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Sri Lankan Refugees Have Left Indonesia
Putri Prameshwari | February 04, 2010

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The remaining Sri Lankan refugees on the Australian vessel MV Oceanic Viking have been flown out of Indonesia, an immigration spokesman said on Thursday.

Maroloan Barimbing, a spokesman for the Directorate General of Immigration at the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, said the refugees, who for months had refused to leave the vessel, had left the archipelago.

“The last batch has been flown back to their home country,” he said, adding that he could not remember the exact date, but that it was “some time in January.”

The 78 Sri Lankans, reportedly 68 men, five women and five children, were aboard an armed Australian patrol vessel, which had remained docked in the Riau Islands since October.

The Oceanic Viking rescued the 78 asylum seekers when their boat sank in Indonesian waters as they were attempting to enter Australia.

The migrants claimed they faced persecution in their homeland, where a rebellion by theTamil Tigers separatist group was crushed by the government in May.

In mid-November, 56 of the migrants agreed to leave the Australian vessel to be housed at an Australian-funded immigration center in Tanjung Pinang, while their refugee claims were verified.

The group had previously refused to come ashore in Indonesia, emphasizing that resettlement in Australia was their goal.

Teuku Faizasyah, a spokesman with the Foreign Affairs Ministry, said that the refugees were divided into groups, with different destination countries.

“After being processed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, all of them have left Tanjung Pinang,” he said, without elaborating on where they were bound.