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.