"Imprisoned behind razor wire indefinitely. Age: 6 years. Crime: None,'' reads one of the advertisements that was launched Tuesday to kick off a new, high-profile community campaign against the Australian government's hardline policy against asylum seekers.

The campaign was launched by Australians for Just Refugee Programmes to enlist new supporters and mobilise support to change government policy on asylum seekers, one that has earned Canberra the ire of many rights activists and the United Nations.

The advertisements — which have a common rallying call for 'A Just Australia' — are the latest development in a groundswell against government policy on asylum seekers.

"What we are doing is trying to unite all of the hundreds of groups that are opposed to government policy. The theme of 'A Just Australia' is one that can unite a lot of this activity and build a bigger campaign base,'' said Howard Glenn, national director of Australians for Just Refugee Programmes .

Glenn has no illusions that the support for Australia's decade-old policy of detaining asylum seekers will change quickly.

"We are very keen for change to occur quickly as we are very conscious of the suffering of the people in the detention camps of Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Australia right now,'' he said, referring to South Pacific island nations that Canberra had asked to take in asylum seekers it had refused to allow onshore.

Racial prejudices

''But we have to be realistic and recognise we have these policies in place for ten years now and there is a lot of ground to shift", Glenn said.

Glenn hopes that a community-based campaign in key marginal electorates will soon gain momentum and diffuse racial prejudices that were powerfully exploited by Australian Prime Minister John Howard in last year's election campaign.

"It is a dark period where race and fear have become political advantages. So what we are doing now is putting together people who aretrusted in the community and committed to finding a better way,'' Glenn said.

The initial cost of the campaign is being funded from US$120,000 from public donations that flooded in after a leading newspaper columnist, Phillip Adams, called for public support for a new group to challenge the government's policy.

The launch of the campaign coincided with three days of hearings in Sydney by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), which is conducting an inquiry into whether the imprisonment of children in detention centres is in breach of Australia's obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The convention specifies: ''No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time."

Released into community

While Australia has ratified the convention, it is the only western country that routinely imprisons all asylum seekers — including children — who arrive without identity papers. Nearly all the asylum seekers arrive by boat.

However, those who arrive at Australia's airports and apply for asylum are released into the community while their applications are assessed.

Since the announcement of the 'Pacific Solution' in August last year, Australian military forces have forcibly relocated asylum seekers to Australian-funded detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

The most recent statistics reveal that as of February this year, there were 365 children in Australian immigration detention centres and a further hundred on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

In its submission to the HREOC inquiry, the Australian section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) was scathing about the government's policy of imprisoning children that arrive with their parents by boat, seeking asylum.

"Such detention is in clear violation of many international treaties to which Australia is a party,'' they submitted.

Without authorisation

"To justify this detention on the basis that, as parents who have arrived without authorisation must be detained, the children should remain with them, rather than being separated, is a travesty, since adult detention is also incompatible with Australia's international obligations,'' they argued.

The secretary-general of the Australian section of the ICJ, David Bitel, told Monday's hearing that the minister for immigration, Philip Ruddock, has the conflicting roles of being responsible for Australia's immigration programme and being the guardian of the unaccompanied children held in detention.

"You can't be both the guardian and the jailer at the same time," Bitel said.

The Australian Committee of the United Nations Children's Fund, (UNICEF) was equally blunt in its submission: "Children in immigration detention centres must be immediately released. These children have not been detained 'as a measure of last resort'. There is no legitimate justification for this policy.''

The children transported to detention centres in Papua New Guinea cause UNICEF particular concern. "These children are of particular concern to UNICEF Australia, given the lack of transparency of their situation, the unpredictability of their future, their limited access (if any) to legal resources,'' the UN agency wrote.

The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the government agency that supervises the detention centres, is scheduled to make its submission to the inquiry in mid-August.