"Sri Lanka refugees, we have lived in forest for one month. Please, sir, please take us to a country. It's OK if it is not Australia. It's better if any other country trades us. We can't live in Sri Lanka."
These were the desperate words of 9 year old Brindha, as she pleaded on Australian television.
She is one of the 255 men, women and children who have been stranded in waters off the Sunda straits of Indonesia since last month.
They were attempting to flee from Sri Lanka and make their way towards Australia, where they could claim asylum, before they were intercepted by Indonesian authorities.
The desperate Tamil civilians aboard the boat staged a hunger strike last week, as they attempted to persuade Australian authorities to allow them to seek asylum.
The hunger strike lasted 52 hours before authorities eventually persuaded them to cease.
A wooden board with the words "We are Sri Lankan civilians, Plz save our lives" scribbled onto it, is on display aboard the ship.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has so far been unmoved and said that their individual cases should be processed by the United Nations.
In reference to the hunger strike he commented that he would not be swayed by "any tactics deployed by any particular person".
"There are still Tamil people in Sri Lanka who are dying every day. This is why most of these people here have fled from genocide in Sri Lanka and trying to find a future somewhere else... We're just people without a country to live in," said Alex, spokesman for the group.
"But the situation in our country right now, I'm telling you, Tamils do not have an opportunity to survive in Sri Lanka," he said.
The group of asylum seekers are still aboard their boat, which has docked the West Java port of Merak in Indonesia and are refusing to leave the vessel.
According to the spokesman there are 195 men, 31 women, and 27 children on board, each of whom reported to have paid $15,000 USD in order to be smuggled out of Sri Lanka, amounting to nearly $ 4 million USD in total.
The conditions of the boat have been described as far from adequate with there being just one toilet on the boat for all on board.
One of the inhabitants, Varshini from Jaffna, is on board with Marthavan, her seven-year-old son, and Amirtha, her four-year-old daughter. She said her children believed they would see their father soon.
She has yet to tell them that he was taken away by Government affiliated paramilitary forces, while they were sleeping 18 months ago.
"There are still many more Sri Lankans who need help," said Alex, at a press conference organised by the asylum seekers last week.
Alex and his fellow civilians are still refusing to leave the boat until they meet a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official to explain the asylum procedure and give assurances about their future.
"If you had no place to go, if you had no country of your own, what would you do and how long would you stay in a boat before you were promised to enter a country that will give you asylum? How long will you go? How desperate will you be?" said Alex.
"We're not only suffering back home we're suffering here. We have no choice."
"We have no country to go back to."
