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One News Page » Category » World » Monday, 12 October 2009 » Boat blast Afghans get Australian asylum

Boat-blast Afghans get Australian asylum

Reported by guardian.co.uk
on Monday, 12 October 2009
(on October 12, 2009)

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Visas granted ahead of inquest into fire which killed five Afghans as boat was heading for immigration centreAustralia will resettle 42 Afghan men who were on board a boat that had been intercepted by authorities when someone on board deliberately set off an explosion, killing five asylum seekers, an official said today.The blast occurred on the wooden boat on 16 April, a day after it had been intercepted by the Australian navy about 350 miles (600km) north-west of Broome, in Australian waters.A naval patrol boat was escorting the asylum seekers to Christmas Island, where Australia has an immigration detention centre, when the boat exploded and sank.Police said earlier this month that fuel was deliberately spilled across the deck of the boat and ignited, but there was not enough evidence to charge any individual passenger.
Asylum seekers often disable their boats once intercepted by the navy to avoid being forced back into international waters.The government determined that the survivors were indeed refugees "because of the situation in Afghanistan and the potential threat to their lives", the immigration minister, Chris Evans, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio today.Evans said any of the refugees could lose their Australian permanent residence visa if convicted of a serious offence as a result of a coroner's inquest into the incident, which is due in January.Colin Barnett, the premier of Western Australia, criticised the federal government for granting the visas before the inquest."I think they should have waited until after that inquest was held," Barnett told reporters.David Manne, of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, said the government should allow the Afghans to stay regardless of who started the fire."It is extremely difficult to see how one could justify revoking or cancelling someone's visa when there has been clear evidence established that they'd face brutal human rights abuse on their return to their homeland," Manne told ABC.The men were being held in detention centres in Perth and Brisbane.Two Indonesian sailors who survived the explosion were being held on human-trafficking charges.
They were not suspects in the fatal fire.

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