"The arrest happened last night and right now they are in the Pamekasan immigration office."Sampang (ANTARA News) - Sampang police detained 76 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar in Tanglok seaport, Madura Island, East Java Province, on Saturday evening.
"The arrest happened last night and right now they are in the Pamekasan immigration office," Sampang Police Chief Adjunct Senior Commissioner Solehan said here on Sunday.
The 76 immigrants consist of 48 men, 13 women, nine boys and six girls.
They were caught when their rented boat was about to leave Tanglok seaport for Bali. They came to Sampang by cars from Surabaya, the capital of East Java, where they had stayed in a hotel for few days.
Indonesia has become a transit country for refugees mostly coming from conflict-hit nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Myanmar who want to go to Australia or New Zealand to seek for asylum.
As the tension has escalated in Myanmar due to sectarian conflicts between two different ethnic groups, more refugees were flowing out of the country by boats and some of them were stranded in other ASEAN member nations including in Indonesia.
Earlier this month, the Indonesian authorities had detained at least 168 Myanmarese refugees respectively on Sumatra and Java Islands for illegal entry into the Indonesian waters, although their intended destinations were actually Australia and Malaysia.
Previously, on February 26 and 28, 2013, two wooden boats with no engine and carrying a total of 284 Rohingya refugees including women and children, were separately found adrift in Aceh waters by Aceh fishermen.
Those Rohingya refugees were just part of the influx of Myanmar immigrants. Some of them had landed in other countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh, not only in Indonesia.
Like many other illegal immigrants, Rohingya refugees arriving in Indonesia have to wait for years in detention centers awaiting UN assessment for refugee status.
(UU.F001)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2013
