THE PEOPLE NO-ONE WANTS TO HELP

Stuck fast       

                                                                         

The abusers of institutionalised children in the 1960s could not have imagined a Royal Commission half a century later investigating their evil deeds.

But in 2016 those responsible for keeping asylum seekers away from our shores should be aware - and perhaps fearful - that in some more caring and concerned future they may be called to account for harm done through their actions.

Eye witnesses at this imagined inquiry will be hard to find, for few independent observers have made it to the detention centres. Those who have worked in the camps will need immunity before giving evidence; the Australian Border Force Act prohibits government employees and contractors revealing what’s going on.

Dr Antje Missbach suffers none of these restraints because she’s been looking at the issue from Indonesia, the point of departure for more than 25,000 asylum seekers since 2012.

The Monash University anthropologist has spent four years researching the tragedy of what she calls ‘transit migrants’ – the Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Burmese, Sri Lankans and now Somalis  who expected to use Indonesia as a brief staging post on their way to Australia.

But in 2013 the Australian Government’s Operation Sovereign Borders started pushing asylum-seeker boats back to Indonesia. Another policy makes those registered in Jakarta with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees after 1 July 2014 ineligible for resettlement in Australia.

According to the Australian Government the tactics have worked and no boats have made it to the mainland.

This has left more than 13,500 people in limbo, and the number is increasing.  They can’t work and the kids don’t get schooling. The Indonesian government has shelter for one in ten, the rest fend for themselves, their presence often causing conflict with locals.  Although many are Muslim, those from Iraq and Iran tend to be Shia, while Indonesia is overwhelmingly Sunni. 

In 2013 a brawl left eight detainees dead. ‘Tension and deep animosity had been building in the centre (in Sumatra) between the Burmese Muslims and Buddhists, yet no precautions had been taken to prevent violence,’ reports Missbach.  Australia helps fund the centres.

Australia sees the transit migrants’ plight as Indonesia’s problem caused by lax border controls allowing easy entry to the Republic, with corrupt officials assisting their movements through the archipelago and onto boats heading south.

Indonesia reckons this is Australia’s problem because that’s where the asylum seekers were heading.  Impasse.

Missbach’s book has been published in Singapore as Troubled Transit by the Yusof Ishak Institute.  Other scholarly investigations of immigrant movements have focussed on Europe and North America.

This appears to be the first in-depth examination of how and why the asylum seekers get to Indonesia, what pushes and pulls them, how they are faring and what happens next.

Not much, although there’s been loose talk in Jakarta about setting aside an island.  There’s no apparent urgency, though that could change in a flash if more serious conflict erupts between reluctant guests and hostile hosts.

Just before the Christmas break Australia hosted the so-called ‘2 + 2 Dialogue’ of Indonesian and Australian foreign and defence ministers. The bland 33-point communiqué was a text-book of diplomatic clichés -  ‘welcoming’, ‘noting’ and ‘underlining’ but no mention of the stranded asylum seekers.

The nearest was a reference to a meeting of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, scheduled for March.

Although Indonesia has long promised to sign the Refugee Convention this hasn’t happened. Missbach believes the chance of ratification under President Joko Widodo ‘remains minimal’.

Jakarta fears acceptance could lead to the establishment of a domestic asylum system.  Missbach comments:  ‘Australia could then designate Indonesia as a safe first country and return people there, which Indonesia wants to avoid more than anything else.’

Troubled Transit is a professional report thankfully devoid of the usual polysyllabic jargon some academics seem to think necessary to distinguish their work from journalism. 

The only impediments to smooth reading are in-text references.  These are like speed bumps and should not be used by publishers seeking wider readership.

Missbach’s poignant stories of individuals remind that behind the acronyms and initialisms are despairing human beings caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare.  

Recounting the personal without losing her objectivity must have been tough.  Three boys she knew drowned trying to reach Australia.  Some authorities thought her a spy. Why would a German researcher working with an Australian university be in Indonesia?

Despite the suspicions she got to state officials, jailed people smugglers and even into detention centres– impossible in Nauru or Manus Island.

Missbach interviewed those who’d learned some English or Indonesian to by-pass interpreters and so avoid risking her informants’ privacy. Many were ‘severely distressed or traumatised’.

Breaks in Germany and Australia became essential ‘to distance myself from the field and its psychological burdens.’

This book is more than a primer for appreciating the issues. It could also be Exhibit A when the Royal Commission into harm done by Asylum Seeker Policies is eventually appointed.

(First published in New Mandala 3 February 2016:  See http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2016/02/03/stuck-fast-review-of-troubled-transit/ 

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'TRANSIT MIGRANTS' - THE NEW FOOTWEAR IRRITANT

Boats stopped: Now what about those in limbo?                       

In 1991 Indonesian troops massacred 200 in an East Timor cemetery, strengthening much of the world’s hostility towards occupation of the former Portuguese colony.

The Republic’s Foreign Minister, the late Ali Alatas, diagnosed the pain as ‘a pebble in the shoe’.  Yet it persisted until a new nation was born eight years later.

The footwear irritant has now returned, this time over the plight of asylum seekers heading for Australia but stranded in Indonesia. There are around 13,500 – a one-third increase in the past two years.

It’s a small number by world standards [Malaysia has more than 155,000] but every one a tragedy.

The human faces behind the statistics can be encountered in a joyless alley alongside a Central Jakarta high rise.  Here the desperate, unwanted by Indonesia and Australia, wait for crumbs of information from the harassed staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Those registered after 1 July 2014 have been told they’ll never be resettled in Australia. They can’t go home, they can’t go on. They are not allowed to work.

Indonesia has 13 detention centers with a total capacity of 1,300. Those who squat in the kampongs usually survive with remittances from their homeland. 

Thousands of bored and despairing young outsiders hanging around with no positive future in view is a recipe for strife. Ethnic, economic, cultural, sexual and religious tensions thrive. The failure of Indonesia and Australia to fix the problem means the pot simmers.

The issue has been conspiracy theorists’ happy place because a sea fog of secrecy laid down by the Australian government has smothered informed debate.

Now some of the mist has been lifted, not by politicians remembering that in a functioning democracy electors have a right to know what’s being done in their name, but through the work of an industrious academic.

For the past four years Dr Antje Missbach has been researching the issue of asylum seekers stuck in Indonesia.  The results of her work Troubled Transit has just been published by Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute. This is the most substantial report to date, looking at the problem from Indonesia’s perspective.

The Monash University academic lived in Indonesia as a teenager.  She has been gathering data, interviewing Indonesian officials, visiting overcrowded detention centers, talking to what she calls ‘transit migrants’ and convicted people smugglers.

Her book also gives Indonesian and Australian human rights activists the facts they need to ramp up campaigns for a just and lasting solution.

Successive Australian governments’ policies have been driven by voters’ fears of unchecked waves of asylum seekers from conflict-ripped regions like the Middle East and South Asia. If they make it to Indonesia they could be ferried south.

Several attempts to solve the problem of ‘crimmigration’ have been tried and discarded.  However the policy now in place jingoistically labelled Operation Sovereign Borders seems to have worked.

It’s an unilateral deterrent justified by the argument that it saves lives. An estimated 1,550 drowned trying to cross the Arafura Sea between 1998 and 2011.

In Indonesian fishing ports where people smugglers load frail craft with the desperate, posters warn No Way – You Will Not Make Australia Home.

More effective have been the messages back to families and friends from the people caught earlier and transferred to detention centres in Nauru and the island of Manus reporting that they have uncertain futures and are living in harsh conditions.

Now boats intercepted by Australian authorities are either escorted back to the Archipelago, sometimes allegedly entering Indonesian waters without permission, or the crew and passengers are put in a lifeboat and pointed north. 

In one case a crew was allegedly paid US$30,000 [Rp 422 million] to return asylum seekers. This has also angered Indonesia, and if correct may have broken international law.

When Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was president he called for a ‘regional solution’. Missbach told The Jakarta Post the definition was unclear and more than 40 nations could be included:

“When SBY initiated the so-called Jakarta Declaration [August 2013] he invited representatives from countries of origin, transit countries and resettlement to ‘talk things through’.

“Now under President Joko Widodo ‘regional’ seems to mean only Southeast Asia. The Bali Process [established in 2002 and co-chaired by Indonesia and Australia], which used to be the most important international forum for asylum seekers … seems to have gone rather dormant.”

What could goad the nations into action?  For Missbach it’s the possibility of Sunni-Shia conflict.  Many refugees from Iran and Iraq are Shia, a branch of Islam persecuted in Indonesia. Brawls with local people have already taken lives.

“I think the situation is actually getting worse,” said Missbach. “In October extremists raided a temporary shelter in Yogyakarta and all detainees had to be taken back into detention for their own safety.

“In other places near Medan I hear some landlords no longer rent their properties to Shia people.”

The latest proposal is to put all transit migrants on an island isolated from the locals. After the Vietnam War thousands fled by boat and were housed on Galang Island in the Riau Archipelago.

Vice president Jusuf Kalla and Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Panjaitan raised the idea this year but have since gone quiet.

“An island would be a very expensive solution as it would require everything being taken there,” said Missbach. “Once Indonesia creates a new island settlement the issue is there to stay.

“The original plan for the Galang camp was to use it for five years. It stayed for almost 20.”  

If this pebble isn’t shaken out soon it could cripple attempts to improve relationships between Indonesia and Australia.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 22 December 20150

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