Lankans won't be sent home - Australian Govt

Australia vowed Yesterday not to send home a group of 85, mostly Sri Lankan boat people if it meant they would face persecution.

The Australian government said the fate of the group, intercepted by a navy ship this week, was being discussed with both Jakarta and the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru, where Australia already has a immigration detention centre.

But Canberra played down a report in the Sydney Morning Herald that it was seeking to have the group sent back to Sri Lanka via Indonesia, in a possible breach of international conventions.

"While the government is considering options, clearly no action would be taken which would breach our international obligations," Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a joint statement.

"Any suggestion that Australia would agree to an arrangement which would see refugees returned to a country where they face persecution is wrong."

Australia has a strict policy of detention for asylum-seekers and the ministers said the group, all men, would not be taken to the Australian mainland.

Instead, it said the men would be temporarily housed at Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, while they underwent health checks and the government decided what to do with them.

Under Canberra's controversial "Pacific Solution", asylum seekers are sent to Australian-run detention centres on Nauru or Papua New Guinea's Manus Island in a bid to deter people-smugglers.

The Nauru detention centre became the focus of global attention in 2001 when a boatload of Afghan refugees seeking asylum was offloaded on the Pacific island.

Last September, Australia sent seven Myanmar asylum seekers to Nauru as it reactivated the centre, which had stood empty for some months after its last occupant, an Iraqi, went to Australia for medical treatment.

Prime Minister John Howard said this week that Australia's hardline stance on asylum seekers had not changed and the country would continue to defend the integrity of its borders.

No formal request for asylum has been made by the group intercepted by an Australian naval ship 50 nautical miles from Christmas Island on Tuesday but officials said this week that they expected the men to claim refugee status.

Sri Lanka has been wrecked by separatist violence for the past 35 years, with an upsurge in violence since December 2005 claiming nearly 4,000 lives.

(AFP)