Australia suspends asylum claims from Afghans and Sri Lankans

Apr 9, 2010, 6:26 GMT

Sydney - Australia announced Friday it was suspending the processing of asylum claims from people arriving illegally from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

The move has been widely interpreted as an election-year response to the boatloads of Afghans and Sri Lankans arriving almost daily from Indonesia.

All new illegal arrivals from those countries are to be detained without asylum applications. The authorities have said they would review the situation for Sri Lankan asylum seekers in three months, and for Afghans in six months.

Current asylum applications are to continue to be processed.

The asylum seekers give money to traffickers to ferry them across to Australia and pay off Indonesian officials who turn a blind eye to the departure of fishing boats and their dirt-poor crews.

So far this year 38 boats have arrived carrying 1,808 asylum seekers and 96 Indonesian crew members. In 2008, before Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd softened the border protection policies of his predecessor John Howard, a total of 127 asylum seekers arrived by boat along with 15 Indonesian crew members.

'The changes we are announcing today send a strong message to people smugglers that they can't guarantee a visa outcome for their clients,' Immigration Minister Chris Evans said.

Asylum seekers already in Australia will continue to have their claims processed.

Opposition Liberal Party immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the suspension was a 'cynical political announcement' designed to help with the re-election of the Labor Party at polls later this year.

'The government basically has a plan for the election not a plan for the boats,' Morrison said.

The Greens, the third-largest political party, also blasted the suspension as a play for votes.

'We have what is Kevin Rudd's redneck solution in the lead up to the election campaign,' Greens spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said.

Rudd has made himself an easy target for criticism by saying greater security and better prospects for peace in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka prompted the policy change.

Just two weeks ago Rudd was arguing the reverse: that the political situation in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka was worsening and this was behind the sharp rise in boat arrivals.

'The message is that the circumstances in Australia have changed and increasingly persons from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are being refused asylum in this country,' Evans said.

Opposition parties say that the change in the circumstances in Australia is the imminent general election campaign, and that the government wants to counter the perception that it has been outfoxed by people-smugglers.