Hunger Strike Continues, Aussies Ponder Citizenship for Nauru
from Agence France Presse

Australia will send a former immigration minister and an Afghan community leader to Nauru next week to try to end a hunger strike by asylum seekers in protest over their continuing detention, officials said Friday.

The delegation was announced amid reports that some of the 35 mostly Afghan protesters are suffering badly in the ninth day of their strike in the tropical heat of the South Pacific island nation used by Australia as a detention camp for unwelcome boat people.

Some have their lips sewn, some are said to be delirous with dehydration and at least 15 have been stretchered to hospital after collapsing from lack of food and water.

But in an apparent softening of the government's stand, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said former minister John Hodges and Afghan community leader
Gholam Aboss would visit Nauru to try to find a solution.

Also...

Australia said Friday it was examining ways to help its near-bankrupt Pacific neighbour Nauru, but ruled out giving the island's entire population Australian citizenship.

In an expansion of Australia's new interventionist policy towards Pacific nations, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his office was considering ways to improve Nauru's economy, which has been propped up by payments from Canberra since its phosphate resources were mined out.

Downer said giving Nauru's 10,000-strong population special immigration rights to Australia had been considered but was not a serious option.

"I think it's less likely than likely that we'd go down that path," he told public radio.

Less likely, but not ruled out as the AFP would have us believe.

More

Copyright 2003 Agence France Presse
Agence France Presse

December 19, 2003 Friday

SECTION: International News

LENGTH: 531 words

HEADLINE: Australia looks at how to help Nauru but rules out citizenship

BYLINE: NEIL SANDS

DATELINE: SYDNEY, Dec 19

BODY:

Australia said Friday it was examining ways to help its near-bankrupt Pacific
neighbour Nauru, but ruled out giving the island's entire population Australian
citizenship.

In an expansion of Australia's new interventionist policy towards Pacific
nations, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his office was considering ways
to improve Nauru's economy, which has been propped up by payments from Canberra
since its phosphate resources were mined out.

Downer said giving Nauru's 10,000-strong population special immigration
rights to Australia had been considered but was not a serious option.

"I think it's less likely than likely that we'd go down that path," he told
public radio.

"The weakness of that proposal, which was the one canvassed back in the late
1960s, I think is that you can't underestimate the fact that the people of Nauru
love Nauru and want to live in Nauru.

"So offering them citizenship may not in any case be a solution to their
problems."

However, with Nauru virtually an economic basketcase, Downer said something
had to be done.

"This is something we'll be looking at next year because I just can't turn my
back on Nauru," Downer said. "I just can't turn my back on the 10,000 people who
live there."

Once one of the world's richest per capita nations, thanks to its phosphate
rich soil exports, Nauru is now on the edge of bankruptcy due to extravagant
spending and poor investments.

Mining has left much of Nauru's surface a moonscape and most of its food has
to be imported as little grows there, leading to chronic diabetes problems among
the population due to poor diet.

Over the past decade, it has operated a controversial tax haven and off-shore
banking operation, believed to be used by the Russian Mafia, and has been forced
to crack down on money laundering after stern warnings from international
bodies.

Its major source of income is the 30 million dollars (22.2 million US) a year
that Australia pays for the tiny nation to host an illegal immigrant detention
centre as part of Canberra's so-called "Pacific Solution" to stop asylum seekers
reaching Australian shores.

In May, the Asian Development Bank offered a damning assessment of Nauru's
state, saying it was "in a long-term decline, resulting from prolonged economic
and financial mismanagement and the progressive exhaustion of its phosphate
reserves".

Australia has stepped up its engagement with struggling Pacific nations over
the past 12 months, fearing failed states in its backyard could become havens
for terrorists or international gangsters.

It led an interventionist force to restore law and order in the Solomon
Islands earlier this year and plans to send police to Papua New Guinea.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd supported the principle of
helping Nauru but said Downer had been too vague about what solutions it was
looking at and how much they would cost.

The left-leaning Greens said any deal giving Australian citizenship to Nauru
's population should extend to the hundreds of asylum seekers in the island's
detention centre, some of whom are on hunger strike protesting their treatment.

ns/lpo

Australia-Nauru

LOAD-DATE: December 19, 2003



Copyright 2003 Agence France Presse
Agence France Presse

December 19, 2003 Friday 12:37 AM Eastern Time

SECTION: International News

LENGTH: 357 words

HEADLINE: Australia softens stand on Pacific island hunger strikers

DATELINE: SYDNEY, Dec 19

BODY:

Australia will send a former immigration minister and an Afghan community
leader to Nauru next week to try to end a hunger strike by asylum seekers in
protest over their continuing detention, officials said Friday.

The delegation was announced amid reports that some of the 35 mostly Afghan
protesters are suffering badly in the ninth day of their strike in the tropical
heat of the South Pacific island nation used by Australia as a detention camp
for unwelcome boat people.

Some have their lips sewn, some are said to be delirous with dehydration and
at least 15 have been stretchered to hospital after collapsing from lack of food
and water.

But in an apparent softening of the government's stand, Immigration Minister
Amanda Vanstone said former minister John Hodges and Afghan community leader
Gholam Aboss would visit Nauru to try to find a solution.

Their visit also follows claims by the International Organisation for
Migration (IOM), which runs the detention centre, that children had been
encouraged to join the protest action.

More than 280 asylum seekers, including 93 children, are on Nauru as part of
Canberra's policy of refusing to allow boat people to land on Australian
territory and diverting them to offshore holding camps to have their claims
processed.

A few of the men began hunger strike on December 10, some sewing their lips
together, claiming they would rather die than be returned to their homelands,
but immigration officials confirmed Friday that 35 men were now refusing food
and drink.

Vanstone on Wednesday ruled out government intervention, insisting the hunger
strikers were not a government problem.

But she said Friday that Aboss and Hodges, and an immigration minister in a
conservative government of the early 1980s would have direct contact with
protesters and would be able to consult the IOM on means of resolving the
situation.

"Mr Hodges is also chair of the Immigration Detention Advisory Committee and,
while he will not be acting in that capacity, he brings a wealth of experience
to issues around the processing centres," she said.

jt/nj

Australia-immigrants

LOAD-DATE: December 19, 2003

posted by prof_booty | 08:25 AM