SEVENTEEN asylum-seeker children suspected of being trafficked from Vietnam have vanished from immigration centres across the country, and authorities admit they have not been searching for them.
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The boys, mainly Catholics from the north of Vietnam, arrived by boat on Christmas Island between June 2010 and May last year.
But despite most of them being missing for months, an investigation by The Sunday Examiner's sister publication, The Sun-Herald, has revealed police have not been searching for the children and the Vietnamese embassy in Canberra has been kept in the dark about their disappearance.
An embassy official said it had been unaware the children were missing.
``We have now asked them to investigate and tell us what was happening. We have still heard nothing,'' the official said.
Before the boys, the youngest of whom is said to be 15, disappeared they told advocates their parents had been tricked into placing them in the custody of an older Vietnamese man promising them work and education in Australia.
Serious concerns have been raised about the sudden arrival of dozens of unaccompanied Vietnamese children as young as six. There are fears they may have been trafficked to Australia for labour or for prostitution.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said that when there was suddenly a large number of Vietnamese children arriving alone - among them girls just 12 years old - there was ``something going on''.
``This is a clear and awful example of what is going wrong with the system, when the minister (for immigration) is the only one responsible for them, and advocating for them, and he lost them,'' Senator Hanson-Young said.
The president of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, Phong Nguyen, said the Immigration Department had been trying to keep the disappearance quiet.
``It is quite alarming that children can disappear like that,'' he said.
Refugee advocate Pamela Kerr said the boys' parents appeared to have been duped.
``These are simple parents who have been misled,'' Ms Kerr said.
``They have been convinced to pay money for their children to travel in the belief that they will be taken care of and allowed to work and study in Australia. When they get here they find that is not the case.''
However, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus told Parliament the police were not investigating the disappearance of the children and did not hold any concerns for them from a ``trafficking perspective''.
Inquiries had found no links to child-trafficking networks.
A federal police spokeswoman said the disappearance of the children was a matter for the Immigration Department.
The children have not been reported missing and it is believed no state police are searching for them.
Yet a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said: ``The department has accorded a high priority to the location of these detainees in co-operation with relevant agencies, including police.
``This group . . . is subject to an ongoing compliance operation by the department and it would be inappropriate to go into further detail due to privacy and operational reasons.''
The Sun-Herald has been told that the man who sent the children, including his own daughter, by boat is already well known to authorities.
The Immigration Department has revealed that 36 children have gone missing or escaped from immigration centres across Australia since July 2010. Nineteen have since been found.
- Sun Herald
