Kupang – Afghan and Iraqi asylum-seekers staying at an Indonesian police college here quietly protested Wednesday against their treatment by the Australian military and international refugee agencies.
About 100 men, women and children sat on hot ashphalt in the mid-afternoon protest with some claiming the group would go on a hunger strike.
About half of the more than 400 Afghan and Iraqi refugees staying at the Police Educational Institute School in this West Timor capital arrived late last month after, they say, the Australian navy stopped their ramshackle boat, which had been hired by people smugglers, from entering Australian waters.
The protestors complained that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) have not helped them enough and some vowed to extend their protest. "Tomorrow all these people will go on a hunger strike," Mohammed Ali, an Iraqi who said he was a former schoolteacher, told AFP.
Numerous refugees complained about the food provided to them by IOM. Afghans are used to eating bread but in Indonesia they have been eating rice three times a day, they said.
Many of the refugees had red eyes and complained of skin problems. They have been sleeping on dirty mattresses or rugs on the floor of the police barracks but the Indonesian police say they are trying their best to care for their new arrivals in what is the country's poorest province. "This is a place for education, not a hotel," said police commissioner and deputy head of the school, Yasirman.
Ali said the refugees wanted a meeting with the UNHCR and the International Red Cross and to take legal action against Australia. "They came as refugees and were treated worse than when they were in their countries," Ali said.
Watched over by rifle-toting police, the protestors dispersed and began playing soccer after airing their grievances.
Thousands of people from the Middle East and elsewhere use Indonesia as a stepping stone to reach Australia, trusting their lives to people-smugglers often using dilapidated and overloaded boats.