ID :
86808
Fri, 10/30/2009 - 09:32
Auther :
Shortlink :
https://oananews.org//node/86808
The shortlink copeid
NO END YET TO TAMIL ASYLUM SEEKER STAND-OFF
MELBOURNE, Oct 29 (Bernama) -- There is no end in sight to a stand-off between the authorities and asylum seekers aboard the Oceanic Viking with the Australian government unable to say when the group will be offloaded.
As the Tamil asylum seekers, who have fled Sri Lanka, remained in limbo for
another day, the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia, Senaka Walgampaya,
warned that the group represented a security threat.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday said the Australian and Indonesian
governments had great patience in dealing with the 78 Tamils, who are refusing
to leave the vessel in Indonesia.
Rudd has not ruled out using cash payments to entice them to disembark.
The ship, which is running out of food and drinking water, will be
resupplied on Sunday.
The asylum seekers were rescued almost two weeks ago by an Australian navy
vessel in Indonesia's search and rescue zone before being transferred to the
Oceanic Viking, an Australian Customs vessel, which remains anchored 10 nautical
miles off Bintan Island,Indonesia.
A spokesman for Australia's Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said
there was no time decided on the transfer of the asylum seekers to the Tanjung
Pinang detention centre on Bintan.
"The Australian and Indonesian authorities are still working through the
details of disembarkation," he said.
There are more than 250,000 people in camps in Sri Lanka as a result of a
20-year civil war that ended earlier this year.
Walgampaya rejects claims that Tamils in Sri Lanka are being persecuted.
But the spokesman for a group of Tamil asylum seekers still moored at
Merak in West Java,Indonesia said the world did not know the truth about what
was happening in Sri Lanka, claiming that people in the camps were being
murdered and raped every single day and children were going missing.
-- BERNAMA
As the Tamil asylum seekers, who have fled Sri Lanka, remained in limbo for
another day, the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia, Senaka Walgampaya,
warned that the group represented a security threat.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Thursday said the Australian and Indonesian
governments had great patience in dealing with the 78 Tamils, who are refusing
to leave the vessel in Indonesia.
Rudd has not ruled out using cash payments to entice them to disembark.
The ship, which is running out of food and drinking water, will be
resupplied on Sunday.
The asylum seekers were rescued almost two weeks ago by an Australian navy
vessel in Indonesia's search and rescue zone before being transferred to the
Oceanic Viking, an Australian Customs vessel, which remains anchored 10 nautical
miles off Bintan Island,Indonesia.
A spokesman for Australia's Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said
there was no time decided on the transfer of the asylum seekers to the Tanjung
Pinang detention centre on Bintan.
"The Australian and Indonesian authorities are still working through the
details of disembarkation," he said.
There are more than 250,000 people in camps in Sri Lanka as a result of a
20-year civil war that ended earlier this year.
Walgampaya rejects claims that Tamils in Sri Lanka are being persecuted.
But the spokesman for a group of Tamil asylum seekers still moored at
Merak in West Java,Indonesia said the world did not know the truth about what
was happening in Sri Lanka, claiming that people in the camps were being
murdered and raped every single day and children were going missing.
-- BERNAMA
