Rob Taylor and Heru Rahadi, Jakarta – Australia's decision to grant temporary visas to 42 Papuan asylum seekers is an "unfriendly" act and Indonesia must protest, a senior Indonesian MP said today.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today announced 42 of the 43 Papuans who landed at Cape York in January have received temporary protection visas (TPV) and would be relocated from Christmas Island to Melbourne.

The group said they feared they would be killed if they were sent home – a charge Indonesian officials deny.

A spokesman for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Dino Pati Djalal, said Jakarta was still drafting a response to the announcement.

But Djoko Susilo, a nationalist MP and member of Indonesia's powerful foreign affairs commission in Parliament, said the decision was "too much".

"Giving asylum to them means Australia confirms what's been claimed by the group," he said. "This is an unfriendly gesture by the Australian Government."

The 36 adults and seven children, who include pro-independence activists and their families, spent five days at sea in a dugout canoe before arriving on Cape York in January.

They have accused the Indonesian military of conducting genocide in Papua, a former Dutch colony taken over by Indonesia in the 1960s following an independence referendum widely dismissed as rigged.

Mr Yudhoyono phoned Prime Minister John Howard, saying the group should not be given political asylum and should be returned to Indonesia, promising they would not be harmed.

Mr Djoko said the group should not be given asylum under any circumstances. "The Indonesian Government must mount a diplomatic protest," he said.

Aloysius Renuaren, the West Papua director of the Indonesian human rights watchdog Elsham, said the was no doubt the group had legitimate claims to asylum, highlighted by recent violence in the restive province in which five security officers were killed. "They felt intimidated," he said.

Mr Renuaren said he had once been the lawyer for the leader of the group, Herman Wanggai, after he was arrested in 2002 for raising the banned morning star independence flag.

"Afterwards he was afraid," Mr Renuaren said. "It's his choice where he feels safer, in Indonesia, Papua or Australia. It's a freedom of rights issue for him."