SYDNEY – Chinese and Indian citizens dominated Australia’s border control blacklist, secret documents showed Saturday, with the majority of people singled out for national security reasons.
The closely guarded Movement Alert List, released to The Australian newspaper under Freedom of Information laws, includes 34,189 Chinese citizens — 10 percent of the total 314,462 people who have been flagged by authorities.
Indians were the second largest group, with 21,643 citizens on the watch list, closely followed by New Zealanders (18,315) and Indonesians (16,271), according to June figures.
Separate data from March showed almost half (49.24 percent) were on the list for national security reasons, with health concerns (11.08 percent) the next biggest group, primarily linked to respiratory illnesses like tuberculosis.
But the size of the list is steady shrinking and national security’s share is also on the decline, falling from 58.27 percent in June 2009.
