is john howard adopting a mercenary stance on this issue?.
i actually support his stance,a lot dont ,but is he acting on instructions from the united states.?
although we have had trouble at refugee centers with these people (some were deported),it hasnt reached this scale
SYDNEY - 15 children at a remote Australian refugee camp have threatened to commit suicide together.
This, as hunger strikes by asylum seekers protesting against Australia's hard line toward illegal immigrants continued for a 13th day.
Refugee lawyer Rob McDonald told the Australian Associated Press on Monday that the unaccompanied children, aged from 12 to 17, at Woomera in the barren desert of south Australia were desperate to get out of the detention center.
"They want to get out of the facility," McDonald said. "These guys feel this is the only thing they can do to get out."
Hunger strikes by mainly Afghan and Middle Eastern asylum seekers have spread to four of Australia's six detention centers since around 200 at Woomera, 295 miles north of Adelaide, began to refuse food and water 13 days ago.
The asylum seekers are protesting at the months if not years it takes to process refugee claims and are demanding they be transferred to a less isolated camp.
Some have tried to hang themselves, others have drunk shampoo, disinfectant or swallowed painkillers. Around 34 at Woomera have sewn their lips shut with a strand of thread.
And an Afghan man was seriously injured at Woomera -- built in a former rocket range in the 40 degree Celsius heat of the red interior -- after throwing himself on a fence made of razor wire.
Refugee lawyers say 370 of Woomera's 900 detainees are now on hunger strike, but the authorities dispute that. They say the hunger strikers have fallen to 181 from 211 two weeks ago.
The disturbances spilled out into the streets on Sunday.
Activists rallied at Sydney's Villawood center, Maribyrnong in Melbourne, and at Port Hedland in Western Australia.
Four demonstrators were arrested outside Port Hedland, including a 12-year-old girl, local media said.
HARD STANCE
The turmoil at the camps has put pressure on conservative Prime Minister John Howard to soften his hard stance.
Around 8,000 illegal immigrants have turned up in Australia over the past two years, a small number compared with other countries. All illegal arrivals have long been locked up.
Australia, a vast island continent of just 19.3 million people, also takes in around 10,000 refugees resettled by the United Nations each year and another 50,000 permanent migrants, mostly from Britain and New Zealand.
But Howard, faced last year with a general election and public resentment at the rising numbers of mainly Muslim boatpeople, decided to crack down even harder.
Since troops stormed a Norwegian freighter last August to stop 433 mainly Afghan asylum seekers it had rescued from landing on Australian shores, warships have intercepted all boatpeople and have taken them to Pacific islands which Canberra pays to house them.
The government has refused to succumb to what it calls moral blackmail by the detention center protesters.
Opposition center-left Labor, which backs mandatory detention and the new uncompromising stand, has however now called on the government to at least remove children from the camps.
"If it's not working, you've got to reassess it and that's what Labor's calling for," Opposition Leader Simon Crean said.
Children's drawings smuggled out of Woomera depict razor wire and guards armed with batons and water cannon, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday.
That was how the children expressed "what they felt," refugee lawyer Paul Boylan told the newspaper.
Bishops urge PM to hear 'cries for help' - Sydney Morning Herald
