Thousands rally over asylum seekers' detention

Over the last few months, fires and protests have focused attention on the plight of the detainees

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Crowds of thousands have rallied against the Australian government's policy of detaining asylum seekers.

Up to 30,000 protesters lined the streets of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, where speakers called for an end to mandatory detention, the Associated Press reports.

"The message of today is refugees are welcome here," Trades Hall Council secretary Leigh Hubbard said to loud applause from

some 5,000 people at a rally in the centre of Melbourne.

Australia's policy of mandatory detention for all illegal immigrants, including women and children, was cast into the international spotlight during a hunger strike at Woomera detention center.

The 16-day protest and hunger strike involved suicide attempts and the grisly practice of sewing lips together with cotton.

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In particular, the length of time the visa application process could take, and the harsh, spartan conditions inside the camps -- particularly the remote Woomera facility -- drew sustained criticism from human rights groups and church organizations.

The government uses navy ships to patrol waters between Indonesia and northern Australia.

Those caught are sent to detention centers under what has been dubbed a "Pacific solution" set up by Australia on the impoverished Pacific nations of Papua New Guinea and Nauru until their asylum applications have been processed.

Thousands of asylum seekers, however, are also being held in camps around Australia.

"What we want out of this is the end of mandatory detention, the end of temporary protection visas and the end of the Pacific solution," Hubbard was reported by the Associated Press as saying.

The Pacific solution is estimated to cost Australia $250 million a year.

Australia has also been under the spotlight for an incident alleging that asylum seekers threw their children overboard so that the navy could save them.

Australia is very active in clamping down on human trafficking, with over 4,000 people arriving by boats last year.

Canberra says they have all come through smugglers and fear that if they don't stop the influx now, illegal migrants will swamp them.

Hunger strike

Earlier protests focused on human rights issues

One of the key grievances of the more than 300 asylum seekers who went on hunger strike at the Woomera camp in January was the government's decision in November to stop processing their applications for protection visas as refugees.

The government argued that the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan invalidated many of the claims for protection for persecution.

It was not until the government agreed to restart processing their visa applications that independent negotiators were able to convince the hunger strikers to call off their protest.

About 800 people are held in the Woomera detention camp, which is located in the desert about 500 kilometers (300 miles) north of the South Australian state capital of Adelaide.

It is the largest of Australia's five onshore detention camps which hold about 2,000 asylum seekers, most of whom have come from the Middle East and Afghanistan via people-smuggling networks.

About 1,000 more illegal immigrants are held in Australian-run camps on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru and on the Papua New Guinean island of Manus.

Unmoved

Despite the international condemnation, Prime Minister John Howard remains unmoved on his hardline policy on illegal immigration.

The tough stance has proved popular with many Australians and is considered instrumental in ensuring the re-election of Howard's conservative coalition for a third term of power in November last year.

Earlier this year, Howard proposed offering payments to Afghan asylum seekers to assist them resettle in Afghanistan.

Howard said the re-settlement assistance would be available to up to 1,100 Afghan asylum seekers currently being detained in camps in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

While not putting a figure on the resettlement sum offered, Howard said it would be a "sensible, useful," amount.