Original Inhabitants ask UN for refugee status

A group of Australian Aborigines has asked the United Nations to register them as refugees, claiming emergency laws brought in to curb alcoholism and sexual abuse have made them outcasts in their own land.

Richard Downs, a spokesperson for the Alywawarra nation which represents around 4000 indigenous people in central Australia, said the request had been given to James Anaya, a UN official visiting Australia on a fact finding mission.

The request urged the UN to register the Alywawarra under the international refugee convention as internally displaced persons.

Mr Downs said his people had been left with no choice because the 2007 Federal Intervention into indigenous communities in the Northern Territories had taken away their rights.

"We've got no say at all. We feel like an outcast in our community, refugees in our own country," Mr Downs told ABC radio. More