Australia lifts freeze on detainee claims

ADELAIDE, Australia -- Faced with increasingly desperate protests, Australia's government has said it would resume processing the asylum applications of Afghan refugees at a remote detention center.

But the conservative government refused Friday to ease the country's hardline policy of detaining asylum seekers behind razor wire despite an offer by charity organizations to care for hunger-striking inmates.

About 200 Afghans at the Woomera detention center began a hunger strike ten days ago to pressure the government to back down on its decision to stop processing their claims.

The government has claimed the delays have been necessary until it can determine if the asylum-seekers can safely return home now that Afghanistan's Taliban regime has been ousted.

VIDEO Australian immigration officials say asylum seekers held at a detention center in Woomera have gone on a hunger strike. Peter Caldicott reports Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)   CNN.com Asia More news from our Asia edition

Escalating the protest, dozens of protesters sewed together their lips this week, and reports emerged that up to 15 refugees had tried to hang themselves.

In his first public comments on 10 days of turmoil at a controversial outback camp for illegal immigrants, Prime Minister John Howard reiterated he was determined to keep boatpeople away from Australian shores and would continue to imprison them.

"We don't like having to detain people," Howard told Channel Nine television in an interview.

"But there is no alternative if we are to keep control of the flow of people into this country. I want to make it very clear that we don't intend to abandon the detention policy."

According to Associated Press news agency, the Immigration Department confirmed 42 detainees had sewn their lips together at Woomera, and dozens of others swallowed shampoo and detergent in apparent suicide attempts, or tried to hurt themselves in other ways.

About 2,000 Afghans have applied for asylum in Australia. Overall, about 3,000 refugees from the Middle East, South and Central Asia are languishing in five camps in Australia.

'Worse than jail'

The authorities released around 20 Woomera detainees after their refugee claims were accepted, but again insisted the decision was not tied to the protests.

John Hodges, chairman of the Independent Detention Advisory Committee, welcomed the government's decision to recommence visa processing . "There's got to be some give and take in a crisis," he said.

The freed refugees said Woomera was "worse than a jail."

"When we came here we came here as a refugee," Iranian Babak Ahmadi, who spent 20 months in Woomera, located 475 km (295 miles) north of Adelaide, told reporters.

"The news media of Australia call us illegal immigrants. That is not true, we are not queue jumpers, not illegal immigrants, we are asylum seekers," he said.

Howard romped back for a third term at a November election partly on the back of a new, harder line on illegal immigrants.

Faced with rising numbers of illegal arrivals as people smugglers began to target Australia, the government last August decided to keep all boatpeople away from Australian shores.

Canberra stepped into a whirlwind of protests after storming the Norwegian container ship the Tampa with troops in order to prevent 433 asylum seekers it had rescued at sea from landing on Australia's remote Indian Ocean outpost of Christmas Island.

The government then brokered cash deals with South Pacific islands to take illegal immigrants intercepted by warships.

Australia has long detained all illegal immigrants. The United Nations has persistently criticized the policy.