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Detention Kids Tell Their Own Story In Award-Winning Film

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Sedaqatyar Family: Another Tale of Misery


(file photo)

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PM Rules out Changes to New Refugee Bill

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Sad Facts of the SIEV-X Sinking

The memory of those who died should be kept above politics, writes associate editor Cameron Stewart.

It's five years since 353 men, women and children drowned aboard the doomed refugee boat Siev X, but the tragedy continues to echo across national politics. This week the disaster resurfaced in two unexpected places: in Labor Party policy and, potentially, on school curriculums. This may seem unremarkable if the motivation is simply to honour the memory of those who died, including 146 children, in this most heartbreaking of maritime accidents.

But it is not.

Instead, the Siev X incident has morphed grotesquely into a cause of agenda politics, a vehicle used by refugee advocates, politicians and special interest groups to lend moral weight to their partisan arguments. Such is their zeal to do this that the facts surrounding the sinking are becoming lost amid a shroud of myths, rumours and conspiracy theories.

Siev stands for suspected illegal entry vessel. The small, overcrowded Siev X - a boat arranged by people smugglers - sank on October 19, 2001, on the way from Indonesia to Christmas Island, taking 353 people to their deaths. Forty-one survivors clung to wreckage for 20 hours before being rescued by Indonesian fishing boats.

Labor's immigration spokesman Tony Burke this week recruited the ghosts of Siev X in an attempt to persuade his party to change policy and oppose the Howard Government's tough temporary protection visa laws. He blamed these TPV laws, in part, for the loss of life on Siev X.

"The reason women and children went to a people smuggler and found themselves on Siev X was that Dad wasn't able to be reunited with them," an emotional Burke told Siev X survivors this week. "On a temporary visa he was not allowed to see them. We ended up with a situation of people giving their life savings to evil operators to then put their lives at risk and in this case many did drown."

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone disputes Burke's claims, saying that, on the contrary, the TPV laws have helped deter asylum-seekers from taking dangerous boat trips to Australia.

Meanwhile, a group calling itself the Siev X Case Study Committee is lobbying NSW secondary schools to include a case study on Siev X for Year 11 students. But rather than focusing on the disaster, the case study ventures into politics, asking students if the drownings were the result of federal government policies and even whether Australian officials sabotaged Siev X before it left Indonesia for Australia. Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop has described the case study as "as outrageous attempt to disguise a political agenda as school curriculum".

Recently, the secretary of Labor for Refugees (Victoria), Robin Rothfield, repeated the oft-made claim by refugee groups that the Australian navy chose to ignore the plight of Siev X. "The nearest Australian warship, HMAS Arunta, was 150 nautical miles south and could have been there in five hours," he wrote in The Age newspaper. 'Australia was the best-resourced country to help but did nothing." Rothfield's claim reflects a view shared by many refugee advocates, including some of those who have created the proposed Siev X school case study: that the Australian navy deliberately sat on its hands while the families aboard Siev X were drowning.

It is an extraordinary and malicious claim and one that is completely unsupported by the available evidence. The inability of the navy and other Australian authorities to detect SievX before it was too late was no conspiracy but a mixture of bad luck and poor communication. Siev X had already sunk - and most lives were already lost - by the time Australian authorities even realised it could be at risk.

Australian Federal Police agent Kylie Pratt called Coastwatch at 9.30am on October 20 to alert it of intelligence pointing to Siev X's suspected departure from Indonesia. She did not know Siev X had sunk the previous night and that the survivors were clinging to debris, awaiting rescue.

Pratt's intelligence report said Siev X was "small, with 400 passengers on board" and when she called Coastwatch she added her own warning that it might be "subject to risk" because of overcrowding. Twenty minutes later Coastwatch called the headquarters of Operation Relex, which was responsible for military surveillance of the area, and told it that a small, overcrowded boat was on its way. But Coastwatch neglected to add Pratt's personal warning that this boat might be at risk.

Eleven minutes later the report of Siev X was in the hands of people who controlled the air force and naval surveillance of the area. At 10.02am - 32 minutes after Pratt's first report - the Siev X report arrived at the 92 Wing Detachment at Learmouth in Western Australia, from where air force P3 Orions were making daily surveillance flights over the area. At that moment a P3 was in the air over the ocean but the crew was unaware that Siev X existed, much less that it had sunk.

At the base, commanders read the report saying a small, overcrowded boat was on the way. This did not trigger concern because most of the asylum-seeker boats were small and overcrowded. The report also did not contain Pratt's assessment that Siev X might be at greater risk than most. Therefore the report was treated as routine and it was not considered necessary to alert the P3 crew already in the air.

P3 group commander Philip Byrne later said: "It was a terrible tragedy but unfortunately we had no safety of life at sea indications." By the time the P3 went on its daily patrol the next day, the Siev X survivors had been picked up by Indonesian fishing boats.

This sequence of events shows while communication between the agencies was poor, Australian authorities did not deliberately ignore the plight of Siev X. A parliamentary committee report into the tragedy agreed.

The other Siev X conspiracy theory that continues to thrive without oxygen is the claim that Australian spies, AFP agents or their operatives sabotaged Siev X before it sailed. The alleged aim was to prevent Siev X from sailing, but that the sabotage went wrong and Siev X sailed into deep ocean before sinking.

Australian spies and police did run an aggressive covert campaign inside Indonesia to dismantle the people-smuggling networks responsible for creating voyages such as Siev X. But rumours that this campaign included sinking asylum-seeker boats were denied by the AFP and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. No evidence has ever emerged that Siev X was tampered with before it sailed, yet this rumour persists to such an extent that it appears on the Siev X case study being hawked to NSW schools.

The decision by Labor's Burke to use Siev X to push his belief that the TPV laws must be scrapped is yet another example of the politicisation of the tragedy.

When Siev X sank five years ago, there was fair reason to be suspicious of the Government's claims in relation to it. The ugly politics of the August 2001 Tampa affair, followed by the manipulation of truth in the children overboard controversy, had debased the Government and encouraged scepticism of its claims. When Siev X sank during the election campaign, John Howard initially tried to distance his Government from the tragedy, claiming the boat had sunk in Indonesian waters and was therefore not Australia's responsibility.

It was later revealed the Siev X sank in the zone patrolled daily by Australia's P3 Orion spy planes. But, in contrast to the children overboard scandal, the early whiff of suspicion in relation to Siev X was not supported by the evidence that later emerged.

Yet for many partisan advocates the facts have become irrelevant: they want to believe that the Government somehow was linked to the drowning of the men, women and children of Siev X. Now is the time to remember the tragedy for what it really was: a terrible accident caused by the greed of the people smugglers who put the unseaworthy boat and its 400 passengers to sea.
==================================

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Research Paper: Therapy with Refugee Children

Refugee children living in Australia have usually survived a multitude of traumatic experiences in their country of origin. Exposed to war, persecution, extreme deprivation and sometimes torture, they are prone to post traumatic stress disorder and physical ailments. Omar, a nine-year old refugee from Afghanistan, was a boy who had undergone such experiences. He presented for counselling at a service for refugee survivors of torture and trauma as deeply traumatised. Omar was restored to health through a series of 58 individual counselling sessions, relying extensively on art therapy techniques. His recovery was also facilitated by his attendance at a recreational camp for refugee youth, and the establishment of psychological and practical support for his family.
...

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Minister Defends Handling of Iraqi Refugee's Long Detention on Nauru

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Happy Refugee Day, Mr. Howard
====================

Calls to End Asylum Seeker Detention

Australia's newest offshore detention centre will be like a maximum-security jail with a section for children, according to a senior senator.

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle told a rally in Melbourne on Sunday marking Refugee Week that she had seen the government's "massive" new centre being built on Christmas Island, which is situated 2,600 kilometres north west of Perth.

"There is close to $500 million being spent building this new detention centre," Senator Nettle said.

The centre contains non-contact visiting rooms akin to the maximum security section of Victoria's Barwon Prison, she said.

"They've also built in there, areas for children, against the promises that the government has made."

The government's "express intention" is that children only be detained as a last resort, she said.

Among the hundreds of protesters at the rally were recent Papuan refugees and representatives of the Tamil community who were calling for the release of 83 Sri Lankans from detention on Nauru.

Organisers at the protest rang the Sri Lankans and broadcast their plea for asylum.

"We are living in Nauru, we have been living here around three months but not any action, please help us and free us, please understand our situation," the voice on the phone said.

The men were intercepted by Australian authorities earlier this year.

Asylum seekers sent to Nauru are not detained under Australia law or the laws of Nauru but are granted special purpose visas by Nauru to stay while they await processing.

David Manne of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre said this process was unfair on asylum seekers because it operated "outside of the rule of law completely".

"They have been cast into possible indefinite exile, out of sight, out of mind, out of rights," Mr Manne said.

Throughout the 2005-06 financial year, a total of 6,626 people were in immigration or community detention in Australia.

Senator Nettle said the government should extend its policy of allowing some asylum seekers to live in the community while they are assessed.

"That strategy of having people in the community is working, has worked and that's what we need to be putting pressure on both of the major parties to commit to," she said.

Senator Nettle plans to introduce a private member's bill to parliament next week aimed at establishing a process to deal with a flood of "climate refugees" displaced by environmental changes.

Sunday's rally in Melbourne coincided with a launch of Refugee Week in Sydney in the lead-up to World Refugee Day on June 20.

© 2007 AAP
==============================

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Has anyone listened to Richard Glover's interview with Ali on Monday afternoon? B)


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I just wonder how seriously and strongly the Federal Opposition will pursue Howard on this latest (biographical) revelation ... Mind you, even back then, every observer knew that Pauline Hanson had never left the Canberran scene




PM's Move to Block Tampa Made 'Despite Legal Advice'

By: David Marr
The Sydney Morning Herald ( 23 July 2007)


(Source)

The Tampa was stopped at sea by John Howard in the teeth of legal advice from the highest levels of the Attorney-General's department that nothing could be done to prevent the Norwegian ship carrying 438 rescued asylum seekers from entering Australian waters.

But the Prime Minister called for a second legal opinion, which in the end "backed his preferred stance" that the ship could be prevented from approaching Christmas Island, says a new book, John Winston Howard: The Biography. It quotes an unnamed ministerial adviser as saying "the Prime Minister's office was all over the Attorney-General's office like shit on a blanket".

The biography essentially accuses Mr Howard of bringing on the Tampa crisis to stymie One Nation. The authors detail a revealing exchange between Mr Howard and the then minister for sport and tourism, Jackie Kelly, as they walked into question time on the day the Tampa story broke.


(Source)

"Kelly's seat of Lindsay took in the far western fringes of Sydney," write Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen. "It was 'Howard battler' territory and Kelly was worried that the boat people issue was reigniting support for One Nation ... 'One Nation is just chewing us up,' Kelly told Howard. 'I've lost two branches to them; one of them is my best fundraising branch. We need to do something or I'm a goner.'

"Howard waved his speaking notes towards her. 'Don't worry, Jackie,' he responded. 'That's all about to change'."

The Herald has confirmed the picture that emerges in the biography of an operation pursued despite hostile advice from the Government's top advisers on the night of August 26, 2001, with lawyers scrambling to keep up with a strategy being devised on the run inside the Prime Minister's department.

That night the master of the Tampa, Captain Arne Rinnan, was threatened with prosecution as a people smuggler if he did not turn his ship around and head for Indonesia.

The Herald understands those threats were sanctioned by the Prime Minister's office but that within hours the office accepted more considered legal advice that such charges would never stick. The threats were dropped.


(Source)

Senior legal advisers on that first night also told the then head of the Prime Minister's department, Max Moore-Wilton, that the Tampa had a right of "innocent passage" under international law.

The authors of that advice are believed to be the Government's then chief general counsel, Henry Burmester, QC, and the first assistant secretary, office of international law, Bill Campbell.

The gist of Mr Moore-Wilton's reply was that this view of the law was "crap" and there had to be some way of stopping the ship.

Subsequently, departmental lawyers offered the view that possible contravention of migration and quarantine laws might "suspend" Captain Rinnan's right of innocent passage and so prevent him landing the asylum seekers in Australia.

Within the Attorney-General's Department it was felt there was nothing necessarily improper in the Government sending the lawyers back to rethink their advice. But there was a sense that giving this comfort to the Government's strategy was legally problematic.

A spokesman for the Prime Minister told the Herald that at the time Mr Howard had obtained explicit advice from the international law division of the Attorney-General's department "that the Government's actions were perfectly legal".

A spokesman for the Attorney-General's Department said that as far as he could determine the Government had been advised only that the Tampa had no right of innocent passage.

Canberra's threats kept the Tampa on the high seas for 2 days, out of reach of the medical help asylum seekers required. But once the shipping line's lawyers were satisfied the Australian Government could take no effective legal action, Captain Rinnan was ordered to call Canberra's bluff and sail the Tampa close in to Christmas Island.

(Weblink: Additional reporting)

===================================

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Stories of Asylum Not Forgotten



With the recent closure of Baxter Detention Centre, a new book detailing the experiences of asylum seekers and their advocates is making a particularly timely and important contribution to the literature surrounding this dark time in Australian immigration policy. Syreen Rashid attending the launch of Acting from the Heart and has the story ...

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SIEV-X: Playing Politics with Lives



A new memorial is a reminder of the potential costs of harsh policies towards refugees, writes J. Olaf Leist

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[GreenOz]

in the detention centres, they treat people worse than a neglectful owner would treat his dog, fullstop!

the environment in which they live in there and the associated trauma, is enough to drive the most sane into madness.

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In the spirit of previous khaki and fear-mongering Federal Elections, let's pay a nostalgic visit to our much-celebrated ideals of "Fairgo", June 2001 ...

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(Duration: 3mins:30sec)

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New Minister, Old Department

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