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.
The request is one of hundreds of letters given to Mr Anaya, who is in Australia at the invitation of the Australian government to examine the controversial Intervention, brought in under the government of former Prime Minister John Howard.
The intervention into 73 indigenous communities, which represented the biggest overhaul in indigenous policy in decades, has divided Australia since it was introduced in the wake of a devastating report into sexual abuse in Aboriginal communities .
Mr Howard suspended the Racial Discrimination Act and literally sent the army into prescribed communities. Under the Intervention, alcohol was banned and welfare payments were quarantined to ensure money was spent on food and clothing rather than 'rivers of grog'.
Medical teams also arrived to check the health of children and identify abuse victims and a A$7million remote housing package was put in place to rectify the appalling living conditions of thousands of Aborigines, who live in fourth world squalor.
However, despite a number of successes - particularly improvements in health services, education and, crucially, safety for women and children, the Intervention has remained controversial.
An independent review last year found that progress on health care and security were undermined by a lack of full community support.
Last month, a report into indigenous health, expected to reveal improvements, found that children in indigenous communities were six times more likely to be abused or neglected than the country's non-indigenous population.
The housing programme has also come under the spotlight, with communities complaining that despite political grand-standing, not one of the promised 750 houses has been built.
Northern Territories Indigenous affairs minister Alison Anderson resigned over the issue two weeks ago, accusing the Labour government of betraying Aborigines who continue to live 20 to a house with no running water or electricity. Housing conditions are so poor that some parents have complained their children wake with cockroaches in their ears.
Recently, the respected Arnhem Land Aboriginal leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu withdrew his support for the Intervention, calling it a 'form of apartheid.'
"I am bitterly, bitterly disappointed with the intervention,'' Mr Yunupingu said. "I thought it was going to be for the good of the people, but I have been disappointed no end
"Housing is a big promise, and people are still sitting there biting their fingernails waiting for their homes, and that's never come.''
The request for refugee states comes a month after 150 people walked off the community of Ampilatwatja, 200 miles (300 km) north-east of Alice Springs in protest at their living conditions including the raw sewerage that was flowing through their government-owned houses.
Mr Downs, a community leader at Ampilatwatja, said the community would continue to live in makeshift camps for another year if necessary.
A UN spokesman said Mr Anaya would not comment on individual submissions.
Recently, Mr Anaya admitted that the decision to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act as part of the intervention was on the face of it, discriminatory.