Australia aloof to Nauru protest

Protesters issued photos apparently showing lips stitched together

The Australian Government has refused to get involved in a hunger strike by asylum seekers at an offshore detention centre.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone brushed off calls from refugee groups and the main opposition party to intervene in the protest, which is being staged by 24 asylum seekers in a detention centre on the Pacific island of Nauru.

Ms Vanstone said that the refugees were not on Australian territory, and that if they did not like it in the Nauru centre they could go home.

Australia has one of the world's strictest immigration policies, detaining all asylum seekers without visas in high-security camps.

If someone doesn't want to be there, they can go home Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone

Canberra set up detention centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea in 2001, and deployed its navy to divert all boats carrying asylum seekers to Australia to those camps.

Ms Vanstone said on Wednesday that detainees in the Nauru camp were not Canberra's responsibility.

"The centre is being run by the International Organisation for Migration, they are in charge. It is not in Australian territory, it is on Nauru and it is being run by other people," she told reporters.

"If someone doesn't want to be there, they can go home," she added.

Four of the protesters are reported to have sewn their lips together, and the government said that at least nine had been taken to hospital, some of whom have subsequently been discharged.

Twenty-three of the protesters are from Afghanistan and one is from Pakistan.

Lawsuit

Human rights lawyers have lodged a lawsuit to get all 192 adults and 93 children who are being held on Nauru released. Their case will be heard on Thursday.

Australia's second offshore detention centre for would-be immigrants, in Papua New Guinea, was closed in July. The country has five centres within its own borders.

Those housed in offshore camps are denied appeal rights in Australian courts if their asylum applications are refused.

There have been a string of hunger strikes and protests in Australia's detention camps, which together house about 1,200 people.