Howard Government accused of refugee refoulement : Melbourne Indymedia

The report states:
"Refoulement/Physical Protection. Australia had an active policy of returning failed asylum seekers either to their country of origin or to a country where they had residency rights. The Government, however, denied practicing refoulement, indicating that it only removed persons after a rigorous status determination process."

"On December 30, 2004, Australia deported Afghans Ali and Roqia Bakhtiari and their six children to Pakistan, despite evidence that they were actually refugees. Ali had arrived in 1999, and Australia granted him a temporary protection visa in August 2000. When Roqia and the children arrived in 2001, Australian officials denied her asylum claim because they disputed her nationality and put her in detention. In December 2002, they revoked Ali’s visa and detained him as well, accusing him of having lied about his citizenship. Despite letters from the Afghan Government and authorities from their home village and testimony from aid workers in Afghanistan that the Bakhtiaris were Afghani and had fled the Taliban, Australia insisted that because Pakistan acknowledged their right of residence there, it had to deport the Bakhtiaris to Pakistan."

Read the report on Australia:
http://www.refugees.org/countryreports.aspx?subm=&ssm=&cid=1569

The survey also notes that "the number of refugees in the world has increased to 12 million largely due to instability in Iraq. The Survey counts 650,000 more Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria since 2005 and finds that nearly 8 million refugees remain warehoused: deprived of basic human rights for five years or more."

World Refugee Survey 2006