Indonesia reiterates refusal to accept illegal migrants

Indonesia reiterates refusal to accept illegal migrants

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia, reiterating that it will not
accommodate any more illegal migrants, said on Wednesday it would
bar a Norwegian freighter carrying 438 asylum seekers, mostly
Afghans, to drop anchor in the country following a military
operation launched by the Australian government, which has also
denied entry to the ship.

"We have no funds to continually accommodate illegal migrants
in our country and we have appealed to UNHCR and other
international migrant organizations to help solve the problem,"
Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda told a media
briefing.

The minister said Indonesia, as of May of this year, had
accommodated more than 1,600 illegal migrants from Afghanistan,
Iran and Iraq who planned to seek asylum in Australia.

Indonesia's islands have long been prone to piracy and
smuggling, now increasingly in human cargo trying to reach
Australia after fleeing conflict in the Middle East and
Afghanistan.

"Indonesia will not accept illegal migrants ... although we
understand that their intention was not to come to Indonesia but
to go to Australia," Hassan noted.

Canberra has refused to let the Norwegian freighter Tampa
enter Australian waters off its Indian Ocean territory of
Christmas Island and says the passengers are Indonesia's
responsibility.

But in a dramatic development on Wednesday the Norwegian
captain sailed into Australian territorial waters -- only to be
halted by elite SAS troops who boarded the freighter and took
control.

Hassan said Indonesia was "under no international obligation"
to accept the asylum seekers.

Officials of the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR) here were quoted by Reuters as saying on Wednesday that
another large group of asylum seekers trying to reach Australia
amid a diplomatic row over a stranded boatload of illegal
immigrants is holed up on an Indonesian island off Lombok in West
Nusa Tenggara.

Around 150 asylum seekers from mainly Afghanistan and Iraq are
staying at a government guest house in Mataram, a city on eastern
Lombok. Police said the group had no plan to leave the island,
1,100 km east of Jakarta and next to the resort island of Bali.

Tony Garcia, a UNHCR protection officer in Jakarta, said the
Lombok group initially numbered about 300 but half had escaped
and their whereabouts were unknown.

"We sent a team (there). In the meantime some of these people
escaped, disappeared. And now we've only got about half of them.
The other half somehow escaped," Garcia said.

The Norwegian ship has been at the center of an international
impasse since the vessel rescued the mainly Afghan asylum seekers
from a sinking Indonesian ferry last Sunday in the Indian Ocean.
Australia, Indonesia and Norway have all refused to take
responsibility.

A number of major international aid agencies urged Australia,
Indonesia and Norway on Tuesday to resolve the problem of the 438
stranded boat people currently holed up on Christmas Island.
(tso)