SPI
Bitter Tale of the Galang Camp
Indonesia Vows
"Boat People" Move Despite Protest
By Reuter, 04/28/1995
strike by hundreds of inmates at a holding camp.
The official Antara news agency quoted E.G. Rumayar, security director at the Foreign Ministry, as telling reporters a mass hunger strike on Galang Island would not deter Indonesia from repatriating those found not to be genuine refugees.
"Indonesia plans to entirely vacate Galang Island of refugees in 1995," he said on the industrial island of Batam, near Galang. Both islands are south of Singapore.
U.N. officials said local representatives of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees had flown to Galang on Wednesday to investigate reports of a protest by hundreds of boat people ruled out for resettlement in third countries.
The presidents of Indonesia and Vietnam agreed on Wednesday to hasten repatriation of boat people from Galang, where 10,000 Vietnamese, 2,000 of them earmarked for possible third country settlement, are camped.
In the 1980s, waves of desperate Vietnamese people took to the sea to escape hardship before the communist government there instituted market reforms.
Indonesian newspapers said 550 Vietnamese joined the Galang hunger strike and 79 of them had been taken to hospital. Antara said some had threatened to set fire to themselves.
Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam said Hanoi was ready to settle the issue of the boat people based on voluntary repatriation and respect for human dignity.
Indonesia wants to clear the island before including it in a booming growth triangle, centred on Batam.
Vietnamese President Le Duc Anh was scheduled to visit Bandung, West Java, and the resort island of Bali before returning to Vietnam on Friday.
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