Scores feared dead off Java as Australia laments rush of boats

In the dwindling days before Australia reopens island detention camps for asylum seekers who try to reach its shores by sea, as many as 100 people are feared dead on yet another sunken boat off Indonesia. Australian officials have bemoaned a recent rush of boats before the camps open.

The troubled boat is believed to have held as many as 150 people, more than 50 of whom have reportedly been saved since early Wednesday morning when Australian rescue teams got a distress call from southwest of Java. Scores more are still missing.

Indonesian search and rescue crews tried to spot the struggling vessel from the air, but didn’t find people in the water until early Thursday morning, a lag that has spurred criticism of its efforts.

“Don't underestimate how hard it is to find people in the middle of the sea,” Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare told reporters Thursday in Sydney, defending the Indonesian rescuers.  

The deaths come weeks after Australia decided to establish camps for asylum seekers offshore on Nauru and Papua New Guinea while their cases are weighed in an attempt to discourage people from risking their lives on rickety boats to reach Australia.

The country used to hold asylum seekers on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Manus in Papua New Guinea, but abolished the practice years ago under a torrent of criticism from human rights groups.

Australian leader backs plan to deal with asylum seekers

The Australian prime minister has thrown her backing behind a plan to send asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea and the Pacific island of Nauru, setting the stage for her government to reinstate a system that it abandoned under pressure from human rights groups years ago.

“Anybody who comes to Australia by boat should be very clear about the possibility of not being processed in Australia,” Chris Bowen, minister for immigration and citizenship, told reporters Monday.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard had pushed to send asylum seekers to Malaysia while their claims were processed. More than 7,000 people have taken dangerous trips by boat to reach the country this year, most of them from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka, according to the Australian government. This year alone, scores have perished as crowded boats faltered and sank.

Opponents of her plan wanted asylum seekers to be sent to Nauru instead, as they were in the past before the isolated camps there were scuttled over human rights concerns. As more boats showed up on Australia's shores, public pressure mounted to return to “offshore processing,” or holding asylum seekers elsewhere.

Europe sends gays seeking asylum back home and back to the closet

As gays and lesbians facing repression at home have come knocking on European doors, pleading for asylum, they have often been assured they will be safe -- if they stay home and stay in the closet.

In Hungary, a court weighing the case of a West African woman opined, “If she would not make her lesbianism public, she would not have to fear the consequences of her behavior,” according to a Dutch study of European asylum practices last year. Switzerland turned down an Iranian man, saying homosexuality was tolerated in Iran “when it is not publicly exposed in a way which could be offensive.”

The British Supreme Court made headlines by rejecting that idea two years ago, likening requiring gays and lesbians to hide their identities to sending Anne Frank back to her Amsterdam attic. The United Nations refugee agency flatly states that asylum seekers cannot be expected to change or hide their identity to avoid oppression, and that being forced to do so can itself be a form of persecution.

Yet the argument that gays and lesbians can simply be sent back to the closet has continued to hold sway in many parts of Europe, according to researchers who have tracked cases in France, Belgium, Ireland, Poland, Denmark and elsewhere. In one recent case that sparked outrage in Germany, an Iranian woman was turned down for asylum and told she could live “unobtrusively” without any problem.

Her story became infamous in Germany after she pleaded with a Nuremberg feminist organization for help. Samira Ghorbani Danesh, 24, fled Iran nearly two years ago after dodging arrest at a Tehran party that was broken up by religious police who took her girlfriend away. Danesh hid elsewhere while police turned up at her home looking for her.

Iranian law says homosexual acts between women are to be punished with whippings and, after the fourth offense, death, though researchers and activists say it is unclear how often such executions are carried out. Terrified that police or her father would punish her for being a lesbian, the Iranian woman fled to Turkey and ultimately arrived in Germany, where she sought asylum.

Her attorney, Gisela Seidler, argued that Danesh faced arrest and torture in her home country. But German immigration officials said the young woman could simply hide the fact that she was a lesbian and live safely in Iran. Unhappy with the decision, Danesh spoke out about the case in German media, a decision that brought an outpouring of support from gay rights groups but also added to her fear of returning.

“Now she is in even more danger,” Seidler said earlier this year. “Her name is known all over the world.”