Refugee groups are demanding that the Immigration Minister Scott Morrison comes clean about the whereabouts of the asylum boat intercepted by the navy near Bathurst Island on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n
Reports on New Year\u2019s Day said that an asylum boat with around 38 asylum seekers found 95 nautical miles north of Darwin had been boarded by navy personnel and was being escorted in a \u201cwesterly direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWith reports of a second boat being found at Rote Island, we are quite concerned that the New Year\u2019s Day asylum seekers have also become a victim of the government\u2019s turn-around policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally an asylum boat so close to Darwin would be expected to have docked in Darwin, but there have been no reports of its arrival,\u201d said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dangers of the turn-back policy cannot be overstated. The government is putting asylum seekers\u2019 lives at risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2001, three asylum seekers drowned trying to get to shore when an asylum boat turned back by the Howard government Australian navy beached itself 300 metres off Rote Island. The similarities with the recent reports of asylum boats at Rote Island are uncanny and extremely worrying that the government has resorted to such desperate measures.<\/p>\n
“Turning back the boats didn’t work for John Howard; it won’t work for Tony Abbott.”<\/p>\n
For more information contact: Ian Rintoul 0417 275 713<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Refugee groups are demanding that the Immigration Minister Scott Morrison comes clean about the whereabouts of the asylum boat intercepted by the navy near Bathurst Island on New Year\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311091,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-press-releases"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/311091"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refugeeaction.org.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}