Three families who were returned to Vietnam last year under Australia’s boat turn-back policy are reportedly being held in Indonesia after fleeing Vietnam a second time by boat.

Earlier this month, their lawyer Vo An Don said on social media the families of Tran Thi Thanh Loan, Tran Thi Lua and Tran Thi Phuc had left Vietnam on August 31 with the intention to make it to Australia again.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese Service, Lua said their boat’s engine stopped working after 12 days at sea while still in Indonesia’s waters.

She told RFA that Indonesian police and local people then helped the families to shore, “I asked them not to return us to Vietnam,” she said. “I showed them proof of our imprisonment and they told us that they would not return us to Vietnam. But they said they have to wait for their boss’s decision.”

It’s not known where the families are staying in the archipelago nation.

According to Attorney Vo An Don, the families of Lua, Loan and Phuc consist of six adults and 12 children.

All three families fled to Australia in 2015 but were returned to Vietnam the same year.

Some were sentenced to a total of six years in prison by a court in Binh Thuan province on Vietnam’s southeast coast.

Loan and Lua had previously told Don on the phone that they would drown themselves at sea if the Australian government does not accept them and decides to return them to Vietnam.

Don told the family they would face old and new judgments of 7 to 10 years in prison if they were returned by Australia.

The Australian government has a zero-tolerance position towards unauthorised boat arrivals under its Operation Sovereign Borders policy.

– TiVi Tuan-san