RI does not object to UNHCR asylum plan for Acehnese

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia will not object the decision by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to arrange political asylum for 22 Acehnese who are seeking refuge at the United States embassy and UN compound in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

"Indonesia in principle treats the 22 Acehnese people as illegal workers and it depends on the Malaysian government and UNHCR on how to treat them," Gaffar Fadyl, spokesman for the Indonesian Foreign Affairs Ministry, said here yesterday.

Gaffar made the statement in reaction to the UNHCR's recent decision to treat them as asylum seekers and to seek third countries which were ready to give them asylum.

AP reported from Kuala Lumpur yesterday that the UN would arrange political asylum for the 22 Indonesians who took refuge in the United States embassy and UN compound here to escape deportation.

"We have interviewed all 22 of them, we have investigated, and we have concluded that they are refugees and in need of international protection," Hege Rudd of the UNHCR said.

The UNHCR had not decided where the refugees would be given asylum, Rudd said, adding that they could be sent to different countries.

"The UNHCR is in close communication with the Malaysian government to see what the next step will be for these refugees," she said.

The UN was asked to intervene after the Indonesians refused to leave the U.S. embassy in downtown Kuala Lumpur, saying that they would be tortured and possibly killed by the Indonesian military if they were deported.

The refugees are all from Aceh, on the northern tip of Sumatra, where an armed separatist movement has been active since the 1970s.

Fleeing a police crackdown on illegal migrants, 14 Indonesians rammed a truck through the gates of the UNHCR compound on March 30.

Eleven days later, eight more Acehnese hoisted themselves over the walls of the U.S. embassy and sought political asylum.

The UNHCR would try to resettle the 22 men by seeking legal protection, and in certain cases, citizenship, from governments who agreed to allow them in, the official said.

But the fate of two dozen other Indonesians who scrambled over the walls of the Swiss, French and Brunei embassies on April 9 hangs in balance.

Unlike the U.S. and the UN, these embassies handed the illegal immigrants over to Malaysian police, who took them to a detention camp.

"The UNHCR has not been able to see them," said Rudd.

Malaysia says the Acehnese are economic migrants, not political refugees, and hence should be deported like all other foreigners found working without valid permits.

Malaysia has already deported 30,000 Indonesians this year in an attempt to secure jobs for its own people as its economy heads into recession.

Prior to the Southeast Asian economic crisis, hundreds of thousands of foreign workers were welcomed in Malaysia and provided much of the work force in the booming property sector. Of the 8 million labor force in the property sector, 3 million were migrant workers, half of them Indonesian. (rms)