The Australian government has sent back 38 asylum seekers who arrived by boat in Australia’s busy Geraldton port last week, as refugee advocacy groups claim they were denied access to lawyers.

A further 28 asylum seekers who were on the boat are having their claims “processed” on Christmas Island, according to reports, after the group pulled into the port following a 44-day voyage from Sri Lanka. An Australian Air Force jet will be sending the asylum seekers to Colombo. Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor stated,

''Returning this group to Sri Lanka sends the powerful message that people who pay smugglers are throwing their money away and risking their lives in the process... There is no fast track to Australia - irrespective of whether someone arrives at an excised offshore place. If they do not engage Australia's protection obligations, they will be returned home.''

Meanwhile, as another group of asylum ended a 10-day hunger strike in a Melbourne detention centre, American political critic Noam Chomsky stated,

“The true measure of the moral level of a society is how it treats the most vulnerable people... Few are as vulnerable as those who have fled to Australia in terror and are locked away without charge, their terrible fate veiled in secrecy. We may not be able to do much beyond lamenting about North Korean prisons. But we can do a great deal about severe human rights violations right within reach”.

He was joined by critically acclaimed Australian author Thomas Keneally, who said,

“If any Australian citizens were treated as these people are, with detention, humiliation and denial of rights, we too would make protests to assert the justice of our cause – just as these present refugees have done”.

“A previous prime minister, Bob Hawke, in the late 1980s, permitted 43,000 Chinese students to stay here, if they chose, after the Tiananmen massacre."

“No detention was necessary, no years behind wire for those offered asylum by the PM. I refuse to believe therefore that the present detention and long-winded processing of Tamils and others is necessary. Some of these people are in the same, if not greater peril, as were the students of 1989.”