Jakarta Globe – AFP, May 06, 2014
Jakarta. The Indonesian navy has found 19 asylum-seekers who say they were turned around trying to reach Australia in the latest tow-back of a vessel under Canberra’s hardline policies.
A group of 21 Sri Lankan asylum seekers rest on their wooden boat on arrival at a port in Malang, East Java, in this file photo. (AFP Photo/Aman Rochman) |
Jakarta. The Indonesian navy has found 19 asylum-seekers who say they were turned around trying to reach Australia in the latest tow-back of a vessel under Canberra’s hardline policies.
The news
came just days after Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott abruptly cancelled a
visit to Indonesia that had been viewed as a bid to thaw ties damaged by
Canberra’s border protection policies and a row over spying.
Reports at
the time said he axed the trip to the resort island of Bali, where he had been
due to meet Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, over fears an
ongoing turn-back operation could inflame tensions.
The
Indonesian navy said that it had found a boat with would-be refugees stranded
on Lay island in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) province, in eastern Indonesia, early
Sunday.
All the
passengers were male, with 15 from India, two from Nepal and two from Albania,
said a statement from the navy released late Monday.
The navy
said that based on testimony from the crew, the boat started sailing from
central Sulawesi island on April 26 and managed to enter Australian territorial
waters on Thursday.
“At
midnight [on Thursday], the boat was checked by two Australian warships… the
boat was later escorted towards Indonesian waters,” the navy said.
Abbott’s
office has declined to go into the reasons for putting off the visit to
Indonesia.
It would
have been his first since damaging revelations in November that Australian
spies attempted in 2009 to tap the phone of Yudhoyono, his wife and inner
circle.
Jakarta
reacted furiously to the news, recalling its ambassador and halting cooperation
in key areas including defense and people-smuggling. Tensions were further
inflamed by Canberra’s military-led crackdown on asylum-seekers making their
way to Australia by boat from Indonesia.
The
crackdown, named “Operation Sovereign Borders”, involves Australian vessels
turning back asylum-seeker boats to Indonesia when it is safe to do so.
There have
also been reports that Canberra has purchased orange lifeboats to send back
asylum-seekers if their own vessels are deemed unseaworthy.
In February
two boatloads of asylum-seekers washed up in southern Indonesia in orange
lifeboats, saying they had been transferred to the vessels by Australian
authorities before being turned around.
Agence France-Presse
File photo taken on Februay 8, 2014 shows a now-empty Australian lifeboat,
which carried asylum seekers turned back by the Australian navy, docked at
western Java island (AFP/File, Timur Matahari)
|
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