Image copyright EPA Australia’s government has defended its plan to send citizens evacuated from the region at the centre of China’s coronavirus outbreak to a remote island used to detain asylum seekers.
Hundreds of evacuated Australians are expected to be quarantined on Christmas Island.
Critics, including the Australian Medical Association, have described the plan as inappropriate.
But Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said it was the best solution.
“The reality is people need to be accommodated somewhere for up to 14 days,” Mr Dutton told reporters in Canberra on Thursday.
“I can’t clear out a hospital in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane. I don’t have a facility otherwise that we can quickly accommodate for what might be many hundreds of people, and Christmas Island is purpose-built for exactly this scenario,” he added.
Christmas Island, an Australian territory about 2,600km (1,616 miles) from the mainland, has held thousands of asylum seekers.
The controversial detention centre was closed in 2018 but re-opened the following year, and currently houses only a family of four Sri Lankan asylum seekers who are fighting deportation.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the plans to send Australians evacuated from China’s Wuhan city and the surrounding areas to the island. He did not say how many of the more than 600 Australians affected would be moved.
Australians in China say officials have told them they will need to pay A$1,000 ($673; £512) and agree to go to Christmas Island in order to be repatriated.
The Australian Medical Association has argued that people would be better quarantined on the mainland.
“We feel that the repatriation to Christmas Island – to a place previously the focus of populations under enormous mental and physical trauma and anguish – is not a really appropriate solution,” the association’s president, Tony Bartone, told Australia’s Nine Network.
Wenbo Yu, whose wife and two children are in Wuhan, said he would prefer his loved ones to stay where they are.
“Compared to Wuhan, we believe Christmas Island is even more unpredictable,” he told ABC.
In total, more than 7,700 people have been infected with the coronavirus, and 170 people in China have died.
Media playback is unsupported on your device
Click Here to Visit Orignal Source of Article https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-51317760
