[Indonesia Report] Australia troubled for growing asylum seekers

Survivors are treated at a temporary shelter in Watulim, Indonesia after their boat capsized on their attempt to seek for asylum to Australia in December 2011 (Photo: www.telegraph.co.uk)

Australian Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen told reporters that he hoped to start sending asylum seekers who arrive by boat to Nauru later this week, AFP reported.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s planned to reopen the Howard government’s asylum seeker processing centre, to send the asylum seeker who try to enter Australian by boat to Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

News.com, an Australian mass media, quoted Gillard as saying that “Our policy push here is to make sure that people do not get an advantage from having got on a boat…. If they are a genuine refugee, they will have to wait the same amount of time for a resettlement opportunity as they would have wait if they hadn’t got on the boat.”

Australia is now facing a massive wave of asylum seeker arriving by sea.

AFP reported that Bowen will table a document in parliament on Monday (Sept 10) to designate Nauru as a regional processing country under the Migration Act so potential refugees could be sent to the small state to await their visa decision.

One of the popular hubs for asylum seeker to reach Australia is through Indonesian waters.

In Madiun, Indonesia’s East Java Province, police recently arrested 60 asylum seekers from Middle East countries who were trying to get to Australia through Indonesia’s Tamperang Beach.

The asylum seekers then were detained in a hotel being used as immigration temporary detention facility due to the over crowded of the local immigration detention center.

They then escaped from the hotel and local police recaptured 55 of them on Sunday (Sept 09).

Indonesian police have named nine Indonesians as suspects for allegation of people smuggling, The Jakarta Globe reported.

According to East Java Immigration office record, 51 of the asylum seekers claimed to be from Iraq, 5 from Kuwait and 4 from Iran.

December last year, four of Indonesian army soldiers were arrested for attempting to smuggle Middle Eastern asylum seekers from Popoh Beach in Tulungagung district and Prigi Beach in Trenggalek district in East Java Province.

This year there has been more than 300 asylum seekers died on their way to Australia to try their fate.

Meidyana Rayana Intern Reporter news@theasian.asia