Posted on 06/28/2002 4:42:58 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Thirty asylum seekers were at large in the Australian desert Friday after a daring escape from the nation's most notorious detention center.
Thirty-five people escaped the Woomera detention center just before midnight Thursday after activists used a car to pull down a fence topped with razor wire, the government said.
Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said 15 asylum seekers were allegedly involved in the mass breakout. The other 20 took advantage of the confusion and fled into the desert surrounding the camp at Woomera, a former missile testing base in central Australia.
``This is a deliberate, organized breakout by people who have been in contact with detainees,'' Ruddock told Melbourne radio station 3AW.
Ruddock said five of the detainees were recaptured. Police were using a helicopter, an airplane and dogs on the ground to search a 80,000-square-mile area for the rest of the escapees.
Ruddock said members of an activist group drove a car up to one of the camp's fences, pulled a portion of it down and ferried away the asylum seekers.
Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio said it had received an e-mail from a group calling itself Our Sacred Country, which claimed responsibility for the breakout.
Kate Denman, a South Australian state police spokeswoman, said police had arrested and charged three men and a woman with assisting the breakout and were searching for others. All of them were in their 20s. Their identities were not released
``It's very cold out in the desert (at) night and we have concerns for their welfare,'' said Denman.
An angry Prime Minister John Howard said helping people escape was ``inflammatory and unhelpful and potentially criminal.'' He said the government would pursue the culprits.
The detention center at Woomera is one of five camps where hundreds of mostly Middle Eastern boat people are held while authorities consider their requests for asylum. The policy has been criticized by human rights activists but is popular with most Australians.
Woomera has been the most troublesome of the camps and has been plagued by riots, hunger strikes, arson and self-mutilation by inmates.
About 160 of the 200 Woomera detainees had been on a hunger strike for four days. Two of them had sewed their lips together.
Earlier this year, 47 inmates escaped when hundreds of people protesting Australia's policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers tore down part of the fence. Most of them were later recaptured.
Most of the people now detained at Woomera are from Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost all have had their applications for refugee status refused but cannot be returned home because Australia does not have repatriation arrangements with their home countries. Some have been in the camps for more than three years.
Potentially?!?!?
police had arrested and charged three men and a woman with assisting the breakout and were searching for others. All of them were in their 20s. Their identities were not released
Wanna bet they all have names like "Abdul," "Mohammed," and "Achmed."
Although in retrospect, thay are probably white Aussie idealists with a guilt complex.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.