FED: Nine Kosovars taken into detention

AAP General News (Australia)
04-15-2000
FED: Nine Kosovars taken into detention

The federal government has moved against a group of Kosovar refugees who don't want
to leave Australia, taking nine of them into detention.

Immigration Minister PHILIP RUDDOCK says the nine had made it clear they wouldn't leave
voluntarily by tomorrow's deadline.

The nine are among 146 refugees at the Bandiana Army Base near the NSW-Victoria border
due to leave Australia tomorrow.

More than 30 of the Albanian Kosovars, given temporary refuge in Australia last year
to escape Serb violence in their homeland, are still refusing to return home.

Mr RUDDOCK says any more Kosovars who don't agree to leave by tomorrow will also be
taken into detention.

ERIK LLOGA, an Albanian community spokesman, says the refugees were in a distressed
state when he visited them at Bandiana today.

Mr LLOGA says most of those still refusing to go are from a region called Eastern Kosovo
-- an Albanian-dominated area inside Serbia itself.

He says those Kosovars won't be returned to their homes, but would become refugees within Kosovo.





Mr RUDDOCK's declined to say where the nine have been taken, but observers believed
they may have been flown to secure detention centres in Port Hedland or Woomera.

AAP RTV jg/sj/nl/rt

KEYWORD: KOSOVO AUST (MELBOURNE)

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