U.N. Refugee Agency Hails Access to Detention Center in Australia

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, February 13, 2002

U.N. Refugee Agency Hails Access to Detention Center in Australia

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The United Nations refugee agency Tuesday welcomed the news that a senior U.N. human rights official will visit an Australian detention center where asylum seekers had recently staged two weeks of tense protests.

The reaction by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) followed the Monday announcement by Mary Robinson, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, that the Australian Government had accepted her request to send a special representative to the Woomera detention center.

A UNHCR spokesman said that the refugee agency would welcome the visit by the human rights envoy, "whose mandate was complimentary to our own."

The Australian Government Monday said that it would allow a special United Nations envoy to inspect its most controversial detention center -- a former missile base surrounded by razor wire in the parched desert of the Outback.

However, the envoy likely won't visit the camp until May, when another group of U.N. observers is scheduled to arrive.

The Woomera camp was the scene last month of a two-week hunger strike by more than 200 mainly Afghan refugee asylum seekers who were protesting conditions at the camp and demanding their asylum applications be processed more quickly.

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