South Pacific nations including the Solomon Islands have offered to host processing centers for boat people arriving in Australia, a report said yesterday.
Australia wants to send all asylum seekers who arrive by boat to other nations to have their refugee claims assessed as it struggles to break people-smuggling rings that bring hundreds of people to its shores each year.
The government has said that Malaysia and Papua New Guinea are its main focus, but the Weekend Australian newspaper said that South Pacific Nations such as the politically fragile Solomons were also keen to be part of the plan.
The newspaper cited unnamed senior government sources as saying the Solomons had already made an approach to a parliamentary secretary for Pacific islands affairs to host an Australia-funded processing center, but it was declined.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s center-left Labor government has said it wants to process all boatpeople offshore to prevent people from making the risky sea voyage to Australia, which last year claimed scores of lives.
An initial proposal for East Timor to host a regional processing center seems unlikely to go ahead, but talks on reopening an old center on impoverished Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island are progressing.
Meanwhile, negotiations are underway finalize a deal with Malaysia under which Australia will send 800 boatpeople to the Asian nation for processing, in exchange for 4,000 of its refugees for settlement.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not