The accusation, from a coalition of 20 groups which included the Roman Catholic church, came as the government offered to pay Afghan migrants interned in controversial detention centers to return home.

The initiative was unveiled by Prime Minister John Howard during a visit to New York. It follows severe international and domestic criticism of his handling of a crisis that has festered since his government turned away a boatload of refugees in August.

In a letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, the religious and rights groups accused the government of systematic abuses of human rights.

The letter, which was made public, labeled the Woomera Detention Center where more than 200 hunger strikers abandoned a two-week protest on Wednesday, "a concentration camp."

"The Australian government has systematically sought to undermine sympathy for refugees seeking asylum, demonizing them and representing them to the public as 'illegals' or as 'queue-jumpers'," the letter, signed by Catholic, Uniting Church and Islamic welfare agency representatives, said.

"With full acknowledgment of the agony of the Jewish people and other groups exterminated by the Nazis, in the sense of its original meaning, Woomera is a concentration camp," it added.

Howard said he had told Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, during a meeting in New York that "in relation to people who were not judged to be refugees, then we would be willing if they returned to Afghanistan, to provide some kind of resettlement financial assistance".

"Mr Karzai said he would send a delegation and one of his ministers ... in the next couple of weeks to Australia to talk about the issue and obviously they'll have an opportunity of talking to the people who are seeking refugee status and they can clearly talk to the asylum seekers," Howard said in a radio interview broadcast here.

"Bearing in mind that Afghanistan has a lot of problems to say the least, if there were some financial assistance provided on an individual basis, then it would make the re-absorption of people that much easier.

"This is a very difficult issue ... but we do have to address the issue of the people who are ... judged not to be refugees and we are talking here potentially of about 1,100 Afghanis."

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock however implied that the offer would also be made to Afghans who have not yet had their applications for refuge rejected.

Ruddock said the total number of Afghans detained in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Nauru who could return home under the assistance scheme could be as high as 4,000.

An Immigration Department spokeswoman later told AFP that although the hunger strike at Woomera had now ended, 100 inmates at the Curtin Detention Center in Western Australia continued to refuse food and water.

One of them attempted "self-harm" overnight.

"It is unclear at this stage why the detainees at Curtin are protesting," she said.

The Woomera protesters' decision to end their hunger strike followed a series of delicate negotiations between the inmates of the remote desert compound in South Australia and members of a government advisory group.

The Independent Detention Advisory Group (IDAG) eventually recommended the closure of the Woomera camp.

More than 200 Afghan inmates among Woomera's population of 800-plus detainees refused food and water for more than two weeks after Canberra suspended the processing of their claims for sanctuary.

The government argued that the defeat of the Taliban regime in their homeland compromised the Afghans' claims for asylum, which commonly cited a fear of persecution as their primary reason for fleeing their homeland.

The resumption of processing was a key component of the deal that ended the hunger strike.

Copyright © 2002 AFP

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