Darwin (ANTARA News) - Indonesia needs a law on people`s smuggling in response to the frequent use of the country as a transit point for the smuggling of people into a neighboring country, a senior minister said.

"We have a law on human trafficking but we feel the need for a legal umbrella in the handling of organized human smuggling so that there would be no more victims," Chief Welfare Minister Agung Laksono said here on Sunday.

Cases of frequent human smuggling included cases that involve attempt to smuggle immigrants to Australia. The illegal immigrants often transited in Indonesia and continued to Australia illegally.

The victims of this smuggling were the Indonesian fishermen who were promised with an income of Rp20 million, Agung said.

He said that if they were arrested by the Australian Northern Territory authorities, the smugglers would received heavy punishment.

"Our security officials should take repressive measures. But we also have to think about our fishermen who were arrested by holding our own prosecution at home," the minister added.

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Fadel Muhammad said that most of the Indonesian fishermen who were facing harvest failures were interested in transporting smuggled people with promises of payments worth tens of millions of rupiah.

He said that they often used as the lanes the waters of Pulau Pasir in the Ashmore island cluster of Australia where Indonesian fishermen were often arrested.

"My job is to provide explanations to fishermen so that they would no longer become carriers of smuggled immigrants," he said.

In a meeting with the Australian Northern Territory minister for Asian relations and the governor of Northern Territory, the Indonesian chief people`s welfare minister discussed cooperation on the supervision of border areas between the two countries.

The regions in the border areas between the two nations are often used for human smuggling and fish poaching.(*)

Editor: Aditia Maruli
COPYRIGHT © 2012

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