As members of a vulnerable refugee population, we, the refugees of Indonesia, seek the intervention of the international community to bring us a safe future. Failing this, refugees in Indonesia will continue to be trapped within harsh systems and condemned to slow death by attrition.

The impact of Operation Sovereign goes beyond the offshore detention centres on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. It also manifests itself through money and political influence in Indonesia, which has indirectly become another detention centre for refugees turned away from Australia. Those who have died in Manus and Nauru are countable. In Indonesia, the true number of deaths is unknown.

In Kalideres Camp, in a sub-district of West Jakarta, where the government has placed 250 of these homeless refugees, forty-five children whose age ranges from ten to sixteen have zero access to any kind of education.

We sought refuge in Australia because it signed the UN 1951 refugee convention, promising to protect refugees. But we are rejected from all angles and have been pushed to our limits, marginalised, detained and tortured. This pushes us to repatriate or leaves us no option but the sea. We are asking Australia, what are we meant to do?