Indonesia accepts Kurdish boat people, seeks UN help

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post , Jakarta

Indonesia is ready to take 14 boat people back who were refused entry to Australia, but will not allow them to settle in the country, a minister said on Monday.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla said the Indonesian government would ask the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to take care of the people.

"They will be treated as ordinary refugees, and they will be the responsibility of the UNHCR," Kalla said before attending a limited Cabinet meeting.

He said such incidents had happened many times before and the UNHCR was used to dealing with the problem. Many of the refugees were housed in its shelter in the Puncak area near Bogor in West Java, some 70 kilometers south of Jakarta.

The 14 asylum-seekers aboard the Minasa Bone vessel, believed to be Kurds, landed in the eastern Indonesian island of Yamdena on Saturday and police took them Samlaki town for questioning.

Samlaki Police chief Ahmad Yani told AFP on Monday that the boat people would be transferred to Ambon for immigration processing.

"They are currently in our custody but will be sent to Ambon by sea tomorrow," Yani said.

Yani said the police were also seeking two or three other people who had been on the Indonesian flagged vessel, which is also believed to have been crewed by Indonesians.

Both minister Kalla and Yani said there had been no communications with the Australian side.

The Australian navy had escorted the boatload of suspected asylum seekers, who made it as far as a northern Australian island, back to Indonesia.

Australian immigration minister Amanda Vanstone said the boat was escorted to the edge of Indonesian waters before making its own way to Indonesia's island of Yamdena.

She also claimed that her government had been in contact with the Indonesian government regarding the vessel.

The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard invoked extraordinary powers to remove Melville Island and some 4,000 others from Australia's migration zone, effectively making it impossible for the Kurds to apply for asylum.

The decision has drawn strong criticism from the UN, refugee groups and opposition politicians.

Kalla said the Indonesian government was not in a position to comment on Australia's immigration policy, but asserted Jakarta had to accept responsibility for the fate of the boat people.

The 12-meter Minasa Bone is only the second vessel to have reached Australian territory since a 2001 crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Indonesia is a regular route taken by asylum seekers, mostly from the Middle East, to reach Australia.