Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta – A six-month asylum-seeker deadlock in Indonesia has finally been broken, with more than 200 Tamils agreeing to be taken from their makeshift dockside camp at the western Java port of Merak to an immigration detention centre.

A spokesman for the Sri Lankans, Nimal, said the group's leaders had finally agreed to end their protest after assurances that Australia would facilitate their resettlement within 12 months.

"(Senior foreign ministry official) Sujatmiko said he negotiated with Australia to give us resettlement within 12 months," Nimal told The Australian. "We are ready to go to Tanjung Pinang if they give us such assurance."

The reported offer appears to contradict the Australian Government's announcement that no more Sri Lankan or Afghan refugee applications would be processed.

However, not all of the group, which has been camped on the dock at Merak since their capture by an Indonesian Navy patrol boat at Canberra's request last October, were happy to be going today.

As the asylum-seekers were loaded onto buses, to be ferried to Jakarta's main airport and then flown to Tanjung Pinang, at least one tearful woman held up a sign reading: "help me, we don't want to".

The Australian-built and funded Tanjung Pinang detention centre was where the 78 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers from the Oceanic Viking fiasco were taken last November before rapid resettlement, in a deal others including those on the dock at Merak described as "unfair".