Woomera inmates call off hunger strike

More than 60 Woomera inmates sewed their lips together as part of the protest

By CNN's Grant Holloway

WOOMERA, Australia (CNN) -- The two-week hunger strike crisis at the remote Australian detention center of Woomera has ended thanks to efforts by an independent negotiating team.

Australia's Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock broke the news at a media conference in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon.

"The hunger strike at Woomera has been abandoned," Ruddock said.

"That is a very welcome development and I want to thank the members of the committee for their work in relation to that matter," he said.

Reports from detainees inside the camp say the strikers began taking food again at around 3 p.m. local time. (5.30 a.m. GMT).

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A spokesman for the Immigration Department confirmed to CNN that the department had been advised by the negotiating team that the strike was over, but he could not be "100 percent sure" if that meant all protest actions by all detainees had ceased.

More than 250 detainees at the Woomera camp had been on hunger strike for 16 days in protest against the slow processing of protection visas by the Australian government and the mandatory imprisonment of all illegal immigrants, including women and children.

Apart from refusing food and water, some inmates at Woomera also attempted suicide and other acts of self harm such as poisoning and throwing themselves onto the razor wire which surrounds the camp.

At one stage more than 60 of the detainees had sewn their lips together with cotton, while a group of nine youths were threatening to commit suicide if they were not released from the camp by Wednesday evening.

The government-appointed Immigration Detention Advisory Group has spent three days talking to detainees and attempting to persuade them to stop their actions.

On Tuesday, the group recommended to the government that the Woomera camp be closed down.

"Woomera is an extremely harsh environment in which to detain anybody," group member Paris Aristotle told Associated Press.

The government said it would consider scaling down Woomera as other, purpose built, detention facilities became available, possibly as soon as March this year.

Closing Woomera might also be possible in the future, minister Ruddock said.

Speaking on CNN wednesday, Auastralia's Treasurer Peter Costello admitted the Woomera detention center was not purpose built to detain asylum seekers and nobody would want it used for this purpose indefinitely.

"The facilities ... they were not purpose built for this program, it is because the number of boat arrivals has been larger than anybody expected that we have had to bring into operation some of these facilities."

Conditions in the sparse Woomera camp have been criticized many times by independent reports, despite government assurances that the facilities there are adequate.

Australia has a policy of detaining all illegal immigrants, including women and children while their applications for refugee status are assessed.

People smugglers

This process can take may months, or even years, if the applicants appeal against an unfavorable outcome.

Many Woomera detainees have been kept in the camp for more than a year, and some for up to three years.

Costello said Australia had a humane refugee policy and provided a good level of food, shelter and medical care to illegal arrivals.

Australia accepted the second-highest number of refugees per capita in the world and was not embarrassed by the international coverage of the volatile situation in Woomera.

"Australia, I believe, operates a very humane refugee policy ... (but) we have got to make sure that the people that we do take are genuine refugees," he said.

Currently there are more than 800 people in Woomera, which is located in the desert about 500 kilometers (300 miles) north of the South Australian state capital of Adelaide.

It is the largest of Australia's five onshore detention camps which hold about 2,000 asylum seekers, most of whom have come from the Middle East and Afghanistan via people-smuggling networks.

About 1,000 more illegal immigrants are held in Australian-run camps on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru and on the Papua New Guinean island of Manus.