Archive : Australasia

Immigration officials intercepted a husband and wife they believe were planning on smuggling nine women through New Zealand because of an international "alert" on the wife's name. The nine women claimed to be school friends travelling together, but when separated they couldn't answer questions about each other, and didn't even know each other's names, said INZ border operations manager Karen Urwin.

Australian Federal Police and other government agencies will be asked to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into the imprisonment of Indonesian children in adult jails and detention centres while facing accusations of people smuggling. The Senate yesterday agreed to a call by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young for an inquiry into whether any Indonesian minors are still being held in Australian prisons, remand centres or detention centres.

A suspected people smuggler and the three Chinese people he was trying to get to South America are heading back to Asia after border officials stopped them at Auckland International Airport. Immigration New Zealand staff profiling flights out of Buenos Aires were tipped off about four purported Malaysian nationals who had been refused entry into Argentina and were being returned home via Auckland. The group was intercepted in the transit area of Auckland airport and officials found three of their four passports were fake.

INZ staff profiling flights out of Buenos Aires were alerted that four purported Malaysian nationals had been refused entry into Argentina and were being returned home to Malaysia via Auckland, said a statement from INZ. Border operations manager Karen Urwin said all four passengers were intercepted by immigration officers in the transit area of Auckland Airport.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key announced that the government would be implementing "tough new measures to deter potential mass arrivals of illegal immigrants and people smuggling to New Zealand". The proposed changes were announced 30 April 2012 by the Prime Minister and New Zealand Immigration Minister Nathan Guy. According to Key, the new immigration laws will make the country more secure against mass groups of people smugglers. Currently New Zealand does not have a mandatory detention policy.

The convictions of 24 Indonesian people smugglers - some jailed as adults after controversial wrist X-rays – will be reviewed following pressure from human rights groups and the government in Jakarta. The Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, announced the review yesterday after Australia's Human Rights Commissioner, Catherine Branson, warned children may have been prosecuted as adults.

The New Zealand and the United States governments have signed an agreement to do all they can to stop human trafficking in the Pacific. The agreement was signed in Wellington by the Minister of Immigration, Nathan Guy, and the visiting Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

The Australian Government has dropped charges against three Indonesian boat crew accused of aggravated people smuggling. The three men aged 34, 38 and 46 have been in detention for 21 months since their boat was intercepted in August 2010. The government's lawyers told the Victorian County Court all charges against the men were to be withdrawn and the three were released into the care of immigration officials.

In recent weeks, a boat with more than 120 refugees was forced back to Indonesia under Australian orders, 10 Falun Gong members from China docked at Darwin’s wharves and another boat made several distress calls to Australia before vanishing. The first boat was on its way to Christmas Island when it began taking on water. A Singapore-flagged ship rescued the 120 Afghan and Iranian refugees onboard and took them back to Merak, Indonesia. They tried to negotiate for Australian assistance, but were eventually coerced into leaving the ship. One asylum seeker onboard told the Refugee Action Coalition: “We cannot go back to Afghanistan, we cannot survive in [an] Indonesia prison.

New South Wales has joined three other States to call on the Commonwealth to help pay for processing people smugglers. Attorney General, Greg Smith said Australia’s four largest states – NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia – were calling on the funding agreement for Federal trials to be rewritten because the flow of illegal entry vessels was showing no signs of slowing. “In February, there were 192 crew members before State and Territory courts for alleged people smuggling,” Mr Smith said.