Hundreds of detained asylum seekers ended a two-week hunger strike today and 11 teenagers withdrew a suicide threat after Australian government negotiators struck a deal with the protesters, officials said.
"We've had a real breakthrough. The Afghani hunger strikers are no longer on hunger strike," said Ray Funnell, a member of the panel sent to negotiate with the more than 200 mainly Afghan asylum seekers at the isolated Woomera detention centre.
"We have entered into a process we hope will end in a fair and just result for everyone," he told reporters at Woomera.
Mr Funnell also said the 11 teenagers who had sworn a suicide pact at the weekend had abandoned a 5 p.m. (6.30 a.m. Irish time) today deadline to be taken out of the camp.
Afghan and Middle Eastern detainees at Woomera have refused food and water, tried to hang themselves, drunk disinfectant and sewn up their lips to protest at the months, and sometimes years, it takes to process asylum claims.
They also demanded they be moved to a less isolated detention centre than Woomera, which lies around 475 km (295 miles) north of Adelaide in the barren South Australia desert.
The disturbances spread to four of Australia's six detention centres for illegal immigrants, pressuring the conservative government to review its hard line on asylum seekers.
The teenagers in the suicide pact had first set a Tuesday deadline, then delayed it for 24 hours. Mr Funnell said they had been satisfied by promises from the committee to listen to their complaints and were no longer threatening suicide.
But refugee lawyer Rob McDonald told Reutersearlier that the children, aged 14 to 17 had extended their deadline for a week.
"We still think they are deadly serious," he said.
Protests, often violent, have become increasingly frequent at Woomera, the largest of the country's camps, which is located in a former rocket range the size of England, where summer temperatures soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).