Australian authorities may have broken international law: Amnesty International

Australian authorities may have broken international law, Amnesty International claimed in a report that has been labelled as a slur by the nation's immigration minister.

Amnesty International on Wednesday claimed it has damning evidence of Australian naval and border protection personnel paying two people smuggling vessels to return to Indonesia.

The report, released on Thursday titled By Hook or By Crook, claims Australian officials paid 32,000 U.S. dollars to the crew of a boat intercepted twice in May to the north of Darwin with 65 asylum seekers allegedly heading for New Zealand, and instructed them to return to Indonesia.

It is alleged the asylum seekers were encouraged to bathe on the naval vessel while Australian officials paid the money to the boat's crew in a white envelope.

Amnesty also alleged a similar incident occurred in July in which both incidents, according to the report's author Anna Shea, amounts to a transnational crime whereby Australian officials directed a people-smuggling operation, paid a boat crew and gave instruction on where to land in Indonesia.

A spokesperson for Australia's immigration minister Peter Dutton told Xinhua on Thursday that the government has already responded to the report's allegations, including the July incident, and that asylum seekers were held lawfully in safe, humane and appropriate conditions.

"To suggest otherwise, as Amnesty has done, is to cast a slur on the men and women of the Australian Border Force and Australian Defence Force," Dutton's spokesperson said in a statement to Xinhua.

"The Government will always act in the best interests of the Australian people."

Though Australia doesn't have the influx of refugees hitting European shores, which number upwards of 7,000 per day, the island nation's border protection policy of boat turn backs, called Operation Sovereign Borders, and its regional off-shore processing has drawn the ire of the United Nations and international refugee and human rights advocates.

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was deposed by current leader Malcolm Turnbull in a party room coup in Sept., along with Scott Morrison, former immigration minister now treasurer, championed the policy when gaining office two years ago following a tragic spate of asylum seeker deaths at sea and numerous arrivals.

Abbott has encouraged European countries to implement similar policies and close its borders, claiming it was making a "catastrophic" error by accepting so many asylum seekers.

"No country or continent can open its borders to all comers without fundamentally weakening itself," Abbott said during the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture in London on Tuesday night.

"This is the risk that the countries of Europe now run through misguided altruism."

The United Nations Human Rights Commission on Wednesday deplored Australia's off-shore processing policies and the treatment of a Somali refugee on Nauru seeking an abortion after allegedly being raped 15 weeks ago.

It's Australia's policy to transfer asylum seekers and refugees requiring care not available at the offshore processing centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island to the mainland for treatment.

The Somali woman, known as Abyan, is currently in the process to be returned to Australia for treatment. Endit