By Arlina Arshad

MERAK, Indonesia - The Sri Lankan asylum seekers at the centre of a fiery immigration row in Australia are pleading for rich nations to protect them from the threat of persecution, kidnapping and death at home.

Members of the group of 255 ethnic Tamils intercepted off Indonesia last week described harrowing weeks in the jungle and at sea in a bid to get to Australia.

But they said they had no interest in staying in Indonesia, where they have refused to leave their overcrowded boat for almost two weeks, unless they are allowed to speak to the UN refugee agency.

"This country cannot promise my children education, this country can't give us any future. What will we find in this country?" a spokesman for the group, who identified himself as Alex, told AFP on their peeling wooden boat in the Indonesian port town of Merak.

The migrants have gone on a brief hunger strike and threatened to torch their boat in order to draw attention to their plight.

The UN refugee agency says it has not received the necessary invitation from the Indonesian government to interview the migrants, so the standoff continues and the Sri Lankans' asylum claims have not been assessed.

"We are being tortured, our women are being raped, our children are being killed, our parents are being kidnapped..." Alex said of their migrants' lives in Sri Lanka.

"Just for the sake that we are Tamils they just believe we are all terrorists, we are all Tigers," he said, referring to the defeated insurgent group known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

The Sri Lankans have touched off a testy political debate in Australia over border protection amid a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving illegally by boat in the country's sparsely populated north.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono agreed in Jakarta this week to come up with a "framework" for dealing with undocumented migrants who take to the seas in unseaworthy boats.

Indonesia is a springboard for such trips, which are usually arranged by people smugglers for thousands of dollars per person.

Standing on the packed and peeling boat in the midday sun, the Sri Lankan migrants said returning home was not an option.

Rights groups have condemned Sri Lanka's detention of 250,000 minority ethnic Tamil civilians in military-run camps since the end of the country's bloody decades-long civil war earlier this year.

"We are rich people in my country, we all have big houses and farms, but we have no life there," said 35-year-old teacher Kalla, as her two young sons gathered about her legs.

Alex, a former English teacher with an American twang thanks to a previous job in a call centre, said the migrants each paid 15,000 dollars to people smugglers and flew in groups from Sri Lanka to Malaysia.

Then they spent a month living in a makeshift camp in the jungle, with little food and water, before boarding their boat to Australia.

Tossed by waves and battered by rain in their bid to reach Australia's remote Christmas Island, the group was left in fearful limbo when the boat's engine sputtered out.

They drifted for five days in the Indian Ocean before it was fixed.

"The ship was shaking, the waves were big, everyone was vomiting, some fell unconscious," said a 32-year-old woman who gave her name as Shanthi.

Five hours from Christmas Island, Alex said the boat did an about-face and set a course for Java island after a smaller boat failed to show up to whisk the captain safely back to Indonesia.

Alleged people smuggling kingpin Abraham Lauhenaspessy was found on board and arrested after the boat had been escorted into port by the Indonesian navy.