Indonesia reacted furiously yesterday to Australia's decision to grant temporary visas to asylum seekers from Papua Province, recalling its ambassador and warning that the move jeopardized ties between the neighboring countries.
"The government of Indonesia is surprised, disappointed and very much regrets this decision," the foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that it showed that "elements in Australia" back the eastern Indonesian region's separatist movement.
Australia said on Thursday that 42 of a group of 43 people from the province had been granted temporary protection visas, entitling them to stay in Australia for three years.
The group, who arrived in northeastern Australia in January, had accused the Indonesian military of conducting genocide in their homeland while putting down the decades-long separatist movement.
Granting the group asylum is sensitive because it is an effective acknowledgment by Canberra that Indonesian security forces are abusing human rights in Papua, where rights activists say 100,000 have been killed in anti-insurgent operations since 1969.
Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said yesterday that he was ordering Indonesia's ambassador in Australia to return to Jakarta "as soon as the first flight could bring [him] ... back home" to discuss the matter.
Wirajuda said there had been no discussion of cutting diplomatic relations entirely.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono personally called Australian Prime Minister John Howard to reassure him that the group, which includes seven children, would not be harmed if they returned to Papua.
Indonesia's parliament yesterday urged the government to permanently withdraw Ambassador Hamzah Thayeb.
"We regret the move by the Australian government which can only worsen bilateral relations," House Speaker Agung Laksono said in a speech before the 550-seat parliament.
The foreign ministry said the Papuans were "economic migrants who wanted to start a better life" in Australia and reiterated earlier claims they were in no danger in Papua, which is mostly Christian, unlike the rest of mainly Muslim Indonesia.
"The decision is counter productive and does not take into account the sensitivities of the Indonesian people regarding this issue," the strongly worded statement said. "It is against the spirit of bilateral cooperation."
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said he hoped ties would not suffer as a result of the decision, which he said was legally impossible for the government to overturn.
"Bilateral cooperation is in our mutual interest," he told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio, stressing that Australia still recognized Papua as an integral part of Indonesia.
Many Indonesians believe that Australia secretly supports Papuan independence -- suspicions that stem largely from the key role Australian troops played in restoring order to East Timor when it broke from Jakarta's rule in 1999.
The ministry also claimed the decision could hurt Indonesian moves to broker a peace deal in Papua.
Indonesia's military chief questioned why the Australian coast guard had been unable to spot the asylum seekers' wooden boat and turn it away before it landed.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS