A boat carrying 74 asylum seekers disappeared en route to Australia near the Komodo island in Indonesia last week. The boat was believed to have women and children on board and had vanished — feared to have sunk — when the Australian Federal Police was notified by a refugee rights advocate, Ian Rintoul, on July 7.
The AFP sent a text message to alert Indonesian authorities, who launched a search for the boat. Even though the boat had been under surveillance by Australian police in Jakarta, Australian authorities refused to take responsibility for it, because the incident occurred in Indonesian waters, said the July 10 Australian.
Foreign affairs minister Stephen Smith told Lateline on July 8 the boat had been found and all on board were safe. However, 24 hours later, he was forced to admit the fate of the vessel was still unknown. The July 10 Australian said the Indonesian navy had called off its search. It said Rintoul had received news the boat had landed on an island.
This "rescue" attempt — organised by text messages between the asylum seekers onboard the stricken vessel, Rintoul and, shockingly, the federal police between nations — condemns Australia's inhumane border protection measures against refugees.
The incident followed the Australian government's latest lunge to play the "tough cop" in the Asia-Pacific region, pushing regional neighbours to crack down on "people smuggling" in an attempt to stop those fleeing war and conflict from making it to Australian waters.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, along with Smith, met with counterparts in Malaysia on July 6 to discuss "people smuggling" and border control policies.
"Active cooperation between ourselves and regional governments on security, on intelligence, on border control is really important", Rudd said before leaving Australia, said the July 7 Australian.
Smith told ABC's Radio National on July 7 the aim of the Malaysia visit was to "enhance" the former Coalition government's border protection policy though "improved relations" with regional nations identified as common stopovers for asylum seekers, namely Malaysia and Indonesia.
He also mentioned working with Thailand and Sri Lanka. Thailand cast adrift a boatload of Burmese refugees in February and the Sri Lankan government oversaw the recent violent persecution of the Tamil people.
The July 7 Sydney Morning Herald said Australia had provided additional police and customs officials in Malaysia, to improve immigration controls and "toughen" its laws on "people smuggling".
Australia already has a border protection agreement with Indonesia, which includes financial backing for police dedicated to disrupting asylum seekers before they attempt to depart for Australia. The arrest of refugees is common; 21 Afghan asylum seekers were arrested in Lombok on June 24.
The Indonesian Trade Promotion Centre said more than 1300 asylum seekers had been arrested in Indonesia since the beginning of the year, mostly from Afghanistan, but also from Sri Lanka, Burma and Iraq.
The Australian navy also employs the "tow-back" method of turning boats around and sending them back to Indonesian ports, a practice first championed by the previous Howard government.
However, Smith has been forced to defend the talks with Malaysia, which is not a signatory to the 1951 UN refugees convention and has been blacklisted by a US state department report for evidence of brutal harassment of refugees by corrupt immigration officials and police.
"That's a matter for Malaysia itself", he said on ABC's Radio National on July 7.
Meanwhile, Rudd flew on to Rome for the G8 Summit, where he said "global burden sharing" was needed to resettle refugees.
"We, the advanced economies of the world, need to all burden share", he told a G8 function on July 8. This is despite Australia's incomparably modest intake of refugees, even compared to Italy itself, which had 37,000 refugees arrive in 2008.
Rudd's stopover in Malaysia and his pleas in Rome for a "coordinated global plan" to tackle the rising numbers of asylum seekers across the world neglected the most important point: the desperate people who risk their lives for freedom.
In June, immigration minister Chris Evans bragged about Australia's border protection controls. "Australia under the Rudd government has one of the toughest and most sophisticated border security regimes in the world", he told the Senate on June 25.
But when it actually comes to the lives of human beings making risky and desperate attempts to seek our country's protection, it's left to a refugee activist and some text messages to prompt their rescue. Australia's "regime" is shown to be incompetent and inhumane.
The journey to Kuala Lumpur was accompanied by claims up to 10,000 asylum seekers were in Malaysia planning a journey to Australia. The racist response of the mainstream media has been to raise concerns over the capacity of the Christmas Island detention centre, now home to more than 800 refugees.
The numbers of refugees moving across the world continues to rise. Both the PM and Smith correctly attribute this to "significant push factors".
Yet Australia has failed to take the steps necessary to end the wars and persecution that cause people to flee for their lives. The most recent boats have carried people from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The response needs to be compassion and protection in accordance with our international commitment.
Instead, Australia is bolstering regional border controls that prolong asylum seekers' painful and horrific experience, right up until they are forced to risk passage with disappearance or death on our vast northern ocean.