Asylum seekers waiting in Indonesia, says Ruddock

Asylum seekers waiting in Indonesia, says Ruddock

Agencies, Sydney, Australia

Around 1,000 asylum seekers currently in Indonesia are searching
for people smugglers to bring them to Australia or the Pacific
region, Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said on
Sunday.

Ruddock said there were 500 people in Indonesia who'd been
deemed legitimate asylum seekers by the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Those people were waiting for
resettlement places across the globe.

He said the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was
trying to send home another 600 people who had been denied
refugee status.

"There are reports beyond that of another 1,000 or so people
who are simply washing around in Indonesia at the moment looking
at smuggling opportunities and who would, if there were people
able to deliver them, would be using them," Ruddock told Ten
Network television.

"There is information that smugglers are again planning to try
and deliver people to Australia or into the Pacific." He did not
say what the source of this information was.

Ruddock also said on Sunday that Indonesia -- not Australia --
should have rescued of hundreds of asylum seekers who drowned
after their boat sank between the two countries last year.

On Oct. 19, a dilapidated 60-foot (19-meter) wooden boat sank
off the coast of Indonesia's main island of Java, drowning 374
men, women and children. Only 44 of the passengers survived.

The asylum seekers, most of whom were from Iraq and
Afghanistan, had paid smugglers for passage to Australia.

Ruddock defended Australia's hardline approach to illegal
immigrants, emphasizing a need for strong border protection and
the detention of those who made it to Australia.

"If people want to try and escape detention they can do so
successfully in terms of secreting themselves within the
Australian community," he said.

"And it reinforces the view that if people arrive and are not
refugees and have an intention to get a migration outcome in
Australia, locating them is a very difficult task."

Ruddock said he had no further information about 11 asylum
seekers who escaped from the Woomera detention center in South
Australia at Easter.

The Australian government is currently trying to pass
legislation to cut 3,000 northern islands off the map for
migration purposes.

The move would bar asylum seekers from lodging refugee
applications if they landed on any of the islands in the so-
called exclusion zone.