We
don't want them, you take
them By Duncan Graham
WELLINGTON - The so-called NIMBY syndrome
is well known in Australian politics. "Not In My
Back Yard" refers generally to voter demands for
governments to relocate prisons, landfills,
airports and other undesirable but essential
services to someone else's suburb. The same
thinking has recently infected Australia's toxic
debate about how to handle a rising tide of
asylum-seekers.
In the first seven months
of this year, almost 6,800 asylum seekers arrived
in Australia by boat; for the previous 12 months
6,555 landed in the country. Most come from the
Middle East seeking sanctuary from war and
persecution. Many have used Indonesian fishermen
as ferrymen to Christmas Island, an Australian
territory.
About 4,000 boat people are in
mandatory detention awaiting
processing. But even this
system - like the hazardous sea voyage that's
taken hundreds, if not thousands, of lives - has
failed to deter new waves of arrivals.
Outgoing Australian Human Rights
Commissioner Catherine Branson recently commented:
"As far as I'm aware, our system is the strictest
in the Western world, and there's no evidence that
it works."
In neighboring Indonesia, an
estimated 10,000 are waiting for third nation
settlement, some supported by the United Nations
High Commission for Refugees. Others are known to
be in hiding. Overcrowded and comparatively poor
Indonesia doesn't want them to stay and most don't
want to be in Indonesia due to fears of police
brutality, local hostility and long delays in
decisions on their future.
There has been
a spate of arrests of asylum-seekers and reports
of unscrupulous officials illegally providing them
with embarkation assistance along Java's south
coast to make their way to northern Australia. The
Indonesian government has only recently responded
to Australian pleas to better police these known
launch points.
How so many asylum-seekers
gain entry to Indonesia, including through
Jakarta's otherwise secure Soekarno-Hatta
International airport, is a great mystery
considering the suspect documents most carry.
Westerners who visit Indonesia must have visas and
usually are not allowed to board planes to the
country without showing return tickets.
This discrepancy in treatment is raising
the political temperature. Australia's Labor Party
government wants some refugees who make it to
Christmas Island, less than 400 kilometers south
of Jakarta, to be sent to camps in Malaysia for
processing.
The Liberal Party opposition,
on the other hand, wants them shipped to the
Micronesian island of Nauru because Kuala Lumpur,
like Jakarta, hasn't signed the UN Refugee
Convention. An earlier attempt to involve Timor
Leste in processing asylum-seekers failed.
Cynics might assume most favor an "ABA"
solution, or "Anywhere But Australia". The Greens,
who hold the balance of power in Australia's
current ruling arrangement, have demanded asylum
seekers be processed on Australian soil and that
the annual refugee quota be lifted from 13,750 to
25,000.
Others have urged Australia to
face up to global realities. Australia's Refugee
Council, a non-governmental organization (NGO),
says that the country has recognized only 0.56% of
the world's total asylum-seekers.
The
latest proposed solution is for Australia to pay
for Indonesia to process asylum-seekers. The plan
is based on refugee advocate proposals to a
three-man expert committee set up by the
Australian government to try and break the
political logjam. So far almost 70 submissions
have been lodged.
The committee's report
is expected to be released this month, but its
findings won't bind any of the political parties.
Indeed, their responses so far show that they have
already dug deep defensive trenches against fresh
thinking on the divisive issue. (A Labor Party
splinter group which refers to itself as Labor for
Refugees is lobbying for more diplomats to be sent
to the Australian Embassy in Jakarata to handle
asylum claims.)
Outsourcing
detention Another Australian-based NGO, the
Indonesia Institute, has recommended that a "major
detention processing center" be built in Kupang on
the island of Timor, an initiative it argues would
create jobs and inject life into the area's
moribund economy. Immunologist Sir Gustav Nossal,
a former Australian of the Year winner and former
refugee himself, (he fled the Nazis in 1939) has
also made a high-profile push for processing in
Indonesia.
This isn't unprecedented
thinking on the issue. After the Vietnam War,
thousands of anti-communists fled persecution from
that country's southern regions on small, rickety
boats. Many of these so-called "boat people" were
temporarily housed on Pulau Galang, an Indonesian
island close to Singapore.
Times and
politics, however, have changed. The Indonesian
government can no longer so easily throttle public
sentiment and crush angry responses, as seen in
recent mob attacks on minority Ahmadiyah sect
followers and Shi'ite Muslims. The latter group
are well represented among today's asylum seekers,
including Hazaras from Pakistan and Central
Afghanistan.
So far all of Australia's
plans for handling asylum-seekers have been
conceived in isolation and without input from
Indonesia. That raises important questions about
whether any of the proposed relocation plans would
work or be accepted by Jakarta.
Bilateral
relations between the two neighbors are often
touchy. In May, Indonesian President Susilo
Bambang Yudhoyono was bruised politically when he
approved a five-year reduction to convicted
Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby's 20-year
sentence.
The backlash against the
president's action showed how far democracy has
advanced in recent years. Such a public response
would have been impossible under former president
Suharto, who was toppled from power amid street
protests in 1998 after 32 years of
military-backed, iron-fisted rule.
The
signal seems clear: Australian ministers can make
deals on how to handle asylum-seekers with their
Indonesian counterparts in exclusive hotels, but
if the majority of the population are hostile to
the pledges, they can be undone on the street.
Peering through the fences of
asylum-seeking Sri Lankans or Iraqis who are
safely housed, well-fed and enjoying free health
care courtesy of Australian taxpayers, hungry and
homeless Indonesians living on less than US$2 per
day may not see the justice in such a transit
lounge arrangement.
It is also easy to
imagine Jakarta's roads blocked by thousands of
foreigners clamoring to get into the Australian
Embassy there to lodge their asylum claims. The
building is already too small to handle current
business, although an expansion is planned.
Johnny Hutauruk, deputy head of the
Indonesian government's newly formed Human
Trafficking, Refugees and Asylum Seekers unit told
the Sydney Morning Herald: ''On the one hand we
have to guard our sovereignty - we don't want too
many of these people here; but we also must
respect their human rights.
''There are
some refugees in Puncak (West Java) and you see
cultural conflicts between refugees and locals ...
they bring with them their habits and their
culture, which is perhaps not in tune with local
culture and traditions.''
Being
Indonesian, Hutauruk was less blunt than his
southern neighbors on the issue. But he was
effectively saying the same thing: NIMBY.
Duncan Graham is a journalist
covering Indonesia and writes the blog Indonesia
Now.
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