Australian and Indonesian top officials discussed border protection measures in Jakarta on Wednesday, following a significant surge in incidents of people smuggling from Indonesia to Australia.
Australian Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus and his delegation, including National Security Adviser Duncan Lewis and People Smuggling Ambassador Michael Potts, met with Indonesian Minister for Justice and Human Rights Andi Mattalatta.
Debus said the Australian government had allocated an additional A$654 million in its 2009-2010 budget to tackle people smuggling and stabilize displaced populations in the region.
Indonesia has become a hub for economic migrants and refugees from Asia and the Middle East seeking to reach Australia. In April, Indonesian authorities arrested 70 Afghan people bound for Australia without proper documents. The arrest came a day after a rickety boat carrying a group of asylum seekers, allegedly from Afghanistan, exploded off the Northwest coast of Western Australia.
"Our strengthened border security measures will enable us to identify people smugglers, intercept people smuggling ventures and prosecute people smugglers," Debus said in a statement sent to The Jakarta Post.
Human smuggling is defined as the importation of people into a country via the deliberate evasion of immigration laws.
Reuters reported that people-smuggling to Australia peaked in 2001 when more than 1,200 people, mostly from the Middle East, arrived in the country under the arrangements by professional people-smuggling rings. In 2008, Australian authorities caught 162 people trying to enter their country illegally.
An Australian court also sentenced an Indonesian to six years in jail for smuggling three Iranians and nine Afghans into the country last year.
Indonesia helped extradite an Iraqi man arrested in Jakarta last year for allegedly smuggling nearly 900 asylum-seekers, mostly from the Middle East and Asia, to Australia from Indonesia between 1999 and 2001.
"Recent boat arrivals to Australia and other countries in our region demonstrate that we are not immune from the conflicts and insecurity that is driving this global spike," Debus said.
The border protection measure is part of the Lombok Treaty signed between the two countries in 2006 and an agreement on people smuggling, human trafficking and asylum seekers reached at the Bali Process meeting in April, which involved 33 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
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