I. Seeking Refuge: Journeys to Indonesia and Australia

For tens of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers—most from East Africa and South and Southeast Asia—Indonesia is an intended way station along a difficult and dangerous journey to Australia, where migrants hope to find opportunities for a better life and, often, protection from violence and persecution in home countries. Yet most stay in limbo in Indonesia for months or years. As of February 2013, most refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia came from Afghanistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Iran.[6] Thousands of children travel this route annually—some with their families and others alone.[7]

Indonesia has seen a remarkable increase in the numbers of people seeking asylum in the past five years: up from 385 new arrivals in 2008 to 3,230 in 2009.[8] Large numbers of new arrivals continue—in July 2012 alone, for example, there were 753 new cases. At the end of February 2013, there were 9,226 refugees and asylum seekers in the UN refugee agency  (UNHCR)’s active caseload in Indonesia, of whom 1,938 were recognized refugees.[9]

There are more migrants and asylum seekers who choose not to register with UNHCR and are not included in the statistics above. Some may not wish to lodge an asylum claim, seeing few benefits to the procedure in a country that does not officially recognize refugees, and hoping to move on to Australia sooner rather than later.[10]

Other organizations, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM), assist people who are not registered with UNHCR; IOM, for example, reports as of February 2013 487 beneficiaries who have never registered with UNHCR or who have been denied refugee status by UNHCR.[11] It is hard to know the total numbers of refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants in need in Indonesia, many of whom receive no assistance at all.

The Indonesian government did not respond to multiple Human Rights Watch requests for information as to how many migrants there are in the country in addition to those registered with UNHCR.

Lengthy and Dangerous Journeys to Indonesia and Australia

Almost all of the migrant children we interviewed—both those who traveled with families and those who traveled alone—had stopped in Indonesia en route to Australia, risky and expensive journeys of months and even years. Most migrants and asylum seekers interviewed cannot fly directly to Australia because they lack visas needed to board planes. Instead, the journey typically involves a smuggler, either in a migrant’s home country or in a neighboring or transit country. For instance, an Afghan might contract with a people smuggler at home, or through Afghan communities in Iran or Pakistan.

For example, Karim Ali S., a 34-year-old Rohingya man, left Burma on September 20, 2011, with his wife and two cousins, 29 and 24 years old, bound for Australia. We went through Malaysia,” he said. “[After several months there], we paid 10,000 Malaysian ringgit (about US$3,225). We were three days and two nights on a boat [from Malaysia]…. The agent stopped on an island [in Indonesia] … we didn’t know where we were.”[12]

Fartuun A., originally from Somalia, flew to Indonesia from Yemen with her sister, brother in-law, and their four children in 2011. She said,

It cost $1,000 each. We paid a smuggler and used fake passports…. The smuggler said that he would take us to Australia, but then in Indonesia he disappeared…. In Jakarta he took us to a hotel, we stayed the night, and then in the morning he was gone…. Eventually [my brother-in-law] found a Somali man and arranged for us to come here [to the migrant communities outside Jakarta].[13]

Sample migration routes based on Human Rights Watch interviews. © 2013 John Emerson/Human Rights Watch

Unaccompanied migrant children, who travel without parents or guardians, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation on smuggler routes. Rafiq A., a Burmese Rohingya boy, described his journey to Indonesia in February 2011 when he was 14 years old:

We had a lot of problems in Burma.... My parents thought I was in danger so they told me to leave…. The boat ride was long—18 days and nights. We arrived in Thailand, and rested for one day and one night. The Thai navy took our boat motor and our food and put us in the sea. They took us to the middle of the sea and they left us. We had some bamboo and some plastic tarpaulins, so we made a sail. We traveled for three days like that. In the sea we saw a fisherman’s boat. He guided us to Aceh. Police arrested us.[14]

Ahmad Z., a Hazara boy, was 17 years old when he found a smuggler in Kabul to take him from Afghanistan to Pakistan and then to Malaysia, where is stayed in a hotel for 10-12 days before taking a boat to Indonesia: 

[I]t was four hours long and we landed in Sumatra. The smuggler’s contact met us in Indonesia and took us to his house. We stayed one or two days there…. He sent us to another place in Sumatra, and we spent three months there. Every day he would come and tell us, “Oh tomorrow I will send you [to Jakarta].” We couldn’t go outside at all. One day he dropped us at the Padang airport, all 12 Afghan Hazaras [eleven adults and one child]. We were caught in the airport by the police.[15]

Azim M. was also 17 when he traveled from Kabul with smugglers in August 2012. He went to Dubai, and then to Jakarta, where a smuggler promised to take him on to Australia. “He promised that after one month he would take me, but nothing has happened,” Azim said.[16]

Being smuggled to Indonesia is much more expensive than making the same trip by commercial plane. Our interviewees reported varying costs: for example, 300,000 Sri Lankan rupees (around $2,363) for one unaccompanied boy who traveled from Sri Lanka to Indonesia;[17] $3,200 for a Rohingya family of three that traveled from Malaysia to Indonesia (having previously made a separate trip from Burma to Malaysia);[18] and between $7,000 to $12,000 for unaccompanied boys who traveled from Afghanistan to Indonesia.[19] Similar trips by air, according to fare quotes found on-line in May 2013, are significantly cheaper: for instance, a one-way ticket from Colombo to Jakarta costs around $400-500; a one-way ticket from Kabul to Jakarta costs around $750-1,000; and a one-way ticket from Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta costs less than $100.

Once in Indonesia, many migrants and asylum seekers will contract with smugglers for onward travel to Australia through a dangerous boat trip. This costs an additional fee, which varies greatly but some estimates place it between $3,000 and $6,000.[20]

Boats leave from many locations, including Jakarta, towns in southern Java, and Kupang in West Timor. Many boats trips are intended for Christmas Island (one of the closest Australian territories to Indonesia).

The boat journeys are incredibly risky. Smugglers, bound by no safety regulations, overload unseaworthy boats and often fail to supply adequate amounts of fresh water, food, or fuel for the journey.[21]

Sometimes the journey is deadly. Almost 1,000 people died on the crossing between 2001 and 2012, according to known statistics[22]—a period in which the numbers of people attempting the crossing has grown considerably. There are no official passenger records for these unregulated, illegal journeys, and many hundreds more people go missing, presumed drowned, each year.[23]

Arif B., the unaccompanied migrant boy from Afghanistan, was 15 years old when his boat from Indonesia to Australia sank. He said he spent “three nights floating in the boat while it was sinking down.... For three days and nights, no water and food. We kept climbing higher and higher as the boat was sinking.” [24]

Despite the risks of the onward boat journey to Australia, many migrants and asylum seekers we interviewed felt that attempting to make the trip was preferable to the hardships of life in Indonesia.

When a boat goes into distress, Australian or Indonesian search-and-rescue obligations are triggered.[25] Some boat passengers hope merely to reach Australian territorial waters in order to call for help there.

Left without Legal Status or Protection

Indonesia

Migrants and asylum seekers receive a poor welcome in Indonesia, which has faulty or non-existent mechanisms for protecting asylum seekers and child migrants. A variety of government bodies in Indonesia offer incomplete care for migrants in Indonesia. The Directorate General for Immigration oversees immigration detention facilities and should take responsibility for migrants outside of detention but does not meet these duties. Likewise, the Ministry for Social Welfare is responsible for child protection, but is not tasked to protect migrant children.[26]

Indonesia has a recent history as a country of emigration, and indeed, the Indonesian government takes steps to protect its own citizens abroad. Indonesia has ratified the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families,[27] and it takes measures to aid Indonesians working as, for instance, domestic workers in Malaysia or elsewhere.[28]  Indonesia has also taken steps toward assisting refugees, for instance by donating to UNHCR’s annual appeal in 2012 for the first time in over a decade.[29]

Because Indonesia has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention or its Protocol and does not have adequate domestic asylum laws, the protection of asylum seekers and refugees in Indonesia has fallen to UNHCR. IOM assists the government in operating migration detention facilities and supports some migrants outside detention; as of February 2013, it was assisting 2,946 refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia, approximately half of whom were detained.[30]

Australia

Australia has ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol and implemented it through domestic laws and procedures, and asylum seekers who reach Australian territory can apply for refugee status there. In addition, Australia resettles several hundred refugees recognized in Indonesia each year, and the government increased the number of places available for resettlement in 2012. Yet there are not enough resettlement places available for all recognized refugees in Indonesia.

Despite its ratification of the Refugee Convention, Australia has instituted punitive asylum policies that make it difficult for refugees to enter the country and ask for protection.[31] Australia has long maintained policies, including offshore processing, that deter “irregular maritime arrivals” from reaching the country. But Australia, a geographically isolated state, has erected visa regimes and other legal barriers that make it almost impossible for asylum seekers to arrive spontaneously by air legally.

Australia has repeatedly sent asylum seekers arriving by boat to Nauru and Papua New Guinea for “offshore” refugee processing, despite human rights groups repeatedly raising concerns over children’s and asylum seekers’ rights.[32] In 2012, Australia reinstated this policy after fashioning a legal mechanism to overcome a high court ruling that had found it unlawful. Yet Australia’s reinstated policy is not likely to effectively deter boat migration.[33]

These policies and others are designed to discourage “queue jumpers,” positing that refugees should wait in third countries for resettlement to Australia.[34] In reality, there is no queue for resettlement. The consequence of these policies is that people fleeing Afghanistan, Burma, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere get stuck in Indonesia, faced either with a prolonged wait for a slim chance at resettlement, or compelled to take the smugglers’ boats to Australia at great personal risk.[35]

Australia co-chairs, along with Indonesia, the Bali Process, a regional intergovernmental body on people smuggling and trafficking. The recent initiative, with UNHCR, to map the protection needs of unaccompanied and separated children in the southeast Asian region is a welcome start. However, as co-chairs, both countries should ensure that immigration enforcement measures that emerge from the Bali Process prioritize children’s rights above policing measures. While states retain the capacity to control their borders, they also must respect the rights of all children in their territories, including non-nationals.