People are not protesting in Australia, mostly because people believe these men will be allowed to stay. A senior Cabinet member has already said publically that the first man will not be sent back to China against his will.
To a lot of us, these 'Howard government is scared of China' is simply spin by the governments opponents. Australia doesn't get defectors very often - there aren't streamlined procedures to deal with such cases, so it's taken some time to work out what the best way to handle this is - this doesn't mean that the men aren't going to be allowed to stay.
If people thought there was any real likelihood they'd be sent back against their will, people might actually protest.
But we have a clear statement on this issue from one of the Government's senior members.
I'm not saying the government has handled this well, by the way - they haven't. Initially it looks like they just hoped Chen would change his mind, and when he didn't, they didn't seem to know how to handle it.
But nobody here really thinks he's likely to be sent back - so nobody is protesting about him or ther others.
I'm going to post an article about this in a minute.
The article I just mentioned.
In the second half of my comments above, my focus was the Australian left. Since they are mostly against Howard and his government bumbled in this human right issue, they should have been the first ones to be upset over this development.