The Jakarta Post, 3/23/2006 12:02:57 PM
Australia grants visas to Indonesia asylum seekers
SYDNEY, Australia (AP): The Australian government said Thursday it had granted
temporary visas to dozens of Indonesian asylum seekers in a move that risks
straining relations with Jakarta.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said 42 of a group of 43 people from the
Indonesian province of Papua had been granted temporary protection visas - which
entitle them to stay in Australia for three years.
The 36 adults and seven children, who spent five days at sea before landing on a
remote beach at Cape York in northeastern Australia in January, accused the
Indonesian military of conducting genocide in their homeland while putting down a
separatist movement.
Indonesia insisted that the migrants have nothing to fear in Papua and demanded that
Australia send them home, warning that its relations with Canberra could suffer if the
group were granted asylum.
Vanstone said the 42 people would be transferred from Christmas Island, a remote
Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, which is used as a holding camp for asylum
seekers, to the southern city of Melbourne.
She said a decision was still pending on one of the asylum seekers.
In Jakarta, Indonesian lawmakers Thursday condemned Australia for granting
temporary visas to dozens of Papuan asylum-seekers who claimed they were facing
genocide in the province.
"We very much regret this decision," said nationalist Effendy Simbolon. "Such a move
is not the work of a friendly neighbor." Indonesia's government declined immediate
comment, saying it was formulating a statement.
Legislator Yudy Chrisnandy urged the government to formally protest Canberra's
decision. "It is unethical," said Chrisnandy. "It goes against our good bilateral
relationship."
Papua was integrated into Indonesia in 1969 after areferendum, since dismissed as a
sham. A small separatist movement has battled Jakarta's rule ever since.
Rights groups and foreign governments accuse security forces in Papua of committing
extrajudicial killings and torture in the province.
Indonesian generals have routinely defended human rights abuses by their troops in
independence-minded provinces such as Aceh, East Timor or Papua, claiming they
were acts of individual soldiers and not a part of military policy. (**)
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