Human tsunami ... Indonesian demonstrators rally in front of a vandalised portrait of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott during a protest outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
COMMENTS by a senior Indonesian minister that a tsunami of 10,000 asylum-seekers could be unleashed on Australia in revenge for complaints about the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are a new low in a deteriorating diplomatic battle.
Political, Legal and Security Affairs minister, Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno, was quoted on high-rating and government-preferred Metro TV as saying Indonesia would release asylum seekers if Australia continued to upset Indonesia.
"There are more than 10,000 in Indonesia," Mr Purdijatno said of asylum-seekers. "If they are let go to Australia, it will be like a human tsunami."
Mr Purdijatno's figures are correct. According to the UNHCR there are more than 10,000 asylum-seekers in Indonesia, most who have forestalled their plans to take boats to Australia.
Threats ... Indonesian minister Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno is talking tough. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied
Kevin Rudd, who reopened the way to asylum seekers in early 2008 by ending the Pacific Solution, later realised he had made a serious political miscalculation after people started coming by sea — and dying — in great numbers.
Mr Rudd changed his tune for his own political survival, releasing a statement in July 2013 saying that no one who arrived by boat would ever settle in Australia but could find new lives in Papua New Guinea.
It was, for Mr Rudd, a failed chance to try and save his prime ministership.
Protests ... An Indonesian demonstrator spray paints a portrait of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott during a protest outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
The boats almost immediately stopped coming but he lost the election regardless. Incoming prime minister, Tony Abbott, continued Rudd's policy and has since claimed victory for "stopping the boats".
The claims by Mr Purdijatno that Indonesia would direct asylum-seekers towards Australia are thought ridiculous, but highlight how badly Indonesia has reacted to pleas for mercy for the Australians on death-row.
A foreign migration expert based in Jakarta said Purdijatno's statement was "extraordinary", but pointed out it would require Indonesia to deliberately organise boats for the asylum-seekers to assist their journeys to Australia.
Indonesia isn't happy ... The protests around the impending execution of Myuran Sukumaran, right and Andrew Chan, left, has angered Indonesia. Picture: AP Source: Supplied
The expert said that 7000 of the 10,000 asylum-seekers were housed in "immigration centres and community housing".
This would mean, in the unlikely case Mr Purdijatno's comments had any credibility, that Indonesian authorities would set them free from detention.
If so, this would be akin to Cuba's Mariel boatlift of 1980, when Fidel Castro said any discontented people who wanted to leave Cuba could do so, resulting in more than 125,000 Cubans taking boats to Florida to begin new lives.
Sending a message ... An Indonesian demonstrator steps on a portrait of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
Castro opened his jails and dumped his worst criminals on American soil. The difference is that Mr Purdijatno is talking about hopeless, stateless and desperate people.
And that, to a degree, includes Chan and Sukumaran, who are increasingly becoming pawns in a game played by new and inexperienced government ministers who speak without thinking.
All of it makes it harder for the Australians, and those who will be executed alongside them for drug crimes.
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