NSW:Boat survivors should be freed: advocates

AAP General News (Australia)
12-17-2010
NSW:Boat survivors should be freed: advocates

SYDNEY, Dec 17 AAP - Asylum seekers who survived a boat wreck off Christmas Island
should be freed from detention, say refugee advocates.

At least 30 people were killed in the tragedy when a wooden boat, carrying as many
as 100 Iraqi, Iranian and Kurdish asylum seekers smashed against Christmas Island's Rocky
Point in rough seas on Wednesday.

Refugee advocate Ian Rintoul says survivors of the sinking off Australia's north coast
should be spared the misery of detention while their claims are processed.

"The survivors of the Christmas Island tragedy have suffered a terrible trauma ...

they have suffered enough," he said in a statement on Friday.

"A genuine humanitarian response from the government would see them freed from detention
while their claims are processed."

Mr Rintoul said Immigration Minister Chris Bowen should issue the survivors with bridging
visas to allow them to live in the community.

"To inflict mandatory detention onto those that have survived the horror of the tragedy
at Christmas Island would be a national disgrace," he said.

"At the present rate of processing, the asylum seekers from that boat will still be
in detention in twelve or eighteen months time.

Among those who lost their lives in the tragedy were 13 men, nine women, four children
and four babies.

Another refugee advocate, Jamal Daoud, has urged the government to release the names
of those who were killed in the accident and those who have survived.

Relatives of those who were on the boat are desperate to know what has happened to
them, he said in a statement.

AAP sbm/wjf/it

KEYWORD: BOAT RINTOUL

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