Refugee Action groups in Victoria, NSW and Queensland are today calling on the Australian Government to face up to its responsibilities to nearly one hundred asylum seekers, trapped for four years on the Indonesian island of Lombok in an Australian-funded camp, and resettle them in Australia.

The majority of the 92 are Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers, including many children, who arrived on Lombok nearly four years ago after their boats were towed away from Ashmore Reef by the Australian Navy in the lead up to the 2001 Federal Election as part of Operation Relex.

The conditions in the camp are very poor. Asylum seekers are denied the right to work and study. They are only just tolerated by Indonesian authorities. They are forced to rely on the scant charity provided by Australia and the International Organisation for Migration. Despite these difficult conditions, all are too afraid to return to their homelands.

Here is what one asylum seeker trapped on Lombok wrote recently: "It has been nearly four years I am in suffocating situation and without clear future, and It has been more than one year I have been given Temporary Protection under UNHCR in Indonesia, so for how long I should be in such suffocating situation without destiny, under T.P in Indonesia, temporary means temporary not years and years as we are wasting all our age and suffering."

Refugee Action Collective spokesperson Tim Petterson said today:

"The refugee movement of Australia demands the Australian Government face up to its moral and international obligations and end these people's suffering now.

"They came to Australian shores seeking asylum from the most repressive regimes in the world and exercised their legitimate rights under the Refugee Convention, an international treaty to which Australia is a signatory.

"Yet instead of being granted sanctuary, this government demonised these desperate, traumatised people and then had them turned away by an Australian Navy forced to do its dirty work.

"These people cannot return. So as long as the Government continues to ignore its obligations they will remain trapped indefinitely on Lombok in squalor and misery while their children grow up without a proper education or a future."

For more information/interviews, contact: Tim Petterson 0438 399 973
Ian Rintoul Refugee Action Coalition NSW 0417 275 713