Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith on Sunday warned would-be asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan they could be sent home as a result of a suspension on considering their claims. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government, under pressure in an election year to halt the arrival of boatpeople on the country's remote north-west coast, announced on Friday it was suspending new asylum claims from the two war-ravaged countries.
In an interview on Sunday, Smith said the policy was intended to "send a message" to people-smugglers who organise and profit from the ramshackle boats that bring the asylum-seekers from Indonesia, and to their "potential prey".
More than 1,600 boatpeople arrived off Australia's north-west coast in 2009. The numbers are small compared with the tens of thousands of asylum seekers sailing across the Mediterranean to Europe each year.
However Rudd's government is due to hold an election later this year and is under increasing pressure to stem the arrivals, mostly from those two countries. Smith told Channel Nine the decision was taken as a result of "evolving circumstances in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan" and how they relate to the definition of a refugee.
"You have to have a well-grounded fear of persecution and we thought it appropriate to suspend while that information - those circumstances - work their way through the system. So we're already seeing potentially a reduction in the number of visas.
"The most effective message to people smugglers is people being returned to their countries of origins because they're not classified as a refugee." Smith said, however, he did not expect any quick impact on the number of boats arriving.
"As we speak there may well be desperate people from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan who want to continue their journey. The message to them is, there'll be a suspension and you are not guaranteed a visa, you will not necessarily get the outcome that criminal people smugglers told you that you would get," he said. Refugee advocates have criticised the decision, accusing Canberra of reneging on its obligations under international law.
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