Australian government and the drowning of asylum-seekers

beatriz

RIGHTS-AUSTRALIA:
Smuggler Jailed But Iraqi Boat People Wrangle Rages On
Bob Burton

CANBERRA, Jul 15 (IPS) - The sentencing of a former Baghdad goldsmith for helping organise a people-smuggling operation that ended in tragedy has not quelled controversy over the Australian government's role in the October 2001 drowning of 353 Iraqi asylum-seekers on their way to this country from Indonesia.

On Thursday, Queensland Supreme Court Judge Phil McMurdo imposed a nine-year prison sentence on Khaleed Daoed for helping organise the ill-fated voyage but that may only have raised once again questions of what the Australian government knew of the fateful voyage of the boat, SIEV-X.
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Tony Kevin, a former Australian career diplomat and author of the award-winning book on the affair, 'A Certain Maritime Incident', believes there are far too many unanswered questions about what happened. ''This is a moral issue, that if our system of law and respect for life means anything then we have got to expose this,'' he said.
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When news of the tragedy first emerged during an election campaign centred on asylum seekers, conservative Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, insisted the boat sank in ''Indonesian waters'' and therefore was the responsibility of Indonesian authorities.

However an internal government diplomatic cable, written the day after the survivors were rescued, revealed the government knew SIEV-X sank in international waters within the Australian surveillance zone. The cable was only released, with major deletions, in February 2003. (....)
Tony Kevin continues to hope that one day soon a whistleblower will come forward to answer the lingering questions over what happened. ''Will there ever be a whistleblower? You never know, someone might get a conscience,'' he said.(....)

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