On the same day last September that Tony Abbott was elected prime minister with a mandate to stop the boats, three young men from Pakistan's violent disputed areas arrived in Indonesia.
Twenty days later the trio tried the people smugglers' route to Australia, but their boat foundered and they were brought back to Indonesia.
In January they tried again, but had the distinction of being in the first group returned on Australia's freshly purchased orange life boats. Now Mir Abbas, Haneef Hussein and Farman Ali accept they must wait years in Indonesia for resettlement through United Nation's processes.
But they have handed all their money to people smugglers and, like hundreds of others stopped in Indonesia by Australia's tough policies, can no longer afford the $200 to $300 a month it costs to buy food and pay rent. Indonesia does not allow them to work and their families - who sold land to get them this far - have nothing left to send.
Their solution is to try to get into one of Indonesia's overcrowded and sometimes squalid detention centres.
These men are literally willing to exchange their freedom for food.
"I have no money, no work … I've decided we'll go to Makassar … Pekanbaru camp - any camp," Mir Abbas says.
These men know - because they talk to friends already in detention - that some of the 13 Indonesian immigration detention centres are "like prisons; you can't go out", says Haneef Hussein.
READ MORE
http://ift.tt/1gm2iPL
No comments:
Post a Comment