Government plans to deport 14 Turkish boat people

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government said it intended to deport 14 Turkish boat people who sailed back to Indonesia after being refused entry to the neighboring country last week.

"Deporting (them) is what we want to do. But we can't do it arbitrarily as every time they (illegal migrants) come here, various parties like the UNHCR and IOM intervene," justice minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra told reporters at his office on Wednesday.

Yusril was referring to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the International Office for Migration.

According to Yusril, deporting the boat people would not be an easy task as the Turkish administration sometimes refused to accept migrants who claimed to be Kurds.

"It's complicated," Yusril said.

The ministry would make a decision after talks with the UNHCR, IOM and the Turkish Embassy here.

Meanwhile, the immigration directorate general regretted the decision of Australia to send the Turkish boat people back to Indonesia.

"We regret their decision as it creates difficulties for us," immigration directorate general spokesman Ade Dachlan said.

Separately, some of the boat people said they were seeking asylum in Australia but were turned away by Australian sailors who boarded their boat after it arrived from Indonesia at Melville Island near Darwin on Nov. 4.

"We had no sleep, no food, no drink. We told soldiers we are refugees. They said 'Don't understand. Go back to Indonesia. No Kurds'," Aseem Bali was quoted by AFP as saying.

Bali, who claimed he was a taxi driver in Turkey, said his trip was organized by a Turk called Mustafa and an Iraqi man in Jakarta called Hassan. He said he paid US$4,000 to Mustafa.

The refugees said they were sick and showed medicine to reporters.

The 14, and the two Indonesians manning the boat, landed on Yamdena island in Maluku following their rejection by Australia.

They arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday and were taken to an immigration quarantine center for questioning.

It was not clear what had happened to the two Indonesian boat crew. Ade said that the police in the Maluku capital of Ambon had questioned them.

Indonesia has no legislation on people smuggling.

The UNHCR has accused Australia of breaching the 1951 convention on protection of refugees by refusing the UN agency access to the boat people so it could assess whether they had a right to asylum before they were turned away.

Indonesia is not a signatory to the convention.

Yusril said that Indonesia had no intention of signing the convention as the country did not have the capacity to accommodate migrants.

"We have millions of our own people to feed. That's our priority," he said.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country with 214 million people.