Asylum seekers await their fate

Alex Wilson, Contributor, Jakarta

For Afghan asylum seekers living in Jakarta, the days are spent huddled over intense games of chess punctuated by visits to local mosques or UNHCR offices.

Mostly from Afghanistan or Iraq, they come and go as they please without official escorts. Their lives are very different from their Australian counterparts, detained in conditions described last week by a government-appointed commissioner as disturbing.

The Australian government's tough stance on asylum seekers was an election winner in last years poll but has strained relations with Indonesia and drawn criticism from many, including Amnesty International and the Red Cross.

Ali Riza, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, says he and his friends are no longer interested in seeking asylum in Australia.

"We have freedom in Indonesia," he said. "No one wants to go to Australia now -- that country won't accept you and puts you in jail. If we arrive there they will take us to Papua New Guinea -- we won't go there now, there is no chance for us there."

Ali has used all his savings on two failed attempts to reach Australia. The boats he boarded were unseaworthy and one became lost at sea for fourteen days after a ferocious storm. "I was afraid, of course: everyone was," he said. He has not seen his family for five years and does not know where they are.

Like many others, Ali is now living in Jl Jaksa in Central Jakarta and applying for refugee status from the UNHCR. He visits the local mosque to pray for his family and says he feels comforted living in a Muslim country. He would happily make Indonesia his home. "So long as they accept me and protect me I will stay in Indonesia, no problem," he said.

Ali's accommodation in Jaksa is paid for by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a nongovernmental organization providing food, lodgings and medical supplies to asylum seekers.

According to head of IOM Indonesia Richard Danziger, the Australian government's tough immigration policies have had the intended affect, with numbers of asylum seekers falling.

"Certainly we sense that fewer people have come to Indonesia in the last few months," he said. "The way I see it, it's almost a business decision on the part of the smugglers."

Danziger said another factor had been the fall of the Taliban regime, from which so many asylum seekers were fleeing. Many Afghans in Indonesia were now happy to return home, and the IOM would pay for their flights as soon as documents could be organized.

He said asylum-seekers in Indonesia were generally well treated by authorities. "In Indonesia, the government is taking a very humane attitude," he said. People were free to stay while they were processed by UNHCR and those whose claims to refugee status were rejected often stayed on in Indonesia without trouble.

Australia processes asylum seekers in accordance with the 1957 refugee convention and the 1967 protocol to which it is a signatory. Indonesia has signed neither so the task of determining asylum seekers' status falls to the UNHCR.

Australia's immigration department has a long-standing policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Recent years have seen a huge increase in the number of illegal immigrants caught attempting to reach Australia from Indonesia, all of whom are detained while their refugee status is determined.

In September last year, 433 illegal immigrants, taken aboard a Norwegian cargo ship after their boat sank, were refused entry to Australian waters. A diplomatic incident ensued as Indonesia refused to take the people back and Norway insisted the ship be allowed to land.

Those aboard were eventually shipped to the tiny pacific nation of Nauru, founding a policy now known as "the Pacific solution". Australian Naval vessels patrol for asylum seekers who are shipped on to Nauru and Papua New Guinea for processing. The policy won strong support from the Australian public and was pivotal in the Howard government's reelection last November.

There are now around 1,500 illegal immigrants in Nauru and Papua New Guinea and a further 3,000 in detention camps across Australia.

When the Taliban was overthrown, the Australian immigration department froze the processing of Afghan asylum seekers until the situation could be assessed. Tension among frustrated detainees boiled over into two weeks of protests, hunger strikes and self-mutilation. Afghans sewed their lips together and threatened mass suicides unless they were removed from centers.

The protests sparked renewed criticism of the Australian government's position. Last week the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) said detention of illegal immigrants for prolonged periods was in breach of human rights provisions, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. HREOC said there was a culture of despair in the camps, which impacted on detained children.

Ali Riza has friends in Australian detention camps and has no desire to join them. "I know the situation of those in Australia is not good," he says. "Sometimes they have been living like that for years and their families don't know if the have sunk into the ocean."

Ali hopes to be classified as a refugee and assigned to a country so he can complete high school and go on to university. "If the UN helps me I will have achieved my objective," he says. With a weariness in his voice he says wryly that he can sympathize with Australia's situation. "I think the people of Australia are simply fed up with refugees."