D

efense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro has announced that the ministry will deploy maritime patrol aircraft from the Navy to track people smuggling along the southern coastal areas of Indonesia.

'€œThis October we will launch maritime patrols along the southern coasts to monitor boats carrying migrants because not all of them stop off in Indonesia [on their way to Australia],'€ Purnomo said on the sidelines of the transfer of CN-235 Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) to the Navy at state-owned PT Dirgantara Indonesia in Bandung on Wednesday as quoted by Antara news agency.

He said that the aircraft would be operated within the '€œcoordinated patrol areas'€ agreed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is currently visiting Indonesia for bilateral talks. People smuggling is one of the topics on the agenda of the two leaders.

He said that the maritime patrol aircraft, equipped with sophisticated tools, were able to record and detect the routes used by boats carrying migrants, who were mostly from the Middle East and usually headed toward Australia'€™s Christmas Island.

'€œWe will track their routes to make sure that they have not sailed from any of the islands in Indonesia, and subsequently block their movements,'€ Purnomo said.

He said that the ministry would deploy both MPA.

'€œThe aircraft are very useful for tracking the traffic of small boats that are used for smuggling people,'€ he said.

He said that the ministry needed around 54 NC-212 and 21 CN-235 MPA to patrol Indonesian waters.

'€œWe will have five new aircraft within the next two years,'€ he said.

Yudhoyono, after meeting with Abbott on Tuesday at the State Palace, said that '€œIndonesia and Australia are victims of the people-smuggling issue'€.

Both leaders agreed to establish effective bilateral cooperation in line with the Bali Process, an international framework agreement aimed at addressing people smuggling and human trafficking, which was initiated in Bali in 2002.

Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Djoko Suyanto and Australian Immigration and Border Protection Minister Scott Morrison will discuss details of the cooperation in a meeting.

According to data from the directorate general of Immigration at the Law and Human Rights Ministry, there were around 1,900 migrants in 14 detention centers across Indonesia as of September. The number increased from 1,819 the previous month.

Immigration spokesman Heriyanto told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday that the immigration detention centers were overcrowded, so a large number of migrants had been moved to community houses.

'€œApart from the migrants detained in detention centers, we also had around 2,028 migrants at community houses across Indonesia as of August,'€ he said.

He said that his office had been cooperating with other related institutions to halt the influx of boat people into Indonesia. He added that immigration offices across the country had been conducting public awareness campaigns to encourage people to report any suspected undocumented migrants in their neighborhoods.

However, he said that one of the major factors that caused the increased flow of undocumented migrants to the country were the uncertain sociopolitical conditions in conflict regions, such as the Middle East.

According to data from Australia'€™s Department of Immigration, last year 278 boats transported 17,202 passengers to the country, a sharp increase from 134 boats that carried 6,535 passengers in 2010. Meanwhile, as of July 16 this year, 218 boats transported 15,182 people, 88 percent of the total number of undocumented arrivals last year. (hrl)