Chris Brummitt, Nusakambangan Island – A group of Afghan refugees detained for two weeks after their ship sank off an Indonesian prison island threatened Saturday to go on a hunger strike unless the United Nations agreed to their asylum demands.

The 138 refugees were sailing from Indonesia to Australia's Christmas Island last month when their rickety boat sank in a storm. A mother and child drowned. The others managed to swim to the shores of nearby Nusakambangan Island.

The group is separate from the 460 mainly Afghans languishing on a Norwegian cargo ship since Monday after both Australia and Indonesia refused to accept them. New Zealand and the Pacific republic of Nauru agreed Saturday to take them in to assess their eligibility for asylum. In Indonesia, officials from the UN International Organization for Migration have visited the 138 refugees twice, but have yet to make a decision on their fate.

"We will go on a hunger strike on Monday unless we are allowed to leave this place," said Abdul Rashid, 34, a dentist who said he was fleeing political persecution by Afghanistan's hardline Islamic Taliban rulers. "No one is listening to us or helping us."

Hundreds of illegal migrants now live in Indonesia after being caught trying to sail for Australia and New Zealand without visas. Authorities rarely detain them and usually allow them to live in the community while waiting for the United Nations to process their applications for political

asylum in Western countries.

However, with Indonesia coming under intense international pressure to crack down on the increasing flow of illegal migrants passing through its territory, the government seems determined not to free this particular group. Many of the illegal migrants here have skin diseases. There is little to eat, and their drinking water is brown.