Indonesia’s foreign minister Marty Natalegawa has indicated that Australia could be going further than turning boats back, by potentially facilitating the movement of asylum seekers.
Dr Natalegawa was responding to the Federal Government’s admission that lifeboats have been bought – reportedly to send asylum seekers back to Indonesia.
It comes as Fairfax media reports that the Australian Navy fired warning shots in a bid to force another asylum seeker boat back towards Indonesia.
It is the third time the Australian Navy has been accused of forcing an asylum seeker boat back towards Indonesia in the past month.
Dr Natalegawa has described the claims that Australia plans to provide lifeboats for asylum seekers as a slippery slope.
“Developments of the type that has been reported in the media, namely the facilitation by way of boats, this is the kind of slippery slope that we have identified in the past,” he said.
“Where will this lead to?”
Indonesia considers that many asylum seekers are illegally using the country as a staging point to get to Australia, and objects to them being returned.
Dr Natalegawa has indicated that if Australia is actively helping asylum seekers get back to Indonesia, that is worse.
“It’s one thing to turn back the actual boats on which they have been travelling but another issue, when they are transferred onto another boat and facilitated and told to go in that direction,” he said.
Dr Natalegawa would not say what action his government would take.
He says with a slow and steady approach, the relationship can be returned to normal and he says the focus on asylum seekers is “unhelpful”.
“To be zeroing in on issues that, in a manner that tends to divide, is not helpful,” he said.
Yesterday Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, the commander of Operation Sovereign Borders, would not confirm or deny reports the lifeboats would be used to send asylum seekers back to Indonesia.
“We’ve acquired them to be part of the range of measures that we have at play,” he told a media briefing yesterday.
“Clearly a lifeboat, it’s involved potentially in those on-water activities that we don’t discuss and so I’m not going to go further in that space.”
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison also defended towing boats back towards Indonesia, saying there has never been an intention to enter Indonesian waters.
