Australia possible home for Uighers now in Palau.

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Updated November 3, 2009 17:43:58

Australia has been put forward as an eventual permanent home for the six Chinese Muslim Uighers who have arrived in the Pacific Island nation of Palau, after seven years in detention at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The six men accepted the offer to relocate to Palau, after the US asked the government there if it was prepared to accept some, or all of the Uighers it was holding at Guantanamo. But the resettlement offer for the six men is only temporary, until they can find a permanent home, preferably a country with an established Uigher community. Both the lawyers representing the former detainees, and the President of Palau, want Australia to consider taking the men. But as Pacific Correspondent Campbell Cooney reports, any country offering sanctuary is likely to incur the wrath of China, which considers the Guantanamo Uighers as terrorists.

Presenter: Pacific Correspondent Campbell Cooney
Speaker: Palau's President Johnson Toribiong; Andrew Bartlett, a former Australian Democrats Senator, now a Research Fellow in Immigration Law at the Australian National University; Lawyer representing three of the Uighers in Palau, Michael Stenhell

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