Lebanese Asylum-Seekers Detained in Pacific Likely to Return Home

A majority of Lebanese asylum-seekers detained in the Pacific will choose to return home, a Lebanese member of the council advising the Australian government on asylum-seekers said.

Australian media reports said on Tuesday that Dr. Jamal Rifi, a prominent member of Sydney's Lebanese community, visited the detention centers in the islands of Papua New Guinea and Nauru last week.

More than 60 Lebanese are held there, many from northern Lebanon.

"They were quite happy to receive us, and our mission, let's say, was to give them the options available to them, based on their situation and given the facts as we saw it, the political mindset in Canberra, and the changes in the Department of Immigration," Rifi said.

As part of the policy, Prime Minister Tony Abbott's government has promised to turn back asylum-seeker boats when it is safe to do so.

Describing the mood on the islands as "tense and desperate,” Rifi said he now thought the majority of the Lebanese asylum-seekers detained offshore would seek to go home rather than spend years in detention or in the developing Pacific nations.

Rifi said he was now in talks with Lebanon's counsel-general to Australia about ways to fast-track the return of those who did not believe they had a genuine refugee claim to pursue.

The media quoted him as saying that most of the Lebanese detained offshore had economic reasons for seeking asylum, and they've been duped by people smugglers.

Hundreds of people have died in fatal sinkings in recent years, often after boarding rickety, wooden boats in Indonesia to try and make the treacherous sea crossing to Australia.

Australian authorities were warned that people in Melbourne and Lebanon were helping to organize boatloads of Lebanese asylum seekers to travel to Australia, weeks before a boat sank off the coast of West Java, killing dozens of people including many women and children from one Lebanese village.

Up to 120 people, mostly from the Middle East, were on board the ill-fated boat that sank on September 27. Scores have died.