed by a string of immigration bungles, including the wrongful detention and deportation of two mentally ill Australian women.

"As of this morning there were 42 children from 20 families in immigration detention centers. By the end of this week there will be none," Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said in a statement.

Australia is a nation built on migrants but its strict policy against illegal immigrants, regarded as among the toughest in the world, has helped Prime Minister John Howard's government win four straight elections.

Australia's strict policy includes detaining illegal arrivals, illegal workers and people who overstay their visas in razor-wire camps, often for years while their cases are heard. Human rights groups have strongly criticized the camps.

As of July 20 there were 689 people in six detention centers.

Of the 42 children to be freed this week, 20 were held in the Villawood detention center in Sydney, Australia's biggest city.

The children were being released with family members, some into temporary accommodation while more permanent solutions were found.

"Under the new arrangements, families will live in the community at a specified address, with reporting conditions, while remaining available to the (immigration) department," Vanstone said.

The minister said that another camp on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean would remain open as a warning to people smugglers even though it would be empty by Friday.

Eleven Vietnamese people, including three children, had been held at the remote camp since they arrived in Australia in 2003 seeking refuge. Vanstone said they had all been granted temporary protection visas.

Christmas Island was at the centre of an international storm in 2001 when a Norwegian freighter, the Tampa, rescued 433 people from a sinking boat. Australia used elite troops to stop the boatpeople from landing on the mainland and instead forced the Tampa to take them to Christmas Island.

Australia was targeted by waves of illegal immigrants from the late 1990s, many of them from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, and often organized by people smugglers, prompting the tough stand against them.

The number of illegal immigrants detained in a year peaked at 8,205 in the 1999-2000 financial year. In a bid to stem the flow, Australia began intercepting boats at sea after 2001 and shipping illegal immigrants to camps on remote South Pacific islands.