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MEDIA RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE USE An international protest will be held in Melbourne on Monday to mark 100 days since the Australian Prime Minister told the Indonesian president to intercept and seize a wooden boat that was carrying 255 Tamil Sri Lankan asylum seekers to Australia. Refugee supporters and community activists will join protesters from New Zealand, Canada, the US, England, Indonesia and Malaysia to demand that Australia accept the asylum seekers for processing and resettlement, as befits its obligations to the UN Refugee Convention. Activists recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Indonesia will address the demonstration, along with other prominent refugee supporters including Sarah Hanson-Young, Greens Senator for South Australia. The protest comes amid threats from the Indonesian authorities to forcibly disembark the Tamils. The fact-finding group’s attempt to provide the Merak asylum-seekers with access to the forms to apply for off shore humanitarian visas failed. A Tamil asylum seeker was placed in detention in Jakarta after Indonesian officials discovered the forms in his possession and confiscated them from him. "We ask our politicians to stop compromising our standing as the land of the ‘fair go’ by upholding the values and principles of justice and humanity," said Saradha Nathan, an activist who has visited the asylum seekers in Merak. “The inhuman “Indonesian solution”, which is costing Australian taxpayers $50 million, must be stopped. Desperate people are being used as a diplomatic power play with Indonesia, and already one man has died as a result of this. His blood is on Kevin Rudd’s hands. We call on the Australian government to have compassion for people who have suffered the trauma of war. Kevin Rudd started this crisis and he can end it with one phone call,” said Sam King, from Victoria’s Refugee Action Collective. Background information: |
| The Jaya Lestari was seized by the Indonesian Navy on October 18, 2009 after Kevin Rudd phoned Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and personally requested the Indonesian government to intercept it. The boat carried 255 Tamil asylum seekers fleeing the civil war in Sri Lanka, amongst them 31 children, 29 women (one of whom is seven months pregnant) and 195 men. Since then the boat has been moored in Merak in Western Java. On 23 December 2009, a 29 year old man, George Jacob Samuel Christin, died on the boat after vomiting blood for two days and being refused medical treatment by Indonesian authorities. | Eight asylum seekers have left the boat voluntarily, but the bulk of the passengers have refused to disembark in Indonesia, fearing imprisonment and deportation by the Indonesian authorities. A significant proportion of the group have already been assessed as genuine refugees by the UNHCR. All have fled the aftermath of a brutal civil war in Sri Lanka, which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tamils becoming internally displaced within the country. More than 100,000 Tamils are still being held in squalid military internment camps, subjected to rape and torture at the whim of the Sri Lankan Army, as confirmed by the Red Cross and Amnesty International. |
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For a comprehensive analysis about the situation of Tamils in Indonesia, please click here |