The Australian government confirmed that it had turned back 20 boats carrying 633 asylum seekers in the past 18 months, according the country’s immigration minister.
Minister Peter Dutton said that the government would “celebrate” what he called a “significant achievement”, telling reporters,
“We have [more than] a year since we have had a successful people-smuggling operation and that is good news because we have had no reported deaths under Operation Sovereign Borders at sea and we have been able to stare down these evil people smugglers”.
"I think the important point to remember in all of this is had those 20 boats arrived, 200 boats or 2,000 boats would have followed them," he added.
The announcement comes as the Australian government confirmed it turned back a boat carrying 46 asylum seekers from Vietnam last month. The Vietnamese government was contacted, the boat they arrived on scuttled and the refugees sent back, confirmed the minister.
Refugee support organisation VOICE said that some members of the group were now being held by Vietnamese security forces "for an indefinite period for interrogation".
In June this year, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott came under fire after reports that the Australian government had paid people smugglers to turn back boats packed with asylum seekers.
See more in our earlier post:
Australian PM refuses to rule out paying people smugglers to turn back boats (12 Jun 2015)