Weekly media round-up No. 34

Twenty-six families with children born in detention received written assurance from the Immigration Department that neither they nor their children would be sent to offshore detention centres on either Nauru or Manus Island until a case on their legal status is resolved.

The Royal Australian Navy announced that one commanding officer will be removed from command and another administratively sanctioned due to a series of incursions into Indonesian waters in December and January. The announcement came on the same day that Guardian Australia revealed one of the Australian customs vessels went further into Indonesian waters than had previously been disclosed, within 27 kilometres of the Indonesian shore.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ representative in Indonesia, Manuel Jordao, said the number of asylum seekers registering in Indonesia has fallen from around 100 a day to 100 a week since December. Mr Jordao said it was too soon to say whether the decrease was due to the Australian Government’s policy Operation Sovereign Borders, under which no one arriving in Australia by boat is eligible for resettlement in Australia.

Indonesia’s top military commander said Australia had agreed to stop turning back boats to Indonesia, but Immigration Minister Scott Morrison contradicted this, saying that the government’s policy had not changed. Military Commander General Moeldoko made the comments after speaking with Australia’s defence chief, David Hurley. However, Mr Morrison told Fairfax Media that details of the conversation had been “misreported”. Indonesia and Australia are expected to discuss the issue further at the Bali Process this week.

Weekly media round-up No. 31

29 March marked 100 days since an asylum seeker boat reached Australia. An estimated eight boats have been turned back to Indonesia in that time.

The Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee found it may not be possible for boats to be turned around safely without the risk of Australian naval vessels crossing into Indonesian waters. The Committee reported on six incursions into Indonesian waters between December 1 and January 20.

ABC’s 7.30 aired new witness statements alleging Australian personnel purposely inflicted burns on the hands of three men on an asylum-seeking boat in January. The Australian Government maintained the claims are baseless and attacked the ABC’s ‘recycling’ of the story.

Children held in detention in Australia described conditions as ‘hell’. The Australian Human Rights Commission is conducting the inquiry into children in immigration detention in Australia. The Commission made its first visit to children in detention on Christmas Island this week.

The UN refugee agency Asylum Trends 2013 report says there was a sharp rise in asylum claims in 44 industrialised countries last year, driven primarily by the crisis in Syria. According to UNHCR, 612,700 people applied for asylum in North America, Europe, East Asia and the Pacific last year - the highest total for any year since 2001. UNHCR reported (p 6) an increase of 54 per cent (24,300) in asylum applications in Australia compared to 2012 (15,800).

According to the European Union, nearly half a million people sought asylum in Europe last year, the most in two decades. The largest number came from Syria. In total, 434,160 people sought protection in the EU's 28 member states in 2013, an increase of nearly 30 per cent from 2012 when there were 335,000 applications.