By: Saiful *)
Australia has introduced a policy of Operation Sovereign Borders to crack down on asylum seekers who arrive by boat. With this policy, Australia will push back the boat that bring asylum seekers to the Indonesian ocean and those who reach the Australian territory will be processed within 48 hours and quickly sent to the Pacific Island or Papua New Guinea. This policy criticized by the Indonesian government, because Australia have violated their territorial sovereignty.
Iwan Setiawan SH. Hum, Terrorism and Transnational Crime Task Force of Prosecutor Republic Indonesia said that Indonesia’s like take the negative impact from Australian policy. Indonesia does not have the capacity to accept illegal immigrants as the asylum seekers. Even if we returned the illegal immigrants to their country, it would require a fee.
We can say that Australia’s policy is unfair to Indonesia. Australia seems to only solve their own problems, but let the problem happen in other countries. It was clearly unfair. Moreover, Australia did not provide a solution when Indonesia faced a problem when the asylum seekers pushed back.
Australia should take diplomatic steps to make mutual agreement that beneficial for both parties. Unfortunately, it was not at all, Australia should be resolving the problem by opening a parallel dialogue with Indonesia to find a fair solution.
*) The Author Is Sulawesi Regional Contributors
