Asylum Seekers Escape in Australia

WOOMERA, Australia —  As many as 20 asylum seekers, including a child, escaped from an Australian detention center Friday by scaling fences topped with razor wire or cutting holes with bolt cutters thrown to them by protesters outside.

Authorities recaptured 12 refugees after the escape, which occurred amid clashes between police and demonstrators at the Woomera Detention Center in central Australia.

Inside the center, detainees flung chairs, rocks, bedposts and garbage bins at staff, who responded with tear gas, Immigration Department spokesman Paul Oliver told Associated Press.

The search for the remaining fugitives continued Friday night. Oliver gave no details of how or where the 12 were recaptured.

About 300 mostly Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers are being held at the center. The demonstrators were protesting Australia’s policy of detaining all refugees who arrive illegally in the country.

One escaping refugee dashed through a hole in a fence with both arms raised, yelling: “Freedom! Freedom!” She was immediately tackled by a security guard, but protesters wrestled her free and she ran off.

Another refugee ran out shouting, “After two years I’m free!”

A spokeswoman for No One Is Illegal, one of about 20 groups involved in the protest, said one of the escapees, an Iranian woman, had taken shelter in a protester’s tent surrounded by hundreds of demonstrators to prevent her recapture.

“They are demanding that her visa be processed and that she be freed,” protester Andrea Maksimovic told Reuters.

“Police are trying to negotiate with us, but I think they are just biding their time until reinforcements arrive and then they’ll do a clean sweep of the camp,” she said.

The refugees escaped by scrambling over the razor fences around the center, and they appeared afterward to be bleeding. Protesters immediately put new clothes on the escapees and whisked them away from police, who then began scuffling with rioters.

Ten police officers on horseback rode into the crowd in an attempt to quell the escalating violence. As they did, more refugees broke out, some of them escaping through holes in the fences.

Oliver said 15 to 20 people escaped. Speaking by telephone from the center, he said one security officer suffered minor injuries from gravel thrown in his face.

The clashes subsided Friday night, and the protesters drifted away from the camp. But unrest continued inside the center, Oliver said. More protests were planned for the weekend.

Under Australia’s detention policy, refugees, including young children, are locked up until their asylum applications are dealt with--a process that can take three years. The Woomera detention center has often been the scene of hunger strikes by refugees.

The policy of mandatory detention has broad public and bipartisan political support in Australia, and the conservative government’s tough stand against illegal immigration was seen as a key factor in its third-term election victory in November.

Australia accepts more than 10,000 U.N.-approved refugees for resettlement each year.