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strong>May 14, Online

The Indonesian government has no plans to undocumented migrants people from Myanmar and Bangladesh who were rescued after they became stranded on Aceh waters. '€œIndonesia is not a signatory of the 1951 Convention on Refugees but has implemented the non-refoulement principle,'€ Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said on Thursday.

The non-refoulement principle forbids the returning of a victim of persecution to his or her persecutor. '€œWhat Indonesia has done is given shelter and food to illegal migrants. What we do not do is force them back onto their boats and expel them from the country,'€ Arrmanatha said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

He said the regional administration in cooperation with the International Migration Organization (IOM) would look for uninhabited islands in the country on which to accommodate them.

Your comments:

There needs to be a coordinated regional effort to control economic migration, and pressure on offending governments to stop persecuting their citizens.

Indonesia needs to free itself from the ineffective '€œAsian values'€ of non-interference as exemplified by ASEAN and start to demand that Myanmar meet its human rights obligations to its own citizens.

Neither Indonesia nor Australia can afford to have over a million uneducated, radicalized, poor peasant workers land on their shores. Look at what is happening in Europe to see how bad this can get.

Testin

After a stay on one of the uninhabited islands, the asylum seeks will be more than happy to return to Myanmar and Bangladesh.  It won'€™t be anything like the conditions in PNG and Nauru.  Basically they are saying exactly what Australia is saying: Arrive by boat and you won'€™t be resettled.  Applying '€œAsian values'€, somehow the criticism of Australia rings hollow.

Malaysia and Thailand need also to take strong measures to stop the stream of illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.  Failure to do so will only result in increasing numbers arriving not only from those destinations but also from other countries with bleak economic futures.  Those involved in ethnic cleansing will be further encouraged to increase their actions if they know people can successfully flee to other countries.

Jagera

The boat people from Vietnam that Indonesia accepted in Galang were all taken care of by international NGOs and donors. The camp in itself was managed by the UN. It would be fair to mention it. Indonesia benefited it as it received millions of dollars of investment to build it.

Jakartard

We should ask them where they really want to go, then outfit them with boats, food, water and fuel and send them on their way.

Deddy K

The country is in conflict. The problem is between the people, not the government persecuting the Rohingya. The only solution I think is to transfer them to a new country.

It'€™s more a case of one group (extreme Buddhists) persecuting the other group (Rohingya). This is an ASEAN problem that cannot be solved by ASEAN as of right now. Australia has the capacity and resources to solve it.

Tarfah Miz

ASEAN member states (particularly Indonesia and Malaysia) need to step up and start taking some of these guys. Malaysia is in dire need of low-skilled labor and Indonesia, as we are regularly told, is a world power that has the world'€™s biggest Islamic population and has a dual responsibility.

Let us see some action, not rhetoric. It is easy for President Jokowi et al to spout at the Africa-Asia Summit. He said there was a new world order. Well step up and take some responsibility.

But the source of the problem is Bangladesh [...] and you have to deal with that.

Duncan Tan

For Indonesia, it'€™s a no win situation. Most of the refugees don'€™t want to resettle in Indonesia. But Indonesia is not going to turn back refugees if they want to land in Indonesia.  That is Indonesian policy.  

That is why the Foreign Ministry has clarified Indonesia'€™s position. The Indonesian Navy engaged with the Rohingya who wanted to go to Malaysia, but it never turned the boats away, because the people had no intention of remaining in Indonesia.

Indonesia has an interesting policy with regards to boat people. If they come by boat, the Indonesia government policy is not to turn them back.

This policy has been in place since the 1970s, when Indonesia accepted 300,000 Vietnamese boat people. As an archipelagic country, Indonesia has a policy on refugees arriving by boat. It will take them in, whether they are non-Muslim or Muslim.

As long as Indonesia isn'€™t such a desirable place for permanent settlement and only a transit point, it'€™s OK.  But sooner or later it will be like Thailand, where you have Cambodian and Burmese illegals working as maids. That is when we will really know if Indonesians are tolerant or not.

Weilim

It'€™s easy to demonstrate against what happens to them, just as with the Palestinians, for example, but if for some hypothetical reasons Palestinians (as now those Rohingya '€œbrothers in faith'€) would c
hoose Malaysia or even (heavens forbid) Indonesia as their destination, the page would very
quickly turn and one would hear thousands of excuses on why neither one those countries that so relentlessly fought for their rights when they were still back in their respective areas, don'€™t want to accept them as refugees.

But if would-be refugees turned to a third country, for example Australia, and were refused entry or accepted in limited numbers, the pathetic uproar would instantly start again.

Norris