Scuffles outside Australian camp

Over 1,000 asylum seekers are held at the remote Woomera detention center

SYDNEY, Australia -- Tension is brewing outside the Woomera detention camp in South Australia as demonstrators protest at the imprisonment of asylum seekers.

Security guards scuffled with around 150 protesters outside the controversial center, which holds over 1,000 people and is located in the desert about 500 kilometers (300 miles) north of Adelaide.

Supporters have targeted the Easter weekend to protest Australia's policy of detaining all illegal immigrants while their refugee claims are heard, a process that takes months or even years.

Sky News Australia reports that up to 2,000 activists are expected at the remote outback site over the weekend, while other reports have put the number as high as 5,000.

Woomera is the largest of Australia's five onshore detention camps, which together hold almost 3,000 asylum seekers, mostly from the Middle East and Pakistan.

While Australia's policy of mandatory detention has broad support in the country, human rights groups have slammed it. They have also drawn attention to the harsh and spartan conditions inside the camps -- particularly at Woomera.

A 16-day protest and hunger strike earlier this year -- which included attempts at suicide and the grisly practice of sewing lips together with cotton -- cast the camps into the international spotlight.

Easter discord

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Demonstrators defied efforts by federal security guards to move their protest camp away from the gates of the outback camp on Friday, in the first conflict of what could be a violent weekend as busloads of protesters arrive at Woomera.

A spokeswoman for No One is Illegal, one of about 20 groups organizing the protest, told Reuters news agency that about 40 Australian Protective Service (APS) officers stormed the protest camp outside Woomera at about midnight on Thursday.

"They raided the camp at about 12 midnight and tried to get people to leave. There were a few scuffles, people had been asleep, but everyone refused to leave," said Andrea Maksimovic.

The APS are not police officers but a government security service responsible for guarding most federal buildings and land.

South Australian police in Woomera say it is up to the APS to decide whether to arrest anyone who tries to breach the boundary near the detention camp.

Complications

Human rights groups have slammed the conditions in the camps

A spokesman for the Attorney-General's office, which is responsible for the APS, declined to comment on the incident but suggested a disagreement between state police and the APS over jurisdiction had complicated the protest situation.

"I think there are some games going on between the APS and the state police," the spokesman told Reuters.

He did not know whether the APS had the power to arrest the protesters but said the state police had no jurisdiction as long as the demonstrators remained at the Woomera detention centre.

A group of demonstrators plan to storm the center on Saturday in an attempt to deliver a banner proclaiming "Freedom" in English, Arabic and Farsi to asylum seekers, Maksimovic said.

"We're going to walk into the prohibited zone, it appears we can walk around the first fence and we'll just have to see what happens when we reach the second fence," she said.

Australia accepts more than 10,000 U.N.-approved refugees for resettlement each year but since 1994 has detained illegal immigrants in camps while their asylum claims are processed in an effort to discourage people-smugglers from bringing migrants to the island continent of 19 million people.