Nowhere to go. Refugees stranded in Indonesia while the world looks away.

In 2002, fifty nations – including Australia – set up the Bali Process to sort out the tragedy of boat people. Since then, hundreds of asylum seekers have drowned trying to reach Australia and Indonesia. The boats have stopped, but the refugees are still coming. Duncan Graham reports from Aceh, ground zero for people smugglers.

Abdu Solam wasn’t paraded for media sympathy. The chance encounter during an unchaperoned wander by the only Westerner among 233 traumatised asylum seekers came as the 11-year-old dragged himself past a torn tent.

Flapping blue plastic sheets flag the location in Indonesia of Rohingya Muslims, forced from their Myanmar homeland by a ruthless military junta bent on ethnic cleansing. Survivors then fled to the world’s biggest refugee camp (population one million) in Bangladesh after years of misery and squalor.

Abdu had been a cripple from birth, and his wasted legs suggested polio. In the West, he’d get prosthetics and training. Indonesia hasn’t signed the International Convention on Refugees, so has no legal obligation to help. Consequently, he’s unlikely ever to get the aid he needs.

Nor in Australia, where conservatives hostile to accepting ‘boat people’ would see a disabled child as a drain on ‘taxpayer-funded’ NDIS.

No shelter in Oz suburbs likely either for the thin, illiterate, hassled women scrubbing clothes and cooking over wood fires, their multiple kids climbing through the barbed-wire fence to frolic in the surf.

Not OK. Cattle scouring plastic trash for something organic aren’t the only depositors of waste. With no toilets, the Rohingya use the sea, which is fine till the tide turns. They catch rainwater for washing.

Also unwelcome Down Under would be the middle-aged black-bearded men in long robes sitting on the dirt chanting verses from open copies of the Koran carried during the 17-day, 2,000 km plus hazardous journey.

Although they seemed to be giving thanks for their salvation, to the self-labelled ‘true blues’ they’ll be putative terrorists plotting bombings.

“Stop the boats.” Is Australia seeing a sudden uptick in asylum seekers, fishermen or fear-mongering?

Selective human aid

Should some humanity prevail in this post-compassion era, states offering settlement will only want the young, skilled and adaptable, like Aziz Ullah. The incandescently bright photographer taught himself English in the Bangladesh camp, which his family fled to from their bombed and burned village last decade.

Like all refugees interviewed for MWM, the 19-year-old said he didn’t care where he spent the rest of his life. He hankered to live in a society “where men and women are equal, where we are treated as human beings”.

When invited to nominate a destination, no one suggested Australia; Europe, the US and Canada were mentioned with the rider that climate and cultural differences weren’t the issue,

just safety, no persecution and the chance to be human.

Mohamad Fahad, 15, wanted to write his response in English, reproduced here without edits: “As my age is going over and also I can’t learn education, my future will become worse, so I’m asking to high-level education”.

More than a thousand Rohingya refugees landed in Aceh last month, the largest number ever experienced by veteran human-rights activist Farida Haryani, 56. She runs the social aid agency Pasca Aceh, which gets Australian Aid to help the disabled.

Tsunami survivors

Most are survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed around 228,000 – the majority in Banda Aceh, the capital of Indonesia’s most northern province and close to Malaysia.

Aceh has some autonomy from Jakarta and is the only place where strict Islamic Sharia law prevails. This puts dress codes above civil rights and employs ‘morality police’ to enforce gender proximity rules and flog miscreants. Muslim women must wear jilbab (headscarves) and cover all the body apart from the face.

Said Farida: “We try to support the refugees by filling the gaps in the basic aid supplied by overseas agencies, like the UN High Commission for Refugees. We have a staffer in the camps who teaches English and Indonesian. Almost all refugees have only their language, and few can write as they’ve had no schooling”.

Farida also speaks out against the hostility shown by some Indonesians towards the refugees, using arguments familiar to xenophobic Australians. ‘”There is too much misunderstanding,” she said. “All religions stress humanity. We must accept these people and argue about settlement later”.

The hostiles claim newcomers carry diseases, are criminals – or will be – can’t integrate and will steal jobs and land. The most ridiculous slur yet widely believed is that the Rohingya are Asian Israelis. Once they settle, they’ll oust the locals like Palestinians.

There have been reports of calls to push the refugee boats back to sea, but so far, tolerance has prevailed.

Malaysia doing their bit

Messages and calls to expel UNHCR and other foreign agencies are driven by claims they’re pull factors encouraging asylum seekers. In reality, a prime lure is next door Malaysia, which has already, though reluctantly, taken in 184,000 Rohingya, according to UNHCR and allowed them to work.

The demands were carried on signs waved by 25 young men demonstrating at the main traffic circle in Banda Aceh and seen by this writer. The peaceful protest was overseen by about 50 police. Passers-by paid no attention, and the show ended with handshakes all around.

It’s been a different story on nearby Sabang island – where more boats have landed, according to videos circulating on social media showing violent confrontations with police in riot gear.

The 20-metre timber freighter that brought Aziz and his fellow hopefuls to the beach at Sigli about 120 km south of Banda Aceh has already been stripped of its engine and other parts by local chancers. Relations with villagers seemed good, with some bringing food and clothes.

Eventually, the UNHCR will bus them to a more secure temporary camp if provided by the local government. A former road-workers’ base, Mina Raya has a few decrepit buildings in a square around a basketball court with no hoops and a deflated ball, a metaphor for the depressing mess.

Simple fixes could have made the area fit for play, but the people haven’t even assembled a prayer room, though they’ve painted murals idealising their homeland.  The long-term mental damage will be entrenched.

Few men among the 500 inmates can hold a gaze, making them seem shifty when in reality they’re racked by shame, grief, guilt and anger – though all questioned denied this last emotion. Two cried while being interviewed.

People smugglers still in business

Among the 500 inmates is Alomgir, 22, who calls himself Alex; he smiles continuously but prefers to study trees and clouds when talking. He’s been in the camp for a year with his seven-month-pregnant wife Omy Lasa. She’s been getting care at a local hospital through NGOs.

He said the couple paid people smugglers one lakh (100,000 Bangladesh taka – AUD 1,400) for their journey.

“The Indonesians are good, very kind,” he said. “It’s better here than in Bangladesh, but we don’t know what is happening and when we can ever move.” On Jakarta’s fringes, there are 14,000 mainly Afghan refugees; some have been in Indonesia for more than a dozen years. Farida said:

Asylum seekers are an international problem which should not be left to NGOs and local governments.

“I’ve told my government that it must get involved at a national level before the situation worsens. It should go further to ASEAN because the problem started with Myanmar and now affects us, Malaysia and Thailand. All are members”.

Australia and Indonesia co-chair the Bali Process forum. On the evidence in this story, the ministers and their officials seem to be better at talking than fixing.

PS> Since this story was written a further 400 asylum seekers have reportedly landed in Aceh, forcing President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo to back locals demanding speedy international action. The Australian solution is being canvassed – put them on a distant island, in this case, Galang near Singapore, used in the 1980s to hold Vietnamese refugees.