Canberra, Oct 31: Australia has refused asylum to 53 Vietnamese people who sought refugee status when they arrived in a fishing boat off the Western Australian coast in July, the Immigration Department said today. The 27 men, 17 women and nine children were detained after their fishing boat was intercepted by the Australian Navy several kilometers (miles) off the coast.

The boat's skipper Tol Van Tran, 46, and crew member Hoang Thang Lai, 32, are being held in jail on people-smuggling charges. People smuggling carries a maximum 20-year jail sentence in Australia. The others, said to be made up of two extended families, are in a detention center on the Australian Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island 1,800 kilometers from the mainland.

They were told last week they had been refused asylum, but can appeal to a tribunal, an Immigration Department spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

Trung Doan, president of the Vietnamese community in Australia, said he had visited the detainees on Christmas Island last month and believed the decision to refuse them asylum was wrong. Bureau Report