27 Asylum-Seekers Rounded Up in Australia Jungle
Australian authorities said Friday they had rounded up all 27 asylum-seekers who arrived undetected on the country’s remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island, adding they were lucky to survive.
How the group, believed to be ethnic Rohingya from Myanmar, came to land on the island was not known but reports said they had survived for several days on crabs and coconut in the inhospitable terrain.
“These are very small vessels and these 27 people who are now safe should count themselves extremely fortunate that they did not suffer a far worse fate,” Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said.
Hundreds of people have died trying to reach Australia on people-smuggling boats, with one of the worst incidents on Christmas Island in December 2010 when a boat splintered on rocks and sank, killing about 50 people.
The government had originally said 28 people arrived on the vessel which reportedly ran aground on Christmas Island’s Greta Beach late Monday, but revised the number to 27 on Friday, adding that details were still sketchy.
“I think they had a very difficult and distressing time, it’s not clear how they came ashore,” said Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, who leads the government’s people-smuggling crackdown Operation Sovereign Borders.
“Those cliffs are extremely difficult and jagged and the jungle very thick.
“Christmas Island, I would note is a sea mount, prone to rough seas, jagged cliffs and extensively covered by dense jungle. These people are extremely lucky to have survived their ordeal.”
Of the 27 on the vessel, 22 were in a detention center and one was in a stable condition in hospital with minor injuries, Campbell said.
“An additional four persons have been transferred into immigration custody this morning after the assistance of the Australian Federal Police in recovering them from the vicinity of Greta Beach,” he added.
Christmas Island, an Australian territory 2,600 kilometers (1,600 miles) from the mainland’s west coast, is located on a major people-smuggling route from Indonesia.
Campbell said while undetected arrivals had occurred in the past, he had directed the commander of border protection command to undertake an assessment of “procedures, disposition and capability to mitigate where possible such surprises”.
“Their arrival was not detected but their outcome… will be the same as all other illegal maritime arrivals, they will go to the offshore processing centers either on Nauru or in Papua New Guinea.”
Asylum-seeker boat arrivals have dropped dramatically under the new conservative government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, which has retained a hardline policy adopted by the former Labor administration of sending all boat people to Papua New Guinea or Nauru for permanent resettlement.
But close to 200 people have arrived on four boats in the past week.
Myanmar views the Muslim Rohingya as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. Thousands have fled in rickety boats since deadly clashes broke out with Buddhists last year.
Source: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/
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