Officials probe hunger strike by boat people

JAKARTA (JP): The United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and Government officials left for Galang island in Riau yesterday to try and put an end to hunger strikes by over 500 Vietnamese boat people.

Between 500 to 1,000 Vietnamese have gone on hunger strikes since Thursday to protest talks on their planned repatriation during a meeting between President Soeharto and visiting Vietnamese President Le Duc Anh here today.

An official at the foreign ministry's office here confirmed the departure of the Director of Security and Management for Indonesia Abroad, E.G. Rumayar, for the island yesterday morning.

The directorate is part of a government working group which includes officials from the immigration office, Ministry of Home Affairs and the Armed Forces which are assigned to handle the issues of Indochinese boat people on Galang.

"Some of them (the boat people) have even had to be taken to hospital," the official told The Jakarta Post.

He could not update the latest situation, however, commenting that Rumayar's departure was part of a fact finding mission to discover the true extent of situation there.

Officials from both the UNHCR office in Jakarta and Bintan Island in Tanjung Pinang, were unavailable for comment since they had left to tackle the refugee crisis.

"The UNHCR supervisor here is leaving at three o'clock," a staff member of the UNHCR office in Tanjung Pinang explained yesterday.

Reports indicate that about to 80 people have been hospitalized as a result of the hunger strike, many of whom suffered from dehydration.

There are still over 8,000 boat people on Galang island which, for the past 15 years, has provided a temporary shelter for over 248,000 Vietnamese and Cambodians who were trying to escape the horrors of war.

These refugees were usually resettled in industrialized countries. However, those who now remain have failed to meet the UNHCR criteria to classify them as refugees and therefore no third country was willing to accept them.

Indonesia sees the remaining boat people only as an obstruction to its plan to develop the island, located just south of Singapore, as part of the Batam island industrial zone.

To achieve their objectives, Jakarta and Hanoi last October reached an agreement to repatriate all of them by the middle of 1995.

The arrival of President Anh yesterday is viewed by many as the decisive step solidifying the removal of the refugees.

Meanwhile Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas played down the talks on repatriation between Soeharto and Anh.

"The only issue at hand is how to accelerate the implementation of Indonesia's decision to have the island vacated," he said.

According to Alatas, the Vietnamese government is committed to assisting with the repatriation of the boat people and that no political hurdles exist to hinder the plan.

Only one-tenth of the remaining boat people are expected to be resettled in third countries such as Canada, Australia and the United States.

Since the camps establishment in 1975 a total of 100,000 refugees from Galang island have been resettled to third countries. (07)