Australian church leaders on Thursday said they would offer sanctuary to asylum-seekers facing removal to a remote Pacific detention camp, vowing to defy the government’s harsh immigration rules. The asylum-seekers, who were brought to Australia from Nauru mostly for medical reasons, number more than 260 and include 37 babies born in the country and 54 other children, the advocates said.
The Anglican Dean of Brisbane, the Very Reverend Peter Catt, said the churches were reinventing the “ancient concept of sanctuary” by opening facilities such as St. John’s Cathedral in Brisbane to the asylum-seekers. Mr Catt told the Australian Broadca-sting Corporation that the concept of sanctuary was not tested under law, “but my hunch is that if the authorities chose to enter the church and take people away, it would probably be a legal action”.
He added: “So this is really a moral stand and it wouldn’t be a good look, I don’t think, for someone to enter a church and to drag people away.”
Asylum-seekers, including children, who try to reach Australia by boat are sent to off-shore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, where they can be held indefinitely while refugee applications are processed.
They are blocked from being resettled in Australia even if found to be genuine refugees.
Many of the asylum-seekers brought to Australia from Nauru are being held at Wickham Point, a secure facility near Darwin in northern Australia.
The high court ruled on Wednesday the detention of asylum-seekers on Nauru did not breach domestic law, me-aning the potential refugees could be returned there in the coming days.
