News Feature - Turning Indonesia Into "Fortress" of "New World" by Fardah Assegaf

  Jakarta, May 9, 2009 (ANTARA) - It was the land of the Aborigines who are believed to have migrated from some unknown point in Asia to Australia 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.

          Later some European explorers and traders including from the Netherlands charted the coastline of Australia which they named  New Holland beginning in the 1600s, until eventually  Captain James Cook of Britain claimed the continent for the British Crown in 1770.

           After declaring the 'new world'  a British penal colony,  the first fleet of 11 British ships carrying about 1500 people - half of them convicts -  arrived at what is now Sydney Harbour on  January 16, 1788.

            The relocation of convicts from Britain  ended in 1868 after around 160,000 convicted men and women were brought to Australia. Until 1973, the former British colony pursued  a "White Australia" policy, restricting the nationality of immigration to Europeans only. After opening itself to non-Europeans, Australia received mainly Chinese and Indian immigrants.

             As of July 2007, Australia's population was roughly 21.0 million people who originally came from over 200 countries.   Australia is a country with the sixth widest territory in the world  (7,682,300 sq km) while some of its regions are sparsely populated.

             Until now, Australia  is still attracting refugees who had hoped to have a better life in the 'new world', especially from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Srilanka, Pakistan and  Iran.

           As it is very difficult to apply for asylum through proper channels in Australia, many of those emigrants looked for an 'alternative way' to enter Australia  and this was why many of them were found to have tried to achieve their goal via Indonesia which shares a maritime border with Australia.                 
     In the May-December 2008 period, the number of such emigrants  who used Indonesia as a transit point to travel  to Australia illegally ran into the hundreds. But their number swelled to 600 in the first three months of this year. 
  "This is a drastic increase. Most of them were Afghans. It is likely that the security conditions in Afghanistan or the global financial crisis has forced them to become illegal emigrants," President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said at his Cikeas residence in Bogor last April after speaking by  phone with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

           Yudhoyono said he had discussed the matter with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the phone. Indonesia and Australia had a commitment to step up their cooperation to address the issue of illegal emigrants whose  number had continued to increase since early this year, he said.

              Meanwhile, Australian news agency AAP reported that Indonesia's and Australis's leaders had agreed in phone conversations  to work together closely to stem the flow of boat people into  Australian waters.

              Because of the the two countries' close cooperation, those emigrants, including children and women, mostly ended up in Indonesian jails  causing some of the jails to become overcrowded.

             Recently,  91 illegal immigrants from Afghanistan were put in an immigration detention center  in Pekanbaru, while according to Yanizur of the Pekanbaru immigration office, the detention house he oversaw only had a capacity to accommodate 68 people.

            "That's why the detention of 34 other illegal emigrants from Afghanistan and Pakistan who were netted in the latest in a series of arrests were transferred to the detention center in Tanjungpinang, Riau Islands," he said.

            Due to the limited space at the Pekanbaru immigratio detention center, Yanizur said, his subordinates had to hold two married couples with children under five years  at the document and inventory room of the detention center.

            "They have been separated from other detainees because the two wives were pregnant so they need a larger space," he added.

           Those  put behind  bars might still be luckier than their friends  who lost their lives ate sea on their way to the `land of hope'.

              Last April , AAP reported that a boat carrying asylum seekers believed to be from Afghanistan exploded, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more.  It was the sixth boat of asylum seekers intercepted by Australian authorities waters this year.

           Even when they managed to land on Australian shores, some of them might  end up in a `hell' as they might be escorted by  Australian authorities to Christmas Island which has a    prison-like detention center built during  the  era of Australian  prime minister John Howard.

          Seven boats, carrying 306 asylum seekers, have been 'intercepted' this year. The Rudd government promptly put the  blame on people smugglers for the apparent 'surge' in asylum seekers, Jay Fletcher wrote in his article "Refugees: Let them land! Let them stay! on Green Left online.

         Australian Ambassador to Indonesia  Bill Farmer  said the jailing of the third Indonesian skipper involved in recent people smuggling activity should send a strong message that Australia would  not tolerate such crimes.

         "People smuggling is a dangerous crime that exploits vulnerable people during times of desperation and demonstrates a callous disregard for the law," Ambassador Farmer said.

                                                                               Indonesia-Australian partnership
      Indonesia is Australia 's largest development assistance partner, according to a press statement of the Australian embassy in Jakarta early May 2009.

           The Australian government has given a soft loan and a grant of AS$328 million for the construction of 500 kms of roads through the Eastern Indonesia National Roads Improvement Program (EINRIP). 
   The Australian government had donated around A$387 million  for the construction of 2,000 elementary schools across Indonesia.

          The two states  co-chaired the Third Bali Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crimes, in Bali last April.

         Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith when speaking in Bali said "We welcome very much the fact that we have very close cooperation with Indonesia, not just in terms of information sharing or best practice, but also importantly in the constructive  activities that we engage in. As has the contribution to assisting countries in our region to criminalize people smuggling and human trafficking through developing model legislation."
       Australia had `pushed' Indonesia to enact  a law which would criminalize people `smugglers'.         
      Australian Minister for Home Affairs Bob Debus officially opened a new computer based training (CBT) center in Bali as part of cooperative efforts between the Australian Federal Police, the Indonesian National Police and the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

          The center would increase the capacity of the Indonesian National Police to manage the training of Indonesian police officers in combating a range of transnational crime types, including the `smuggling' of foreign emigrants to Australia.

         Indonesian and Australian forces have been successfully intercepting boats at sea, turning  emigrants back to Indonesia, and arresting asylum seekers before they attempt the journey to Australia.

         What a drastic contrast with the helplessness  of the Aboriginal people almost three centuries when  they saw  the flow of European immigrants into their land which is now called Australia.