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ABSTRACT
This paper sets out how Indonesia has shifted away from arbitrary and indefinite immigration detention towards so-called alternatives to detention. This shift has been fuelled by the Australian government’s cuts to funding the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which was responsible for the costs of immigration detention until 2018. Although the abolition of immigration detention in Indonesia has been praised as a success, it would be wrong to say that alternatives to detention are without any carceral purposes. While their conditions are more humane overall than those in detention centres, alternatives to detention also serve containment purposes and perpetuate a ‘continuum of unfreedom’, albeit in more subtle ways. More importantly, the decarceration policies have fostered a new hierarchy of refugee deservingness that discriminates against recently arrived asylum seekers. Establishing alternatives to detention has created additional problems that reach beyond the detention/abolitionist dichotomy. The categorical non-integration into the local community and ongoing restrictions on basic rights show that current alternatives to detention, though better than immigration detention, still leave ample room for improvement in decarceration policies in Indonesia and beyond.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The term ‘open prison’ has been used by asylum seekers in Indonesia to describe their living conditions outside immigration detention (see, for example, Morse Citation2019). I have decided to adopt their term as an emic category.
2. Indonesia has been a primary focus for Australian funding of the IOM. Between 2001 and 2016, Australia provided A$238 million to IOM for its Indonesian projects, with the vast majority of those funds dedicated to migration control and migrant care (Hirsch and Doig Citation2018).
3. See circular letter by Director of Immigration No IMI-UM.01.01–2827 on Pengembalian Fungsi Rumah Detensi [Restoring the original function of immigration detention centres], dated 30 July 2018.
4. According to an IOM representative, IOM care is now available only for asylum seekers intercepted at sea (interview, Jakarta, July 2018).
5. Indonesia is not a State party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, nor has it signed the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Person. While Indonesia has generally respected the principle of non-refoulement, the return of a small number of asylum seekers to countries where they could have faced persecution has been reported since 2013.
6. More recent definitions of immigration detention acknowledge a broader spectrum of carceral factors. Martin (Citation2019) defines it as ‘an assemblage of practices, discourses, and material infrastructures that are connected to wider institutional, financial, legal, and geopolitical networks’ in support of migration control.
7. The socio-psychological damage that results from prolonged immigration detention cannot be stressed often enough. Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment, has stated that ‘grossly inadequate detention conditions can even amount to torture if they are intentionally imposed, encouraged or tolerated by States for reasons based on discrimination of any kind, including based on immigration status, or for the purpose of deterring, intimidating, or punishing migrants or their families, coercing them into withdrawing their requests for asylum, subsidiary protection or other stay, agreeing to “voluntary” return, providing information or fingerprints, or with a view to extorting money or sexual acts from them’ (Melzer Citation2018, 7).
8. During informal interviews with IOM officers it became clear that immigration detention centres had become hotbeds of corruption that drained asylum seekers and refugees of their limited resources in return for favours or even escape. The centres also submitted inflated receipts and demands to the IOM (Missbach Citation2015).
9. Between 2012 and 2017, I visited six of the 13 detention centres, usually for a couple of hours each visit. In some detention centres I could talk quite freely to detainees; in others I was escorted by guards all the time, making open discussion more challenging. In general, I was also able to have proper interviews with the heads of detention or at least informal chats with some of their staff.
10. Similar to the corruption that was common in detention centres, owners of shelters have complained that they had to pay bribes of up to 40% of their income from the IOM to third parties to maintain their eligibility as contractors (field observation, Makassar, February 2018).
11. During a visit to alternatives to detention on Batam island in 2019, I learned from the refugees living in repurposed hotels that the air conditioning had recently been cut off. Although all rooms were equipped with air conditioners, IOM wanted to save on electricity costs and to get people out of the shelters and socialising on the streets (field observation, Batam, April 2019).
12. Field observation, Makassar, February 2018.
13. Every rejected asylum seeker can submit one appeal. Claims for asylum are not necessarily rejected because they are weak; more often than not they are rejected because of a lack of proper legal advice or the inability to understand the bureaucratic procedures and requirements.
14. Those willing to be repatriated receive free air travel and US$2,000 from the IOM, using funds provided by the Australian government, to resume their lives in their countries of origin.
15. A few faith-based NGOs have stepped in to provide monthly care to highly vulnerable people or emergency care, but they cannot match the services and financial support that the IOM provides. Source: Presentation by UNHCR of its work to support the government of Indonesia in protecting refugees, Workshop on ‘Presidential Regulation No. 125 of 2016 on the Treatment of Refugees and Asylum-seekers in Indonesia: Opportunities and Challenges’, Depok, 20–21 March 2019.
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Antje Missbach
Antje Missbach is Senior Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute and a member of the Cluster “Patterns of (Forced) Migration„.