Saturday July 4, 2009

Indonesia criticises Australia's people-smuggling stance -paper

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Indonesia's ambassador to Australia has criticised Canberra's tough stance on people smugglers, saying many of the accused traffickers in detention were innocent, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

This year has seen a surge in arrivals of asylum seekers in Australia's northern waters, generally from war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka and usually brought by boat from neighbouring Indonesia.

Primo Alui Joelianto, Jakarta's ambassador to Australia, told The Weekend Australian many Indonesians detained when those boats were intercepted knew nothing about what was going on.

"Our staff went to the detention centre in Christmas Island and in Perth and they found that some of the fishermen told them that they didn't know anything," Joelianto told the newspaper.

"They were just asked to bring persons to fish and to go somewhere. Then, in the middle of the sea, they were told that they had to go to Australia."

Under Australian law, people-smuggling can carry penalties of up to 20 years in prison or a A$220,000 ($175,000) fine.

A series of mostly poor Indonesian nationals have appeared in Australia courts over recent arrivals by boat and several have been sentenced to jail. Last week, 11 Indonesians were sentenced to jail over four boat arrivals between last December and March.

Joelianto's comments follow the interception a week ago of a boat carrying 194 people, an unusually large number on a single vessel.

Australia's detention centre on Christmas Island, a tiny Australian possession in the Indian Ocean just south of the Indonesian island of Java, is getting full with hundreds of asylum-seekers waiting to have their claims processed.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans said on Friday the government was looking at using staff quarters at a casino on the island as alternative accommodation.

Illegal immigration is a hot political issue in Australia and the conservative opposition has accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of taking a soft stance on asylum seekers, saying it has fuelled the new wave of arrivals.

After his election in 2007, Rudd ended the 'Pacific solution' of his predecessor John Howard, closing down a much-criticised processing centre on the tiny island nation of Nauru.

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