Amnesty International today, called on the Australian government to return 153 Tamil asylum seekers, detained in in a patrol boat at see, to Australian shores to have their claims processed, reports the Guardian.
Australian court documents revealed that the asylum seekers were begin held in windowless rooms, with no access to translators whilst being split up from their family groups.
“Detaining men, women and children on a boat, locking in rooms without windows and severely restricting their communication to the outside world with no access to translators, is inhumane,” said Amnesty International Australia’s refugee campaign co-ordinator, Graeme McGregor.
The Australian government Thursday, refused to provide details of the fate of the detained asylum seekers.
A prominent Australian human rights barrister, Julian Burnside, describing the ongoing detention as an act of piracy, 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.”
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