CANBERRA -- Asylum seekers at two remote Australian detention camps continued a 13-day hunger strike on Monday as cracks appeared in bipartisan political support for mandatory detention of illegal immigrants. Fifty-two detainees at the Curtin centre and two asylum seekers at Port Hedland, both in western Australia, have refused to eat since January 23 in protest over their detention for months, or even years, while their refugee claims are heard. A spokesman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said the Conservative government hoped the hunger strikers would end their protest but it would not soften its detention policy. "Anyone on a hunger strike is being closely monitored, and if they make any demands about processing -- if they are trying to seek a migration outcome by a hunger strike -- they are not going to achieve their aim," the spokesman told Reuters. "We're not going to make decisions based on threats." A spokeswoman for the Immigration Department said the number of hunger strikers had been dropping steadily since last week, with 16 detainees giving up the protest since Friday. She said the protest remained non-violent, in contrast to a hunger strike by hundreds of Afghani asylum seekers at a third camp, Woomera, which ended last week. Several Woomera protesters sewed their lips together and tried to hang themselves in their protest which ended after the government promised to resubmit their claims for refugee status. Australia accepts about 10,000 formal refugees resettled by the United Nations every year, but the arrival of some 5,000 mostly Middle Eastern and Afghan boatpeople last year has triggered a popular backlash against the asylum seekers. Political Support Crumbling The protests have sparked international condemnation of Australia's hard-line policy of detaining illegal immigrants while their refugee applications are heard and shaken what has been bipartisan political support for the policy. An australian Labor government introduced the mandatory detention of asylum seekers in outback camps in 1994. But the Labor Party, now in opposition, said on Monday a review of its support for mandatory detention could top the agenda during a party meeting on Tuesday and would undoubtedly be discussed during an overall policy review this year. Labor's unconditional support for the Conservative government's detention policy has been singled out as part of the reason Labor failed to oust Prime Minister John Howard's five-year-old coalition government in a November election. "Obviously it's a serious political issue right now, and so it will have greater urgency than other issues," Labor deputy leader Jenny Macklin told Australian Broadcasting Corp Radio. While Labor's support has shielded the government from parliamentary criticism of the policy, human rights groups continued to condemn Australia's illegal immigration policy. In a scathing report released on Monday, aid agency Oxfam said the government's decision last year to begin diverting illegal immigrants to camps on neighboring Pacific islands was tantamount to people smuggling. "The Pacific is a highly unstable area of the world, and ignoring regional sensitivities by placing a large number of refugees in different parts of the region has contributed to instability," Executive Director Andrew Hewett told Reuters.