Police are using road blocks and tracker dogs as they try and hunt down 109 asylum seekers who burned down a Malaysian detention centre before escaping. The BBC reports the detainees include asylum seekers and illegal immigrants from Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal, Iran and Nigeria.
“Investigations showed that they were dissatisfied over cramped living conditions, the food and long detention periods,” the state deputy police chief, Abdul Manan Mohamad Hassan, was quoted as saying by the official Bernama news agency.
He added that many had lost patience over the long process needed to resettle in third countries.
The centre houses a total of 540 migrants, many of whom had been there for more than a year.
On the other side of the world a search is under way for 150 migrants missing in the Mediterranean after their boat capsized in rough seas off the Italian isle of Lampedusa. Italian rescue vessels and a helicopter saved 48 refugees from the boat, which had been carrying about 200 people.
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We pay Malaysia a good deal of cash to keep people imprisoned for us.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/commentary/nothing-illegal-about-seeking-asylum/story-e6frgd0x-1226034924740
On another note, Paul Power nails Greg Sheridan to the wall.
I find it very cute and just a little curious that when the Australian TV news media report on the many thousands of people fleeing to Lampedusa from Africa, they are universally referred to as “refugees”. We actually get to see them and hear their stories, told with great compassion and sentimentality. Yet when it’s people fleeing to our own shores, they’re “boat people”, “queue jumpers”, “illegals” or “asylum seekers” in the same news media. And we never get to see pictures of them or hear their stories. No sympathy or sentiment for them. (That wouldn’t sell at all well here, would it?) We only get the distortions like the jaundiced Lampedusans’ view!
That’s very curious. They all toe the government’s line? Give the folks what they want!