I'nesia to monitor implications of Aust policy
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Indonesia will closely monitor the newly announced Australian decision to stop asylum seekers who pass through Indonesia from settling in Australia and will respond based on the implications, the Foreign Ministry said.
Canberra announced late on Tuesday that asylum seekers who had registered with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Indonesia after July 1, 2014 would no longer be eligible for resettlement in Australia.
Australia will continue to resettle some refugees who registered earlier, but it has cut the number of allocations, making for a much longer waiting period in Indonesia before being resettled.
Reuters quoted Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison as saying that the new rules were designed to stop the flow of asylum seekers from Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan into Indonesia.
“We’re taking the sugar off the table,” Morrison told ABC Radio on Wednesday.
“People smugglers are smuggling people into Indonesia for the purpose of trying to get resettlement in Australia.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Michael Tene said on Wednesday that the Indonesian government had been made aware of Australia’s new policy.
“It is obviously a policy of the Australian government and implemented by the Australian government.
“Indonesia will monitor the implication of the implementation of this new policy and should it have an adverse impact on the interests of Indonesia, then necessary measures will be taken in due course to protect our interests,” Tene said.
He noted that Indonesia’s stance on handling the asylum-seeker problem was to conduct comprehensive talks with the origin, transit and destination countries in order to ensure better detection, prevention and protection of the refugees, as discussed in the Jakarta Declaration in 2013.
“While Indonesia is not party to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, it has in general complied with the basic principles of the convention [...] In this connection, we hope that countries in the region will continue to uphold their shared responsibility in addressing this issue of asylum seekers,” Tene said.
Tene, however, could not confirm that the asylum-seeker issue was on the agenda of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s bilateral discussions with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
The UNHCR-Indonesia office in Jakarta said it was too early to comment on the Australian policy changes.
“For now, the UNHCR is unable to comment on the issue due to ongoing discussions currently happening between the UNHCR and Australia,” UNHCR Indonesia associate external relations officer Mitra Salima Suryono told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
She said that between January and October 2014, the average number of registrations at the UNHCR was 443 people per month, which is 36 per cent less than 694 people per month in 2013.
Australia has also limited the quota of refugee places available in Indonesia to 450 a year, from the previous 600 places.
The number of asylum seekers that have been registered in UNHCR Indonesia offices amounts to 6,202. Most asylum seekers registered in Indonesia originate from Afghanistan, Iran, Somalia and Iraq.
