Inside Tanjung Pinang: the future of offshore processing

The Australian reports this morning that Indonesian officials are considering a plan that would end the country’s practice of allowing asylum seekers who have been assessed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to live in the community, where they have easy access to boats that will take them to Australia to seek asylum.

But many asylum seeker experts say that this approach has increasingly become standard practice in Indonesia and this would just be a formalisation of the process.

The plan could see the Indonesian government request more funding from Australia to build extra processing centres.

The following photos, taken in May and June this year, have been smuggled out of the Australian-funded-and-built detention centre Tanjung Pinang on Bintan Island near Singapore:

There are more than 1000 asylum-seekers living in the community in Indonesia hoping to reach Australia, and at least as many again locked up in 13 detention centres across the country.

Some of the people in these photographs have been assessed as refugees — others are still waiting.

According to Pamela Curr, from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, conditions in Tanjung Pinang are “luxurious in comparison to the conditions in Jakarta and other immigration detention prisons in Indonesia”.

“People remain in these cells for months with no access to fresh air,” says Curr.

“Water is a universal problem even in Tanjung Pinang where it is often polluted and unfit to drink or wash in. This combined with crowded sleeping, eating and living arrangements is a cause of frequent illness,” says Curr.

These images are particularly striking, given they depict children behind razor wire.

Curr told Crikey, “Mothers and children are separated from husbands and fathers. They are allowed to visit each other for one hour per day.”