Defence forces who intercepted refugee boats in Australian waters in Oct 2001 used unnecessary force on the asylum-seekers, ''detaining men under inhumane conditions and beating several with batons'', the Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday.

In its 94-page report, By Invitation Only: Australian Asylum Policy , the US-based rights watchdog says Canberra's refugee policy has led to rights abuses. The Australian government rejects this.

''The conduct of past interception operations should become the subject of further independent investigation, so that perpetrators of human rights abuses can be held to account,'' states the report, which was compiled from interviews with over 50 refugees in Australia and Indonesia.

Some were survivors from the sinking of the SIEV X , others from other boats turned around and sent back to Indonesia in 2001. Human Rights Watch investigators were refused permission to speak to asylum seekers forcibly relocated by the Australian Navy and held at the expense of the Australian government on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. ''A traditional leader in the refugee field...Australia is now undermining the foundations of the international protection regime,'' it states.

The report also notes that two female asylum seekers died in the course of an interception operation on Oct 8, 2001, which is now subject of an inquiry. Likewise, controversy continues to surround the Oct 19, 2001 sinking of SIEV-X , which went down in international waters, resulting in the drowning of 353 people.

Short term basis

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) is also critical of Canberra's 'Pacific solution', which involved diverting asylum seekers from Australian waters to Pacific nations willing to take them on a short term basis in return for financial support.

''Australia's interception policy and the 'Pacific Solution' is a pernicious expression of the Australian government's view that the most fitting way to deal with refugees whom, it argues, should have sought protection elsewhere is simply to send them elsewhere,'' the report states.

Nearly all of the 4,141 asylum seekers who arrived by boat in Australia in 2000-2001 came from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. Those from Afghanistan were ethnic Hazara, a Shi'a Muslim minority who have been persecuted by the Taliban regime, and by some supporters of the Northern Alliance-led government before that.

According to evidence provided to the report authors, some of those fleeing to Australia included medical professionals who refused to perform amputations of ears as a criminal sentence and people arrested in southern Iraq for assisting starving people.

A spokesman for the Minister for Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Phillip Ruddock, rejects the Human Rights Watch report.

Factual errors

''It is riddled with factual errors and unfortunately seems to be defending the practice of using people smugglers at the expense of those refugees who languish in refugee camps in Africa and the Middle East,'' he said.

''They have decided to bypass that system and they are making a migration decision to come on to Australia and what Human Rights Watch is saying is that people shouldn't seek asylum at the first available opportunity, they should make migration decisions and come to Australia. We aren't getting people coming through the system claiming to be persecuted in Indonesia'', he claimed.

HRW takes issue with Australian government claims that simply because asylum seekers transited through another country on their way to Australia they should be returned to their country of origin.

''Australia should stop trying to push asylum seekers back to Indonesia or other states in the region where effective protection cannot be ensured,'' the report states.

While many of those arriving on Australia's shores first sought asylum in Iran or Pakistan, HRW disputes the Australian government view that they were able to obtain effective protection there or in countries such as Indonesia or Malaysia on their way to Australia.

''Many of the refugees making secondary movements to Australia were unable to find and enjoy effective protection in their countries of first asylum in the Middle East and South Asia, nor in the transit countries of Southeast Asia through which they had passed,'' the report states.

Deterrent message

On Monday night, the government pressed ahead with a bill in the Senate to excise extensive areas and islands off Australia's northern coastline and the Torres Strait from the provisions of immigration legislation. Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Chris Ellison, defended the proposal.

''The bill expands the definition of an excised offshore place and sends a strong deterrent message to people smugglers. The bill ensures that persons who travel unlawfully to Australia and who enter Australia at an excised offshore place will not obtain a favourable migration outcome,'' he told the Senate.

Despite the minister's pleas, the Senate rejected the proposed changes. Earlier in the day, the government tabled its response to the recommendations of a report by the Human Rights Sub-Committee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade on findings from visits to immigration detention centres.

The committee visits were prompted by a series of riots at detention centres. The committee recommendation that time limits on detention be established was rejected by the government.

''The concept of time limits on processing and length of detention ... has been tried in the past and was unsuccessful. This proposal could well act as an incentive to those who seek to enter Australia illegally and be used as a selling point for the people smugglers,'' the government wrote in its response. IPS