Afghan detainees welcome visa move

About 200 Afghani detainees have been staging a hunger strike at Australia's remote Woomera detention center

By CNN's Geoff Hiscock

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Afghan asylum seekers held at the remote Woomera detention center in Outback Australia have welcomed the government's decision to resume visa processing, but say it is "not enough".

Hasan Varasi, a spokesman for the detainees, said they wanted to be released from the center into the Australian community while their applications were assessed.

Hasan, a 27-year-old Afghan man from Bamiyan who has been in Woomera since the beginning of August, said Woomera was not a detention center but a "hell center".

"We are not terrorists, we are not criminals, we should be removed from here," Hasan told CNN.

He was speaking from a payphone inside the Woomera camp, which is in a remote part of Australia about 500 kilometers (300 miles) north of the South Australian capital of Adelaide.

Hasan said the pay phone had not been working until a visit earlier this week from members of the government's detention advisory committee.

Hunger strike

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Woomera has been the scene of a hunger strike for 10 days, with about 200 Afghans refusing food and water in protest over the slow processing of their claims and Australia's policy of mandatory detention of illegal immigrants.

Some of the detainees have sewn their lips together in protest, and reports have emerged of up to 15 people trying to hang themselves.

Faced with a barrage of criticism from Australian community leaders, the Australian government on Thursday agreed to resume processing the Afghani visa claims and to keep them updated on the status of their applications.

It also removed from Woomera five unaccompanied children aged under 14.

They are being placed in foster care in Adelaide.

Hasan said another 10 hunger strikers fainted on Friday at the center, and about 15 had made themselves sick through drinking shampoo in protest.

Children protest

He said children were being urged to take food and water, but some of the unaccompanied ones aged 15 to 18 who had been at the center for months were deciding for themselves to take part in the protest.

He said the detainees wanted a time frame for the processing of their claims. Many had left Afghanistan more than six months ago, when the Taliban was still in control of the country.

"We have been in suspense since then," he said.

Hasan said that if Australia did not want them, the Afghani claimants wanted to be handed over the United Nations, to be sent to a democratic country.

He said he faced religious persecution in Afghanistan and had paid a people smuggler $4500 to take him to "any democracy where there was free speech".

He had not specified Australia as a destination.

Australian Democrats leader, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, visited Woomera on Thursday and spoke to some of the detainees, including Hasan.

Situation 'desperate'

She said later that the situation inside the high-security center was "desperate".

Australia has a policy of automatically detaining people who arrive in the country illegally.

They are put in secure camps -- often in remote parts of Australia -- while their status is assessed.

There are about 2,000 illegal immigrants detained in Australian mainland camps, while another 1,000 are held in Australia-run camps on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru and in Papua New Guinea.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Friday that his government would not change its policy of mandatory detention, and said the Woomera detainees were seeking to morally intimidate Australians.