Hazara Nation

Fourteen boatpeople picked up off Australia's northwest coast will be taken to an off-shore immigration centre, the government said yesterday, sparking concern among human rights advocates.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the navy had intercepted the group of 13 men and one woman near the Ashmore Islands, some 320 kilometres off Western Australia on Monday.
The minister said the boat appeared to have come from Indonesia, but he did not know their nationalities or whether they were asylum-seekers. He said they would be transferred to Christmas Island for processing.
"There's no suggestion at the moment that they were illegal fishers, but we don't know much more about them at this stage," Senator Evans told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"Until they're properly interviewed on Christmas Island, we won't know and I won't be able to make public comment about that.
"If they are seeking asylum, then they will be assessed and have their claims tested before proceeding any further."
Rights group Amnesty International Australia said it was concerned about the government's policy of taking boatpeople to remote off-shore stations rather than processing their claims on the mainland.
"It is completely inappropriate to treat this group differently from other asylum seekers," spokesman Graham Thom said. "Individuals should not be punished simply based on their mode of arrival."
"A small boat with 14 people on board is not a border security issue, it is a humanitarian issue and should be treated as such."
In July, Australia announced a "more humane" policy towards refugees, scrapping a widely-criticised system of automatically locking up asylum seekers on arrival, which was introduced by the previous conservative government.
Asylum seekers arriving by boat would still be held at Australia's Christmas Island detention centre, but with the aim of resolving their cases as quickly as possible, Evans said at the time.
The new government has already scrapped the "Pacific Solution" under which boatpeople were sent to special detention centres in the tiny island nation of Nauru or the Papua New Guinea island of Manus.