Hijacked boat found drifting off Sumbawa island

Agencies, Mataram

A boat reportedly hijacked last week by 170 Australia-bound Afghan and Iraqi asylum-seekers has been found in the sea off Sumbawa island, West Nusa Tenggara, news reports said on Sunday.

The Sinar Bontang, whose crew was allegedly cast overboard last week by its asylum-seeker passengers, was found drifting in the sea off Sangeang island some 40 kilometers north of the district town of Bima, Sumbawa island, Antara news agency reported from West Nusa Tenggara capital of Mataram.

The boat's engine had stalled, the news agency said.

"The immigrants were transported by the motorized sail boat Sinar Bontang which had left South Sulawesi for Australia," the West Nusa Tenggara province's regional secretary Abdullah Abu Bakar told the agency.

He gave no date of the incident, but said that the 170 asylum seekers were now being taken ashore on smaller boats.

The authorities plan to move them to Bima as quickly as possible, he said.

Bima Police chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Ishaka Usman told Reuters that the hijacked boat was reportedly recovered after locals in a village on the eastern part of Sumbawa island discovered the asylum-seekers whose boat had run aground in a nearby inlet on Saturday evening.

"Locals first found the immigrants on Saturday night. They were trying to find food and water," Ishaka told Reuters by phone.

"They wanted to go to Australia but are now on the island under our surveillance. Their boat had engine problems," he added.

But Ishaka said the boat's captain who remained on the vessel denied it had been hijacked, even though one crew member who fled the ship and was rescued by the Indonesian Navy said it had been taken over by Iraqi asylum seekers.

Ishaka said Iraqis were also among the 170 passengers.

The Navy said the boat was hijacked on Wednesday in the Flores Sea.

Authorities had been hunting for the hijacked boat for days.

The ship's seizure was the first such case to be reported in Indonesia after several years of being used as a transit point for asylum-seekers mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq hoping to reach Australia.

It follows a tragic case reported this week in which over 350 South Asian and Middle Eastern refugees drowned when their overcrowded vessel sank off the Java island on Oct. 19

Survivors of the tragedy have revealed that many of the passengers did not want to board the small vessel but had been forced to do so by the "people smugglers" who had arranged their perilous voyage for a fee.

Indonesian has called for a regional meeting on the rising tide of "boat people" to seek a solution to the problem, involving participants from both the countries of origin, such as Iraq and Afghanistan and the transit countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.