New racist attacks on refugees [Australia]

The federal Labor government announced a moratorium on processing claims for asylum for people coming from Sri Lanka or Afghanistan on April 9. This means refugees from Afghanistan will be detained for six months before they can even begin the application process. For refugees from Sri Lanka, the wait will be three months. This is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s final abandonment of an election promise that refugees’ claims would be processed quicker, and refugees detained for shorter periods, than under the notoriously anti-refugee Howard government.

Rudd’s closure of the large mainland detention centres (such as Baxter), and the off-shore camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, was achieved by concentrating detained refugees on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.