SYDNEY — Just when links between Indonesia and Australia were looking good, along come Sri Lankans fleeing in leaky boats. Suddenly the Indian Ocean marks a diplomatic and humanitarian standoff of grim proportions.
What started as a rescue by the Australian Navy of fleeing Sri Lankan Tamil refugees soon turned into a standoff between Canberra and Jakarta, with Colombo declining to pour oil on troubled ocean waters.
Boatloads of South East Asian refugees trying to avoid persecution in war-torn homelands by entering Australia illegally is nothing new. Tens of thousands of "boat people" fleeing the Vietnam War and now leading comfortable lives here showed the way. But the latest dash for freedom marks a bigger, more complex challenge to international good will.
Some 300,000 Tamils in northeast Sri Lanka displaced by more than two decades of civil war against Colombo government forces want to get out, to escape to anywhere. In nearby India's Tamil Nadu the government cannot or does not want to accept them.
What better escape than to board a fishing boat and sail across an ocean to peaceful, seemingly empty Australia? Especially when you can afford to pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers, Indonesian fishermen who are crafty at illegal fishing in Australian waters and willing to ship homeless refugees to the promised land. Unhappily in the past many boat people never reached land. Many more are still willing to try.
The latest of many pathetic attempts has pulled at the heartstrings of Australians — and sharply divided public opinion as to the best practical solution. At stake are the lives of 78 people holed up for two months on board an Australian Customs Service launch, the Oceanic Viking, moored off Bantan Island, Indonesia. They refuse to leave.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) awaits permission from Jakarta to process the asylum seekers' claims. Another 235 refugees are refusing to leave their boat tied up in the Indonesian port of Merak. The men, women and tiny children are in dire straits.
UNHCR is responsible for assessing asylum claims but only after getting permission from Indonesia. Jakarta officials claim they are willing to resolve the impasse without violence, even if it means continuing delays. Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. refugee convention.
Meanwhile, the trapped, isolated Tamils have threatened to kill themselves. One, using a cell phone hidden from customs officials, told Australian journalists waiting on shore that five women and five children are suffering. A 9-month-old baby is crying constantly for milk.
One caller phoned that "if we can't go to Australia, we'd like to go to another resettlement country, otherwise we can't live in this world."
The trapped asylum seeker claimed they paid a people smuggler more than $5,000 after living in Indonesia for two years. "We are Tamils but we are not Tamil Tigers," he said.
Their plight is a time bomb for dithering Canberra politicians. The previous Liberal government of then Prime Minister John Howard lost a lot of support with his so-called Pacific Solution, the holding and processing of illegal refugees on two South Pacific islands, Manus and Nauru. Now critics are calling Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's vain hopes the Indonesia Solution.
After decades of screening claims for asylum from illegals who try to jump the official "refugee queue" Canberra has a firm policy of detaining queue jumpers on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Now the tiny island's immigration detention center is bulging with 1127 asylum seekers and 11 Indonesian fishermen.
Yet another boat, the 37th this year, has been spotted by coast guards near Ashmore Reef, off Australia's northwest coast. The 34 passengers and four crew are being taken to Christmas Island. To cope with the rush, the $400 million detention center is being extended with demountable buildings and town houses. But the detainees living there are fed up. They want to get to the promised land. Now.
One irate Sri Lankan facing deportation recently staged a protest strike by climbing up a pole and threatened to jump to his death. He clung on in the tropical heat until center staff used a cherry picker to lift iced water to him. Eight hours later he climbed down.
Back in multicultural Australia the citizens are loudly vocal in telling Canberra what it should do about these vexed problems. And not all are polite about it. One writer to a Sydney newspaper told the Sri Lankans to cross the narrow strait between their war-torn country and India. Another advised Oceanic Viking sailors feeding their stay-put guests to set up tables ashore in Indonesia and invite them to eat there. The cost of hosting the guests is over $75,000 a day.
The normally smiling prime minister Rudd is playing this one cool. His diplomatic skills are working overtime, away from the media. The crisis has come at the same time Rudd was saying we need a bigger Australia for strategic reasons. He knows Australia is the only nation claiming sovereignty over the resources of an entire continent. The population is projected to rise by 60 percent in the next 40 years to 35 million. Still, national security will always be paramount.
Just back from Jakarta welcoming the re-elected power of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Rudd is on a careful watch. Both leaders agreed the asylum seekers should be processed in Indonesia. The problem is Jakarta is struggling to enforce the agreement against local, provincial hostility and rising resentment against Australia.
Smooth-talking Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith has called for public patience. Asked in a radio interview if Australia will back down and let in the detainees, Smith smoothed with: "We don't have that in contemplation."
Enter Indonesia's bright new foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa: "We have done our level best to facilitate our humanitarian concerns and interests for these people. But in the final analysis, if they refuse to leave the boat, this is a fact the Australian government must take into account. We have an abundance of patience." Suave, Cambridge-educated, with a Ph.D. from the Australian National University, Natalegawa faces a test in Australian eyes. Just as Rudd faces criticism here of hypocrisy, so the top Jakarta negotiator will be judged on his handling of a tricky international situation.
The national newspaper, The Australian, urges Rudd to "take the country with him on refugees. . . . Memories of the racist White Australia policy are still strong enough among many of us to resist processes that deny people individuality and humanity. . . . Rudd must take the lead in explaining his principled position. Despite the plethora of opinions, this is not a black-and-white issue and the prime minister cannot hope for universal approval."
How ironic, then, that Rudd will soon be explaining another foulup in the Indian Ocean. Like the refugees, the threatened pollution of sea life is engulfing a seemingly helpless Canberra. An underwater oil rig off the West Australian coast has been spewing oil for three months, running at an unstoppable rate of 400 barrels of day. Suddenly the oil catches fire.
As fire fighters rushed from Perth, workers on the West Atlas rig tried to "kill the well" by pumping mud into a leak 2.6 km below the sea bed. A fire is, one hopes, extinguished quicker than an oil spill.
Sea life, including dolphins, are meanwhile suffering and the Australian public are about to question their delight at the oil and gas riches still being discovered under the sea. Suddenly the Indian Ocean, long second-rated to the dynamic Pacific Region, appears on the public mind as a flash point too long overlooked.
Alan Goodall is former Tokyo bureau chief for The Australian.
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What started as a rescue by the Australian Navy of fleeing Sri Lankan Tamil refugees soon turned into a standoff between Canberra and Jakarta, with Colombo declining to pour oil on troubled ocean waters.
Boatloads of South East Asian refugees trying to avoid persecution in war-torn homelands by entering Australia illegally is nothing new. Tens of thousands of "boat people" fleeing the Vietnam War and now leading comfortable lives here showed the way. But the latest dash for freedom marks a bigger, more complex challenge to international good will.
Some 300,000 Tamils in northeast Sri Lanka displaced by more than two decades of civil war against Colombo government forces want to get out, to escape to anywhere. In nearby India's Tamil Nadu the government cannot or does not want to accept them.
What better escape than to board a fishing boat and sail across an ocean to peaceful, seemingly empty Australia? Especially when you can afford to pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers, Indonesian fishermen who are crafty at illegal fishing in Australian waters and willing to ship homeless refugees to the promised land. Unhappily in the past many boat people never reached land. Many more are still willing to try.
The latest of many pathetic attempts has pulled at the heartstrings of Australians — and sharply divided public opinion as to the best practical solution. At stake are the lives of 78 people holed up for two months on board an Australian Customs Service launch, the Oceanic Viking, moored off Bantan Island, Indonesia. They refuse to leave.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) awaits permission from Jakarta to process the asylum seekers' claims. Another 235 refugees are refusing to leave their boat tied up in the Indonesian port of Merak. The men, women and tiny children are in dire straits.
UNHCR is responsible for assessing asylum claims but only after getting permission from Indonesia. Jakarta officials claim they are willing to resolve the impasse without violence, even if it means continuing delays. Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. refugee convention.
Meanwhile, the trapped, isolated Tamils have threatened to kill themselves. One, using a cell phone hidden from customs officials, told Australian journalists waiting on shore that five women and five children are suffering. A 9-month-old baby is crying constantly for milk.
One caller phoned that "if we can't go to Australia, we'd like to go to another resettlement country, otherwise we can't live in this world."
The trapped asylum seeker claimed they paid a people smuggler more than $5,000 after living in Indonesia for two years. "We are Tamils but we are not Tamil Tigers," he said.
Their plight is a time bomb for dithering Canberra politicians. The previous Liberal government of then Prime Minister John Howard lost a lot of support with his so-called Pacific Solution, the holding and processing of illegal refugees on two South Pacific islands, Manus and Nauru. Now critics are calling Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's vain hopes the Indonesia Solution.
After decades of screening claims for asylum from illegals who try to jump the official "refugee queue" Canberra has a firm policy of detaining queue jumpers on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Now the tiny island's immigration detention center is bulging with 1127 asylum seekers and 11 Indonesian fishermen.
Yet another boat, the 37th this year, has been spotted by coast guards near Ashmore Reef, off Australia's northwest coast. The 34 passengers and four crew are being taken to Christmas Island. To cope with the rush, the $400 million detention center is being extended with demountable buildings and town houses. But the detainees living there are fed up. They want to get to the promised land. Now.
One irate Sri Lankan facing deportation recently staged a protest strike by climbing up a pole and threatened to jump to his death. He clung on in the tropical heat until center staff used a cherry picker to lift iced water to him. Eight hours later he climbed down.
Back in multicultural Australia the citizens are loudly vocal in telling Canberra what it should do about these vexed problems. And not all are polite about it. One writer to a Sydney newspaper told the Sri Lankans to cross the narrow strait between their war-torn country and India. Another advised Oceanic Viking sailors feeding their stay-put guests to set up tables ashore in Indonesia and invite them to eat there. The cost of hosting the guests is over $75,000 a day.
The normally smiling prime minister Rudd is playing this one cool. His diplomatic skills are working overtime, away from the media. The crisis has come at the same time Rudd was saying we need a bigger Australia for strategic reasons. He knows Australia is the only nation claiming sovereignty over the resources of an entire continent. The population is projected to rise by 60 percent in the next 40 years to 35 million. Still, national security will always be paramount.
Just back from Jakarta welcoming the re-elected power of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Rudd is on a careful watch. Both leaders agreed the asylum seekers should be processed in Indonesia. The problem is Jakarta is struggling to enforce the agreement against local, provincial hostility and rising resentment against Australia.
Smooth-talking Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith has called for public patience. Asked in a radio interview if Australia will back down and let in the detainees, Smith smoothed with: "We don't have that in contemplation."
Enter Indonesia's bright new foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa: "We have done our level best to facilitate our humanitarian concerns and interests for these people. But in the final analysis, if they refuse to leave the boat, this is a fact the Australian government must take into account. We have an abundance of patience." Suave, Cambridge-educated, with a Ph.D. from the Australian National University, Natalegawa faces a test in Australian eyes. Just as Rudd faces criticism here of hypocrisy, so the top Jakarta negotiator will be judged on his handling of a tricky international situation.
The national newspaper, The Australian, urges Rudd to "take the country with him on refugees. . . . Memories of the racist White Australia policy are still strong enough among many of us to resist processes that deny people individuality and humanity. . . . Rudd must take the lead in explaining his principled position. Despite the plethora of opinions, this is not a black-and-white issue and the prime minister cannot hope for universal approval."
How ironic, then, that Rudd will soon be explaining another foulup in the Indian Ocean. Like the refugees, the threatened pollution of sea life is engulfing a seemingly helpless Canberra. An underwater oil rig off the West Australian coast has been spewing oil for three months, running at an unstoppable rate of 400 barrels of day. Suddenly the oil catches fire.
As fire fighters rushed from Perth, workers on the West Atlas rig tried to "kill the well" by pumping mud into a leak 2.6 km below the sea bed. A fire is, one hopes, extinguished quicker than an oil spill.
Sea life, including dolphins, are meanwhile suffering and the Australian public are about to question their delight at the oil and gas riches still being discovered under the sea. Suddenly the Indian Ocean, long second-rated to the dynamic Pacific Region, appears on the public mind as a flash point too long overlooked.
We welcome your opinions. Click to send a message to the editor.
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