to the Commonwealth Migration Act 1958, enacted by the Migration Legislation Amendment (Excision from the Migration Zone) (Consequential Provisions) Act 2001. Specifically, the new amendment to the 1958 Act allowed "offshore entry persons" to be taken to "declared countries", with Nauru and Papua New Guinea made "declared countries" under the Act. The implementation of this legislation became known as the Pacific Solution at the same time as or soon after the passing of the legislation (at least within a year). By redefining the area of Australian territory that could be landed upon and then legitimately used for claims of asylum (the migration zone), and by removing any intercepted people to third countries for processing, the aim was to deter future asylum seekers from making the dangerous journey by boat, once they knew that their trip would probably not end with a legitimate claim for asylum in Australia. On 28 October 2001, at his 2001 election campaign policy launch, Prime Minister John Howard said "we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come", in an effort to build support for the policy. Asylum seekers were intercepted at sea while sailing from Indonesia and moved using Australian naval vessels. Detention centres were set up on Christmas Island, Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, and on the island nation of Nauru. Some were also accepted for processing by New Zealand. Most of the asylum seekers came from Afghanistan (largely of the Hazara ethnic group), Iraq, Iran, China, and Vietnam. The last asylum seekers to be detained on Nauru before the end of the policy had come from Sri Lanka and Myanmar. Arrivals dropped from a total of 5516 people in 2001 to one arrival in 2002 after implementation of the policy, and remained below 150 annually until 2008. The removal of the Taliban from power in Afghanistan may have had some effect in this decrease, as nearly six million Afghans had returned to Afghanistan since 2002, almost a quarter of the country's population at the time. Four boats were successfully returned to Indonesian waters out of the twelve Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels (SIEVs) intercepted by the Navy during Operation Relex during 2001–2002, having made 10 attempts to enforce the policy, based on judgements of whether it was safe to do so or not. Three men allegedly drowned trying to swim back to shore after returning to Indonesia.