JAKARTA // An Indonesian minister has warned a “human tsunami” of asylum-seekers could be unleashed on Australia in retaliation if Canberra keeps pressing for clemency for two Australian drug smugglers on death row.
Several foreigners are due to be executed for drug-related crimes with Australia among countries pleading with Indonesian president Joko Widodo to show mercy to their citizens.
They include Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, as well as a Frenchman, Brazilian, three Nigerians and convicts from the Philippines and Ghana.
Australia’s repeated calls for clemency have included comments by prime minister Tony Abbott that appeared to tie his country’s aid donations to the pair’s fate -- a notion that caused great offence in Indonesia.
Indonesian security minister Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno said this week that his country could release a “human tsunami” of asylum-seekers in retaliation.
“Indonesia has done a lot in preventing illegal migrants from other countries from going to Australia,” he said.
“If Canberra keeps acting this way, Jakarta will certainly release migrants wanting to go to Australia.
“There are over 10,000 currently in Indonesia. If they are released and we let them go to Australia, it will be like a human tsunami.”
Australia has struggled for years to stem a rising tide of asylum-seekers trying to reach its shores, often from transit hubs in Indonesia.
Many have died making the hazardous journey in crammed, rickety boats, normally after paying huge fees to people-smugglers.
Mr Abbott last month said Jakarta should remember the US$1 billion (Dh3.67bn) of assistance sent from Australia in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed around 220,000 people.
But the bid backfired in Indonesia, where groups of protesters this week delivered bags of coins to the Australian embassy, saying they were handing back tsunami aid money.
Shouting “Shut Abbott’s mouth” and “Abbott, say sorry”, they trampled on a poster bearing a picture of the Australian prime minister with tape plastered over his mouth, as they handed over the coins.
Virgin chief Richard Branson on Wednesday added his voice to those urging death row inmates to be spared, saying the death penalty was a “failed deterrent”.
Mr Branson, a member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, said he was willing to travel to Jakarta to discuss the issue with president Widodo.
“We have done a lot of research into the war on drugs on a global basis ... and found that countries that still carry out executions for drug offences have not seen any significant shifts in supply and demand and the drug trade remains remarkably unaffected by the threat of capital punishment,” he said.
Sukumaran and Chan started programmes that ranged from painting to photography in the decade they were held at Kerobokan jail in Bali after their arrests in 2005 as ringleaders of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug smuggling gang.
Australian media said Sukumaran had made a personal appeal to president Widodo by painting a portrait of the leader, signing it “people can change”.
The French convict facing execution, Serge Atlaoui, on Wednesday appeared in a court outside Jakarta to apply for a judicial review of his death sentence, a last-ditch bid to avoid the firing squad.
The case was adjourned to March 25.
* Agence France-Presse
