Refugees caught trying to sail to Australia end up in detention centres.
The asylum seekers who broke out of a Darwin detention centre for a day of protesting have finally been persuaded to return to the facility.
The men, who were mainly from Afghanistan, broke out of the centre to stage a protest against their treatment. They wrote messages on bed sheets asking for mercy and help. Some of them had recently been told that their refugee status had been denied, others were protesting against the length of time it was taking to process their applications, stating that they had been held in the centre for more than nine months.
Immigration was at the centre of the campaign before the Australian election, with both parties announcing a crackdown on refugees arriving in Australia by boat. Both Mr Abbott, leader of the Liberal Coalition and Ms Gillard, leader of the Labor Party had been negotiating with islands in the Pacific about the re-opening of detention centres there.
At the moment the majority of refugees that arrive by boat are detained in off-shore facilities like that at Christmas Island, or on the mainland. Humanitarian groups want to see off-shore detention centres closed and have long called for women and children to be taken to the mainland.
In April 2010 under the leadership of Kevin Rudd, the Australian government temporarily suspended processing claims by asylum seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. However the rioting at the same detention centre over the weekend was staged largely by alleged people smugglers from Indonesia who are housed in the same centres as the refugees they may have helped to smuggle.
The detainees who broke out simply staged a peaceful protest at the side of the highway with their home-made banners and were talked back into the compound by police. Some of them appeared to be very distressed as they spoke to police and the media about their treatment and the delays in their applications.
However there may be a silver lining for the asylum seekers. The independents who hold the key to the new government have said that they favour a more humanitarian approach to refugees.
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