Sri Lankan asylum seekers arrive in Australia after weeks held at sea

SYDNEY (Reuters) - A group of 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers has arrived at a detention camp in Australia, government officials said on Monday, after having been held at sea by authorities for almost a month, sparking a legal challenge.

The interception and detention of the group has spotlighted Australia's controversial and secretive policies to turn back boats carrying potential refugees.

These policies have drawn world scrutiny and criticism from rights groups and the United Nations, besides legal challenges.

The group was taken to the remote Curtin Detention Centre in outback Western Australia on Sunday and Monday.

Indian consular officials were due to begin interviewing some of the group, whose boat was intercepted by the Australian navy after setting sail from India.

India has agreed to take back any of its nationals among the group but a lawyer asked to represent the Tamils said they should first be interviewed by Australian authorities to establish any claims to asylum.

"Now these people are in Australia, the ordinary protections of Australian law must be afforded to these people," human rights lawyer David Manne told Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) radio.

"On the information at hand so far, it's completely unclear what role India could properly play in this process. It's a fundamental principal of refugee law that no person should have to deal with the authorities of another country from which they may have fled."

The government made the decision to bring the group, which includes 50 children, to Australia after human rights lawyers began legal action in the High Court to stop them being sent to Sri Lanka and disputing the government's right to assess asylum claims while the detainees were at sea.

The High Court decided on Monday, after the group's arrival in Australia, to drop that case, cancelling a hearing scheduled for next week, citing the detainees' changed circumstances.

Lawyers for the group said they were discussing new potential legal action with the detainees, based on the their current situation.

The group of Sri Lankan men, women and children are the first asylum seekers travelling by boat to reach mainland Australia in seven months, an apparent setback for the government's policies.

Conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott's government had boasted of its success in deterring asylum seekers from making the perilous journey, often in unsafe boats after paying people smugglers in Indonesia.

The government issued updates of how long it had been since the last such boat's arrival in Australia.

Australia normally uses offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and the tiny South Pacific island nation of Nauru to process would-be refugees who arrive on boats.

While the group of Sri Lankans will be processed at the Curtin camp, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has stressed they will not be resettled in Australia and has released little information about them.

Morrison contends the group are economic refugees.

"These people have come from a safe country of India. They haven't come from Sri Lanka," he told ABC radio.

"If we can't take people back to India, what is next? New Zealand? India are a vibrant democracy, they are a good partner, they're working closely with us," Morrison said.

The asylum seekers were brought ashore in the Cocos Keeling islands at the weekend after being held on an Australian customs boat, and transferred in smaller batches by plane to Curtin.

Their plight became known after a separate group of 37 Sinhalese and four Tamils on another boat was quietly intercepted and returned to Sri Lanka by Australian authorities.

About 16,000 asylum seekers came on 220 boats to Australia in the first seven months of last year, but the government says there have been no illegal boat arrivals since December 2013.

(Additional reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez)

WhatsAppFacebookTwitterLinkedinBeloudBluesky