Vietnamese migrants detained on Galang Island

Vietnamese migrants detained on Galang Island

Reuters, Jakarta/Canberra

Thirty-one Vietnamese migrants bound for Australia have been taken into custody after their unseaworthy boat was found beached on a small Indonesian island, a migration agency said on Thursday.

The boat was found on Galang Island just south of Singapore with a broken-down motor, said Steve Cook, chief of mission for the International Organization for Migration in Jakarta.

"The motor had conked out so they removed it and the locals were trying to help them fix it," Cook told Reuters, adding all on board the boat, including women and children, were healthy.

"Only 10 of these people say they want to return to Vietnam, while 21 want to claim asylum," he said.

Galang Island, with few inhabitants and dotted with scrub- covered hills, held more than 10,000 boatpeople at a refugee camp in the early 1990s.

Indonesia, with porous borders and a lack of laws on people smuggling, has in recent years become a springboard for asylum seekers heading for Australia. The issue has strained ties between Canberra and Jakarta in recent years.

Cook said the whereabouts of another boat carrying 42 Vietnamese migrants found near Indonesia's Borneo island last week was unknown.

Their rickety boat was found stranded with no fuel and authorities, after checking if any of the passengers were suffering from the deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, re- supplied it with fuel, food and water and sent it on its way.

Australia, while criticizing Indonesia for not taking the migrants ashore, has already warned the Vietnamese would not be allowed to land on Australian soil if they made it that far.

Conservative Prime Minister John Howard said his hardline policy, adopted in 2001, of blocking access to all boatpeople still stood and the vessels would be turned back or diverted to a camp for asylum seekers on the nearby Pacific island of Nauru.

"We will, of course, continue to follow the thing very carefully and we'll act in a humane fashion, as we always have, but we don't intend to change the policy that we've adopted," Howard told an Australian radio station on Thursday.

Refugee advocacy groups called for compassion, fearing a repeat of a disaster in October 2001 when an overcrowded boat, known as the Siev X, sank on route to Australia, drowning 353 mainly Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers.

Australia says the Siev X sank in Indonesian waters, where it has no jurisdiction. The current two boatloads were also last reported in Indonesian waters.

"Australia and Indonesia have got to work a lot more closely on this," Greg Barns, spokesman for the Coalition for Reform of Refugee Policy, told Reuters.

"You simply can't have unseaworthy boats being fueled up and pushed out into sea from Indonesia to Australia because it is putting people's lives at risk."

The Australian government believes the boats embarked from Vietnam, which hundreds of thousands of refugees fled in the 1970s and 1980s after the U.S. military withdrawal and reunification of the country under the victorious communists. Countries in Southeast Asia have long been reluctant hosts to many of them.

Jakarta deflected the criticism, saying it was unfair to put the onus on one country. Indonesia has said the issue would not harm relations with its neighbor but it could set a negative tone at a regional people-smuggling summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali next week.

Indonesia, with its porous borders and lack of people smuggling laws, had become a springboard for mostly Middle Eastern and Afghan asylum seekers heading for Australia.

Canberra lost patience with the lucrative people smuggling trade after arrivals rose to 5,000 a year -- a trickle by global standards but a jump on just a few hundred previously -- and sealed its borders in mid-2001.

Despite controversy, the Australian government has hailed the policy a success with no boat arrivals since December 2001.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock and Howard dismissed suggestions these vessels signaled a new wave of boatpeople, describing the passengers as "opportunistic" travelers who pooled savings to buy a boat rather than using people smugglers.

"But we've asked Indonesia for information and what they can do about this," a spokesman for Ruddock said.