NZ shuts door on asylum seekers

New Zealand turned back a boat load of Sri Lankan asylum seekers, fearing that accepting them would open the floodgates to “millions of others" and encourage people smugglers.

A boat containing about 85 Sri Lankans bound for New Zealand was detained in Indonesian waters over the weekend.

According to AFP, the refugees were waving New Zealand flags and signs reading “Our future life is in New Zealand" and "We like to go to New Zealand".

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has taken a hardline stance against boatpeople saying they were not welcome in New Zealand and he would not be changing his view.

"Once you start taking people in the form of people smugglers, you are rewarding the bad guys. You are rewarding people who are putting others' lives at risk," he said.

New Zealand takes in 750 refugees a year. Prime Minister Key said they would not be accepting anyone that does not come through “official channels.”

"There are literally millions of people in this category. It's not a simple thing to just say 'let's take this boat in and be good citizens'.

"There’s a very clear pathway, it's fair to people, and that is you come through the normal channels as a refugee, otherwise you're jumping the queue."

The Sri Lankans who were turned back are currently moored on an island off the coast of Sumatra and said they would not give up on their goal to reach New Zealand. They are refusing to leave their ship.

"We are not illegal immigrants, but refugees," a spokesman, Romance Radan, told reporters. Refugees have said they would rather die than go back to Sri Lanka, where they say their relatives had been killed.

The migrants told the BBC Tamil service that they are refusing to leave their ship before their safety can be guaranteed.

One of those on board told BBC Tamil that they were mostly from northern Sri Lanka and were caught up in the final stages of the war between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels.

Many say they left Sri Lanka after the war and have been living in Malaysia for the past two years.

Officials from the International Organisation for Migration are in negotiations with the Sri Lankan asylum-seekers.

But a spokesman for New Zealand’s Refugee Council says that refugees should be able to enter New Zealand by boat or by plane, “as long as they have a valid claim to refugee status.”