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RESCUERS ARE SEARCHING the seas off Indonesia’s Java island for possibly dozens of asylum-seekers missing after their Australia-bound boat sank, leaving at least three dead, with 157 saved, an official said.
Local rescue officials estimated there could have been “up to 200″ passengers on the boat which was bound for Australia, while a survivor said some 250 had boarded the vessel.
“The 157 rescued have been taken to an immigration centre, where they have been given food and water,” head of the rescue operation Rochmali, who only goes by one name, told AFP.
“We have to do proper checks, but they say they’re from Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka,” he said.
Police said that the three dead were two children and one woman.
Indonesia’s rescue agency was alerted to the incident by Australian authorities on Tuesday evening, Rochmali said.
The boat sank in heavy seas off the fishing town of Cidaun in western Java, from where rescuers set out in their own boats and in vessels lent by the police and fishermen.
An AFP reporter who spoke to survivors said a group of 38, including women and children, had swum for between two and three hours in high seas to reach the shore on Tuesday night.
Ciduan in western Java (Image: Google Maps)
Their boat was headed for Australia’s Christmas Island, which is closer to Java than mainland Australia, when it began taking on water, 42-year-old Sri Lankan survivor Obijet Roy told AFP.
Speaking in broken English, he described how terrified passengers jumped into the sea.
“Water from bottom of the ship is going up and then the passenger panic. Then they down to the sea,” said Roy, who added he was heading to Christmas Island with three friends.
Some of the asylum-seekers were wearing life vests, while others were clinging to pieces of wood when the boat went down, he said.
Survivors
According to Roy, 250 asylum-seekers, mostly Sri Lankans, had travelled to Cianjur from a shelter in Bogor city on six buses to take the treacherous boat journey.
Villager Harun, 49, said he had seen the distressed asylum-seekers coming ashore in Cidaun.
“It was a shocking sight to see clusters of migrants at the beach. More and more came swimming to the shore,” he told AFP.
Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted a man named Soheil saying he was the only survivor of a group of 61 Iranians he was travelling with.
“We have problem with motor after two hour. For three hours, we try to come back (to shore).
“The sea very hard, the sea no good. The ship break,” he said.
Australia’s record
Australia has struggled to stem an influx of asylum-seekers arriving by boat, with record numbers landing in 2012 and more than 15,000 so far in 2013.
Hundreds have drowned making the journey — as recently as last week a boat sank, killing four people — with the latest disaster coming just days after Canberra announced a hardline new plan to send all unauthorised arrivals to Papua New Guinea.
Asylum-seekers arriving in Australian waters will now be sent to the Manus Island processing centre on PNG and elsewhere in the Pacific nation for assessment, with no cap on the number that can be transferred.
Even if found to be “genuine refugees” they will have no chance of being settled in Australia, instead having to remain in PNG, be sent back home or to third countries.
In a bid to smash the lucrative people-smuggling networks, Australia on Sunday also announced it would pay rewards of up to Aus$200,000 (€140,000) for information leading to their conviction.
RIP. For all the problems we have in this country and the moaning we all do about it, things like this should really give us a sense of perspective. There are billions of people in the world who would swop with us in a heartbeat to live in a safe and developed nation.
Correct. And most of them would be taking the first boat out of here
I hope the bleeding heart liberals with lots of sanctomonious outrage over australian asylum seeker policy, and no solutions to offer, are watching.
The government are trying to discourage asylum seekers arriving by boat for this reason. This is the reason for sending them on to PNG. To discourage this practice.
I have a big problem with the processing time and detention of assylum seekers. That needs to improve. But asylum seekers must be discouraged from attempting to arrive by boat one way or another.
I agree with your point. Cynical amongst us have said it is an exercise in keeping refugees out of Australia but I disagree. Having been on a few boats around Indonesia myself I can say that health and safety practices do not exist and also that the seas are the roughest and most dangerous I’ve been on even on a clear, beautiful day.
So as a deterent we should send them to a third world country with questionable ability to provide safe conditions at the cost to australia – we have as much control of the boat smugglers as we will the conditions in PNG – sweet f a
But you carry on deluding yourself that this is all to save lives….
Where is your solution? Do nothing to hinder this practice and encourage more of it by extention?
Typical unthinking bleeding heart. All wind and no solutions.
The vast majority of asylum seekers arrive in australia by plane. They are not sent away.
I don’t propose a solution to the boat smuggling issue because i don’t think there is a solution – its not within our control and i don’t believe sending people who arrive here to PNG or Manus or whatever 3rd world alternative is good practice – the stories out if Manus are not good, unless of course the horror stories are the deterrent you are so keen on?
Yep just as I thought. ‘I don’t have the stomach to fully contemplate a moral dillema, so I will deal with the unsettling cognitive dissonance by ignoring half of the dillema and feigning outrage.
Referrin’ to yourself or me?
So you’re on a railway line and an out of control carriage is about to kill 5 people who are working on the track in its path. Your only option to save them is to pull a lever that would send the carriage along another track, but then it will certainly kill 1 person. Do you pull the lever?
In Nazi Germany during WWII you and 10 other Jewish people are hiding in a household attic as the Nazi soldiers search the house searching for you. The slightest sound will alert them to your presence and will certainly lead to the deaths of everyone hiding in that attic. One of the people you are protecting is a baby and he just started crying. Do you kill the baby and save the group or just allow the entire group, including the baby, to be captured and killed by the Nazis?
Lets say we stay with your WWII analogy, say boat loads of jewish refugees were at sea, and some of them arrive to your country and some are shipwrecked.
So as a deterrent to stop these shipwrecks and the associated loss of life we will refuse all boats of refugees, and if they decide to come anyway, we will send them to a third world country. We will pay billions to this country to house these people indefintely. The boats may or may not stop – but even if they don’t we can tell ourselves this is the best worst decision we could make because we can control the actions of others…. It would be worse if we did nothing…
Reminds me of the Woody Guthrie song deportees ,nobody seems to care about these poor people. If a boat carrying tourists sank off the coast of Australia it would be news headlines everywhere.
How can George Bush look at himself in the mirror. The amount of murders and killings he has caused in the world is disgusting. He should be strung up and locked away for life for starting all of this!!! My heart breaks when I read about this:(
What has Bush got to do with this?
Over 1,000 people have died since 2007 when Prime Minister Rudd dismantled the policies that worked.
The bleeding hearts need to realise that when Australia has an effective ‘open door’ policy, people will be exploited by people smugglers and flock to Australia in dangerous conditions. Many of these people, while they may have fled horrendous conditions, have still travelled through numerous countries to get to Indonesia (mostly) and paid large sums of money to people smugglers. These smugglers are well aware that if they broadcast a mayday call then scuttle a boat they will be rescued. What about the thousands of refugees and asylum seekers sitting in camps in the Middle East and Africa who can’t afford to travel or pay?
Harsh measures are initially needed to stop the boats and stop the deaths. This should also include ways to mitigate the “push factors” overseas and to stop the people smugglers at source – a difficult task when much of the Indonesian police/army is corrupt.
@cavanbythesea… I think the reason is to discourage people from getting on boats in the first place… The government has launched a media campaign in Indonesia letting people know this with the hope they don’t get on boats and therefore there will be not many going to PNG… I feel for these people so much and I hope that this may stop the boats and the awful drownings
I get it Alison, make it as unappealing as possible, make an example of them… Its a terrible situation, no doubt, i’m at a loss to know what better to do but just a few months ago we were told that placing women in institutions because they did the wrong thing was the right thing to do, it taught them a lesson, it dettered others, whatever…..
So sad. We’re lucky to be in a developed country. RIP
Shoddy work
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